ISA detainees: Free them now or charge them in court, says Nazri
Beh Lih Yi, Malaysiakini
Jun 28, 05
Internal Security Act (ISA) detainees who have been held more than two years should be released immediately or be charged in court, said Parliamentary Human Rights Caucus chief Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz.
"They should not be served with another two-year detention order. Take them to court and charge them," said Mohd Nazri, who is also the minister in the Prime Minister's Department.
Sixty-four of the 115 detainees in the Kamunting detention camp have been detained for more than two years, according to statistics obtained by the caucus during a visit on June 17.
They comprise 68 alleged Jemaah Islamiah members, nine alleged Kumpulan Militan Malaysia members, 22 who are being held for forging currency, 13 for falsification of documents and one for alleged involvement in the nuclear weapons black market.
Two are women. Among them are 14 Indonesians, three Singaporeans, two Filipinos and one Sri Lankan.
Speaking during a press conference at the Parliament lobby today, Mohd Nazri also called for the foreigners held under the ISA to be repatriated to their country of origin "without any delay".
"I am sure they will also be detained there. They shouldn’t be here... send them back and let their countries deal with them," he said.
Other recommendations
On dozens of detainees who were punished and held in solitary confinement following riots last December, he called for their full rights to be restored as they have been penalised for more than six months, which is in violation of the Internal Security (Detained Persons) Rules 1960.
On the same note, he also asked the camp authorities to remove wire-mesh and fiberglass boards in the visitors' areas, to allow detainees to have physical contact with family members during visits.
In one case, a detainee has not been able to touch his son who was born after his detention and who is now more than two years old, Mohd Nazri said.
"Please think of the innocent children and let them feel the love of their fathers. As a caring society, we should look into all this," he said.
Mohd Nazri also urged the authorities to provide adequate social welfare support to all needy families of detainees to provide for their basic needs of livelihood, education and health.
This includes assistance with arranging visits by families who face financial problems or who live far from Kamunting in Perak.
He highlighted the case of a detainee from Sandakan, Sabah, who has not seen his family since his detention more than two years ago, because his family cannot afford to make the trip to Kamunting.
Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang, who is deputy chief of the caucus, headed a recent visit to the Simpang Renggam detention centre in Johor.
He called for restoration of parity of pay and perks for prison officers.
"At present, poor salaries not only keep prisons understaffed but fail to bring out the professional best from the prison officers," he told reporters at the same venue.
The caucus found the detention centre to be overcrowded by some 72 percent. It houses 3,439 detainees currently.
Meetings to be called
On the next course of action, Mohd Nazri said the caucus will arrange a meeting with the Internal Security Ministry and prison officials for responses to memoranda that detainees have handed to the caucus members.
The caucus received a total of 18 memoranda from detainees at the two camps, but these have been censored by the camp authorities.
On how soon he expects the recommendations to take effect, Mohd Nazri said this was hard to predict. However, as a member of the government, he will bring the matter up through any possible forum.
"We feel there is a better chance now because we understand that action has been taken on the Royal Police Commission’s recommendations too," he replied.
He also called every parties to continue engaging in dialogues with the authorities although similar recommendations previously made by the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) have not been accepted.
Questioned on the caucus' stand on tabling the Suhakam annual report for debate in the House, he said no decision has been made and that this is up to individual MPs.
"We didn’t discuss this. Of course, I am in government and Lim is in opposition... we have different views on that but we work on common ground," Mohd Nazri said.
The minister, who oversees parliamentary affairs, had previously said there was no specific time allotted to debate the Suhakam annual report although it is a statutory body that the government set up in 1999.
In another development, Internal Security Ministry parliamentary secretary Abu Seman Yusop told the House in a reply to Fong Kui Lun (DAP-Bukit Bintang) that 259,967 individuals have been remanded in prisons nationwide from 2000 to mid-2005.
During the same period, 6,322 individuals were detained under preventive laws at the rehabilitation centres and detention centre in Taiping, while another 5,475 were served with restricted residence orders.
However, 3,253 people have been released as their detention period has ended (2,702), or their detention order has been cancelled (487) or because of court orders based on habeas corpus application (64).
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
[Malaysia] UMNO may have passed critical milestone
The Star, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
28 June 2005
Umno may have passed critical milestone
ANALYSIS BY JOCELINE TAN
THE news headlines of the last few days have been dominated by the suspension of Umno figure Tan Sri Mohd Isa Abdul Samad.
But it was news about another Umno vice-president, Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam, that was splashed on the front pages of most newspapers yesterday.
Looking quite distressed, Mohd Ali, who is also the Malacca Chief Minister, denied he would also have to face the Umno Disciplinary Board in connection with the party's elections last year.
He had been dogged by such speculation for a number of days and he was apparently quite fed-up, irritated even.
"Have I not said that I have not received any letter from the board?" he asked. But Mohd Ali and, for that matter, those who had contested the Umno elections, can put all these rumours behind them now that disciplinary board chairman Tengku Ahmad Rithauddeen has made it clear that no other Umno leader will be called before the board.
It is possible that many of them slept peacefully for the first time in the days since the Isa case began last week.
Isa's appeal is still pending but few think he will be able to set it aside. At most, it is said, he will succeed in getting the suspension reduced from six years to three.
Whatever the outcome of the appeal, it is possible that Umno has passed a very critical milestone in its endeavour against money politics with such a drastic action against one of its top leaders.
Isa, who is also the Federal Territories Minister, had won the vice-presidency with the highest number of votes; the other two vice-presidents are Mohd Ali and Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
At 56, Isa, who is also the former Negri Sembilan Mentri Besar, is one of the most established figures in Umno having begun his career in Umno in his twenties.
"My friends were sceptical the party would dare act against a big name. They told me it was like people shooting the red light at traffic junctions and getting away with it," said Wangsa Maju Youth leader Datuk Norza Zakaria.
The impact of the decision also has to be seen from the public or the non-Umno point of view. As the leading party in the ruling coalition, Umno's words and deeds are closely watched by those inside and outside the party.
"The public is impressed that Umno is prepared to act against a minister. It shows that no one is too high when it comes to corruption," said Johor Baru MP Datuk Shahrir Samad.
Negri Sembilan Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Hassan, who has often described money politics as a "cancer that can destroy Umno," said that it took courage to "cut off a diseased limb."
"Credit goes to the Umno president. If he wanted to be popular, he would have kept quiet. But he has sent out a very strong signal, that he does not care who you are, that if you are wrong, you have to pay for it," he said. It is also not only about nabbing the big names but the agents who campaigned and passed out money on their behalf.
And, as Shahrir pointed out, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi basically empowered the board by not interfering in its investigations and proceedings.
"He showed that fighting corruption is not just about him speaking out but that he needs help from those around him. That is his style," said Shahrir.
The shock waves arising from the suspension of the former vice-president are still rippling through the party, but are the ripples significant enough to make Umno leaders and members toe the line when it comes to elections and campaigning?
Will this be a lesson for them to practise more ethical campaign methods? Said a Kelantan politician: "Things will improve but the temptation to buy votes will still be there. There is a death penalty for drug-trafficking but it has not stopped people from pushing."
How will all this affect the mood at the Umno general assembly in July? Few members would disagree that money can undermine the party regardless of whether they have been the ones doing the giving or taking.
As such they are likely to praise the party leadership for being firm, bold and decisive on the issue of money politics. However, some may question the methods of the disciplinary board.
More resources have to be invested in the board to make it a truly competent body of investigation, prosecution and jury. But within Umno, there is consensus that the drive for more ethical conduct among Umno politicians is a long-term effort and action against money politics will have to be on-going.
__________________________
The Star, Kuala Lumpur
28 June 2005
PM: Isa should resign all party posts
BY ZULKIFLI ABD RAHMAN
PEKAN: Umno vice-president Tan Sri Mohamed Isa Abdul Samad, who was found guilty of money politics, should resign from all his party posts, said Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
"I’m sad that Isa had been found guilty of indulging in money politics and that he was punished by the disciplinary board.
"As such, he should resign from all his party posts," the Umno president told a press conference after his visit to DRB-Hicom Defence Technologies Sdn Bhd (Deftech) main military vehicle manufacturing plant here yesterday.
He added that as far as he knew, the board took action against Isa after it considered all information that was made available to it.
The Umno Disciplinary Board yesterday announced officially Mohd Isa’s suspension from the party for six years. "However, he (Isa) can still file an appeal. I hope he will make his appeal immediately," Abdullah said.
Asked on Isa’s Cabinet post as Federal Territories Minister, the Prime Minister said: "The matter does not arise at the moment because he has to make the appeal first."
On whether the action against high-profile members had affected the party’s credibility, Abdullah said Umno’s credibility was still intact.
"Umno is taking action to contain money politics and the party is working to eradicate it," he added.
When asked whether there would be a Cabinet reshuffle if Isa’s appeal was rejected by the disciplinary board, Abdullah said the question was speculative.
Isa declined to comment on the disciplinary board’s decision. "I will talk another day," he said.
Asked on Abdullah’s statement that he should resign from all his party posts, Isa declined comment.
28 June 2005
Umno may have passed critical milestone
ANALYSIS BY JOCELINE TAN
THE news headlines of the last few days have been dominated by the suspension of Umno figure Tan Sri Mohd Isa Abdul Samad.
But it was news about another Umno vice-president, Datuk Seri Mohd Ali Rustam, that was splashed on the front pages of most newspapers yesterday.
Looking quite distressed, Mohd Ali, who is also the Malacca Chief Minister, denied he would also have to face the Umno Disciplinary Board in connection with the party's elections last year.
He had been dogged by such speculation for a number of days and he was apparently quite fed-up, irritated even.
"Have I not said that I have not received any letter from the board?" he asked. But Mohd Ali and, for that matter, those who had contested the Umno elections, can put all these rumours behind them now that disciplinary board chairman Tengku Ahmad Rithauddeen has made it clear that no other Umno leader will be called before the board.
It is possible that many of them slept peacefully for the first time in the days since the Isa case began last week.
Isa's appeal is still pending but few think he will be able to set it aside. At most, it is said, he will succeed in getting the suspension reduced from six years to three.
Whatever the outcome of the appeal, it is possible that Umno has passed a very critical milestone in its endeavour against money politics with such a drastic action against one of its top leaders.
Isa, who is also the Federal Territories Minister, had won the vice-presidency with the highest number of votes; the other two vice-presidents are Mohd Ali and Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
At 56, Isa, who is also the former Negri Sembilan Mentri Besar, is one of the most established figures in Umno having begun his career in Umno in his twenties.
"My friends were sceptical the party would dare act against a big name. They told me it was like people shooting the red light at traffic junctions and getting away with it," said Wangsa Maju Youth leader Datuk Norza Zakaria.
The impact of the decision also has to be seen from the public or the non-Umno point of view. As the leading party in the ruling coalition, Umno's words and deeds are closely watched by those inside and outside the party.
"The public is impressed that Umno is prepared to act against a minister. It shows that no one is too high when it comes to corruption," said Johor Baru MP Datuk Shahrir Samad.
Negri Sembilan Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Hassan, who has often described money politics as a "cancer that can destroy Umno," said that it took courage to "cut off a diseased limb."
"Credit goes to the Umno president. If he wanted to be popular, he would have kept quiet. But he has sent out a very strong signal, that he does not care who you are, that if you are wrong, you have to pay for it," he said. It is also not only about nabbing the big names but the agents who campaigned and passed out money on their behalf.
And, as Shahrir pointed out, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi basically empowered the board by not interfering in its investigations and proceedings.
"He showed that fighting corruption is not just about him speaking out but that he needs help from those around him. That is his style," said Shahrir.
The shock waves arising from the suspension of the former vice-president are still rippling through the party, but are the ripples significant enough to make Umno leaders and members toe the line when it comes to elections and campaigning?
Will this be a lesson for them to practise more ethical campaign methods? Said a Kelantan politician: "Things will improve but the temptation to buy votes will still be there. There is a death penalty for drug-trafficking but it has not stopped people from pushing."
How will all this affect the mood at the Umno general assembly in July? Few members would disagree that money can undermine the party regardless of whether they have been the ones doing the giving or taking.
As such they are likely to praise the party leadership for being firm, bold and decisive on the issue of money politics. However, some may question the methods of the disciplinary board.
More resources have to be invested in the board to make it a truly competent body of investigation, prosecution and jury. But within Umno, there is consensus that the drive for more ethical conduct among Umno politicians is a long-term effort and action against money politics will have to be on-going.
__________________________
The Star, Kuala Lumpur
28 June 2005
PM: Isa should resign all party posts
BY ZULKIFLI ABD RAHMAN
PEKAN: Umno vice-president Tan Sri Mohamed Isa Abdul Samad, who was found guilty of money politics, should resign from all his party posts, said Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
"I’m sad that Isa had been found guilty of indulging in money politics and that he was punished by the disciplinary board.
"As such, he should resign from all his party posts," the Umno president told a press conference after his visit to DRB-Hicom Defence Technologies Sdn Bhd (Deftech) main military vehicle manufacturing plant here yesterday.
He added that as far as he knew, the board took action against Isa after it considered all information that was made available to it.
The Umno Disciplinary Board yesterday announced officially Mohd Isa’s suspension from the party for six years. "However, he (Isa) can still file an appeal. I hope he will make his appeal immediately," Abdullah said.
Asked on Isa’s Cabinet post as Federal Territories Minister, the Prime Minister said: "The matter does not arise at the moment because he has to make the appeal first."
On whether the action against high-profile members had affected the party’s credibility, Abdullah said Umno’s credibility was still intact.
"Umno is taking action to contain money politics and the party is working to eradicate it," he added.
When asked whether there would be a Cabinet reshuffle if Isa’s appeal was rejected by the disciplinary board, Abdullah said the question was speculative.
Isa declined to comment on the disciplinary board’s decision. "I will talk another day," he said.
Asked on Abdullah’s statement that he should resign from all his party posts, Isa declined comment.
Contradicting Quotes?
Actions speak louder than words.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Look before you leap.
He who hesitates is lost.
Many hands make light work. (or) Two heads are better than one.
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
A silent man is a wise one.
A man without words is a man without thoughts.
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Clothes make the man.
Don't judge a book by its cover. (or) All that glitters is not gold.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Better safe than sorry.
The bigger, the better.
The best things come in small packages.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Out of sight, out of mind.
What will be, will be.
Life is what you make it.
Cross your bridges when you come to them.
Forewarned is forearmed.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
One man's meat is another man's poison.
With age comes wisdom.
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings come all wise sayings.
The more, the merrier.
Two's company; three's a crowd.
The best things in life are free.
You get what you pay for.
It never rains, than it pours.
Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.
Better to ask the way than to go astray.
Ask no questions and hear no lies.
Never do evil, that good may come of it.
The end justifies the means.
Variety is the spice of life.
Don't change horses in the middle of a stream.
There is nothing permanent except change.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Never too old to learn.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Everything comes to him who waits.
He who hesitates is lost.
Opposites attract.
Birds of a feather flock together.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Look before you leap.
He who hesitates is lost.
Many hands make light work. (or) Two heads are better than one.
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
A silent man is a wise one.
A man without words is a man without thoughts.
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Clothes make the man.
Don't judge a book by its cover. (or) All that glitters is not gold.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Better safe than sorry.
The bigger, the better.
The best things come in small packages.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Out of sight, out of mind.
What will be, will be.
Life is what you make it.
Cross your bridges when you come to them.
Forewarned is forearmed.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
One man's meat is another man's poison.
With age comes wisdom.
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings come all wise sayings.
The more, the merrier.
Two's company; three's a crowd.
The best things in life are free.
You get what you pay for.
It never rains, than it pours.
Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.
Better to ask the way than to go astray.
Ask no questions and hear no lies.
Never do evil, that good may come of it.
The end justifies the means.
Variety is the spice of life.
Don't change horses in the middle of a stream.
There is nothing permanent except change.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Never too old to learn.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Everything comes to him who waits.
He who hesitates is lost.
Opposites attract.
Birds of a feather flock together.
[Malaysia] Crimea De-Recognition!
The Star, Malaysia
26 June 2005
Handle controversy on varsity rationally
by WONG CHUN WAI
IT was a meal I found hard to enjoy. Two years ago, around this time, I joined a large section of the 600-odd Malaysian students at the Crimea State Medical University for lunch.
The occasion was the visit of then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to Ukraine, the biggest European country after Russia, and one of his stops was to the university.
I remembered the excited faces of our young Malaysian students eagerly wanting to meet the man they respected much and to use the occasion to pose questions to him.
But hours earlier, then Education Minister Tan Sri Musa Mohamed had also told accompanying Malaysian journalists on the trip that the Education Ministry would review the status of the university.
He said the ministry wanted to re-evaluate the medical degrees from the university, adding that the university was not as impressive as those in Malaysia and Western countries.
Pointing to the large number of Malaysian students there, Musa said there was a need to review the status in the interest of the students and the country, saying "we are forced to review it for our own good".
Chatting to the Malaysian students, I remembered telling my colleagues that these young people would be very unhappy when they read our news reports via the Internet the following day. None of us had the heart to tell them of the press conference by Musa earlier.
Last week, the Crimea State Medical University issue was hotly debated in Parliament, with dramatic exchange of words resulting in a verbal clash between the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Syed Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz and DAP MPs.
But it was Datuk S. Sothinathan, the Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister, who found himself being suspended from his government post for three months after he broke ranks with the front bench.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Sothinathan’s action was not befitting his role as a member of the Barisan front bench and that he should not have taken the stand of criticising his own government.
Outside Parliament, the debate has continued among members of the public. Some arguments have taken a racial tone, which is unfortunate, as the matter should be examined from the country’s national interest.
The dilemma of our students at the university, irrespective of their ethnicity, should be regarded as a Malaysian problem.
There are Malay, Chinese and Indian students in Crimea. In fact, in 2003, Selangor state government officials even visited the university and signed a memorandum of understanding to place Yayasan Selangor students there.
Questions have been raised over the manner in which the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) handled the issue as it had previously recognised the degrees from the said university.
Then, there is also the concern over why the Education Ministry had given "no objection" letters to Malaysian students, who are said to be Arts students, to pursue their studies there.
These are valid questions and it is best that they are handled in a rational manner. Our Malaysian students there must be anxiously waiting for the Government to address their worries now. All the angry outbursts and name-calling, which are unbecoming of our politicians, will not help them.
In all fairness, the alert from the Government came long ago. The MMC has the right to ensure that Malaysians abroad study at the best universities.
Among the reasons stated for the MMC’s change of heart in recognising the university included the dubious qualifications of students admitted for the institute’s medical studies, the difficulty of its medical graduates in using technical terms in English, and the strain on the quality of teaching due to the sudden increase in intake.
The MMC has stated that it would withdraw the recognition of the programme to any student registered and admitted after Dec 31 this year.
Some parents have appealed to the body to extend the deadline to another year, pointing out that when the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom withdrew its recognition of medical degrees from Universiti Malaya in the 1980s, it gave the university a five-year period to rectify what it saw as its weaknesses.
The fault of the MMC is the sudden change of heart after having given recognition earlier and the manner it is now tackling this headache.
Unlike other degrees, doctors deal with human lives and none of us want to be treated by doctors with dubious medical degrees.
But all is not lost. Graduates of the Crimea State Medical University, it should be pointed out, can still sit for a qualifying examination when they come back to Malaysia. If they pass, they can still practise at home.
There are other options. For example, Kiev University is prepared to provide courses to Malaysians using English as a medium of instruction. Musa, who had visited the university, was impressed with the facilities there.
Here is an interesting historical anecdote: Crimea, now an autonomous region in Ukraine, has a long history of conflict. The Crimean War, which lasted two years from 1854-56, was fought between Russia and the alliance of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia. It was the focus of Tolstoy’s voluminous War and Peace.
Let’s hope this medical university controversy ends quickly and does not generate unnecessary tomes of words, written or otherwise.
---------------------
Go forth and seek to be educated
THE Higher Education Ministry has just released the intake figures for public universities and the usual airing of grievances looks set to be less controversial this time around.
To be sure, there will be some who will be disappointed that they did not get a place. Some will be unhappy that they did not get a course of their choice. Some will be angry that they are being sent to a university too far from home.
In a situation where demand exceeds supply, one must expect that it is not possible to accommodate every one’s needs, let alone wants.
But one headache that will not recur this year is with regard to medicine, where all students with a CPGA of 4.0 were successful in their applications. This has been attributed to a significant drop in the number of STPM straight A students and the lessons learnt from last year, which deterred many from making medicine their first choice.
The number of students offered places this year is close to 40,000, and there will certainly be much rejoicing and thanksgiving in many homes. For the majority, entry into the highly-subsidised public university system is the only option.
As these students prepare to start their tertiary education journey early next month, it is timely that we reflect on what education is about.
The journey over four years or so should not be solely about getting a degree to serve as a passport to a career and the material success that supposedly will follow.
In recent times, this script has had to undergo changes. While having a degree is more necessary than before, graduates are learning that on its own, it is not enough.This is a point that parents must bear in mind when they pile on the pressure for their children to gain degrees solely for the sake of career advancement, or insist on them taking certain courses in their own interest rather than the interest of their children.
We see for ourselves today that the number of unemployed graduates is rising but what is more disturbing is that they have been found unemployable not because of what they failed to learn from university but what they failed to learn about life.
Even basic language and communication skills are found lacking.
Education is about developing an inquiring mind that continues to hunger for knowledge long after the studies are over. Someone once said that education is what survives long after what has been learnt has been forgotten. In university, and in life for that matter, it is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
Futurist Alvin Toffler said that in the 21st century, an illiterate person will not be someone who can’t read or write, but someone who is not able to learn, unlearn and learn again.
When Vision 2020 was launched back in 1991, the emphasis was on the need to set new standards, to aspire to the highest standards with regard to the skills of our people, to devotion to knowledge and knowledge upgrading and self-improvement, and to language competence.
These words are even more relevant today than in the early 90s. The 40,000 students must seriously ask themselves what they seek to learn at university.
Already, lecturers all over the world are struggling with students who are bent on taking the shortcuts ~ those who plagiarise, those who think research is just doing a Google search, those who do not see the need to learn from their mistakes, or those who do nothing more than regurgitate what is fed to them.
A good university is a centre for great learning, not just a congregation of marvellous buildings surrounded by marvellous scenery.
These are useful lessons for all of us to contemplate, especially those about to enter the higher institutions of learning.
26 June 2005
Handle controversy on varsity rationally
by WONG CHUN WAI
IT was a meal I found hard to enjoy. Two years ago, around this time, I joined a large section of the 600-odd Malaysian students at the Crimea State Medical University for lunch.
The occasion was the visit of then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to Ukraine, the biggest European country after Russia, and one of his stops was to the university.
I remembered the excited faces of our young Malaysian students eagerly wanting to meet the man they respected much and to use the occasion to pose questions to him.
But hours earlier, then Education Minister Tan Sri Musa Mohamed had also told accompanying Malaysian journalists on the trip that the Education Ministry would review the status of the university.
He said the ministry wanted to re-evaluate the medical degrees from the university, adding that the university was not as impressive as those in Malaysia and Western countries.
Pointing to the large number of Malaysian students there, Musa said there was a need to review the status in the interest of the students and the country, saying "we are forced to review it for our own good".
Chatting to the Malaysian students, I remembered telling my colleagues that these young people would be very unhappy when they read our news reports via the Internet the following day. None of us had the heart to tell them of the press conference by Musa earlier.
Last week, the Crimea State Medical University issue was hotly debated in Parliament, with dramatic exchange of words resulting in a verbal clash between the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Syed Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz and DAP MPs.
But it was Datuk S. Sothinathan, the Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister, who found himself being suspended from his government post for three months after he broke ranks with the front bench.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Sothinathan’s action was not befitting his role as a member of the Barisan front bench and that he should not have taken the stand of criticising his own government.
Outside Parliament, the debate has continued among members of the public. Some arguments have taken a racial tone, which is unfortunate, as the matter should be examined from the country’s national interest.
The dilemma of our students at the university, irrespective of their ethnicity, should be regarded as a Malaysian problem.
There are Malay, Chinese and Indian students in Crimea. In fact, in 2003, Selangor state government officials even visited the university and signed a memorandum of understanding to place Yayasan Selangor students there.
Questions have been raised over the manner in which the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) handled the issue as it had previously recognised the degrees from the said university.
Then, there is also the concern over why the Education Ministry had given "no objection" letters to Malaysian students, who are said to be Arts students, to pursue their studies there.
These are valid questions and it is best that they are handled in a rational manner. Our Malaysian students there must be anxiously waiting for the Government to address their worries now. All the angry outbursts and name-calling, which are unbecoming of our politicians, will not help them.
In all fairness, the alert from the Government came long ago. The MMC has the right to ensure that Malaysians abroad study at the best universities.
Among the reasons stated for the MMC’s change of heart in recognising the university included the dubious qualifications of students admitted for the institute’s medical studies, the difficulty of its medical graduates in using technical terms in English, and the strain on the quality of teaching due to the sudden increase in intake.
The MMC has stated that it would withdraw the recognition of the programme to any student registered and admitted after Dec 31 this year.
Some parents have appealed to the body to extend the deadline to another year, pointing out that when the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom withdrew its recognition of medical degrees from Universiti Malaya in the 1980s, it gave the university a five-year period to rectify what it saw as its weaknesses.
The fault of the MMC is the sudden change of heart after having given recognition earlier and the manner it is now tackling this headache.
Unlike other degrees, doctors deal with human lives and none of us want to be treated by doctors with dubious medical degrees.
But all is not lost. Graduates of the Crimea State Medical University, it should be pointed out, can still sit for a qualifying examination when they come back to Malaysia. If they pass, they can still practise at home.
There are other options. For example, Kiev University is prepared to provide courses to Malaysians using English as a medium of instruction. Musa, who had visited the university, was impressed with the facilities there.
Here is an interesting historical anecdote: Crimea, now an autonomous region in Ukraine, has a long history of conflict. The Crimean War, which lasted two years from 1854-56, was fought between Russia and the alliance of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and Sardinia. It was the focus of Tolstoy’s voluminous War and Peace.
Let’s hope this medical university controversy ends quickly and does not generate unnecessary tomes of words, written or otherwise.
---------------------
Go forth and seek to be educated
THE Higher Education Ministry has just released the intake figures for public universities and the usual airing of grievances looks set to be less controversial this time around.
To be sure, there will be some who will be disappointed that they did not get a place. Some will be unhappy that they did not get a course of their choice. Some will be angry that they are being sent to a university too far from home.
In a situation where demand exceeds supply, one must expect that it is not possible to accommodate every one’s needs, let alone wants.
But one headache that will not recur this year is with regard to medicine, where all students with a CPGA of 4.0 were successful in their applications. This has been attributed to a significant drop in the number of STPM straight A students and the lessons learnt from last year, which deterred many from making medicine their first choice.
The number of students offered places this year is close to 40,000, and there will certainly be much rejoicing and thanksgiving in many homes. For the majority, entry into the highly-subsidised public university system is the only option.
As these students prepare to start their tertiary education journey early next month, it is timely that we reflect on what education is about.
The journey over four years or so should not be solely about getting a degree to serve as a passport to a career and the material success that supposedly will follow.
In recent times, this script has had to undergo changes. While having a degree is more necessary than before, graduates are learning that on its own, it is not enough.This is a point that parents must bear in mind when they pile on the pressure for their children to gain degrees solely for the sake of career advancement, or insist on them taking certain courses in their own interest rather than the interest of their children.
We see for ourselves today that the number of unemployed graduates is rising but what is more disturbing is that they have been found unemployable not because of what they failed to learn from university but what they failed to learn about life.
Even basic language and communication skills are found lacking.
Education is about developing an inquiring mind that continues to hunger for knowledge long after the studies are over. Someone once said that education is what survives long after what has been learnt has been forgotten. In university, and in life for that matter, it is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
Futurist Alvin Toffler said that in the 21st century, an illiterate person will not be someone who can’t read or write, but someone who is not able to learn, unlearn and learn again.
When Vision 2020 was launched back in 1991, the emphasis was on the need to set new standards, to aspire to the highest standards with regard to the skills of our people, to devotion to knowledge and knowledge upgrading and self-improvement, and to language competence.
These words are even more relevant today than in the early 90s. The 40,000 students must seriously ask themselves what they seek to learn at university.
Already, lecturers all over the world are struggling with students who are bent on taking the shortcuts ~ those who plagiarise, those who think research is just doing a Google search, those who do not see the need to learn from their mistakes, or those who do nothing more than regurgitate what is fed to them.
A good university is a centre for great learning, not just a congregation of marvellous buildings surrounded by marvellous scenery.
These are useful lessons for all of us to contemplate, especially those about to enter the higher institutions of learning.
[Iran] Calls for Unity
The Sunday New York Times
Winner in Iran Calls for Unity; Reformists Reel
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
TEHRAN, June 25 - Iran's newly elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Saturday that he wanted to create a strong Islamic nation and issued a call for unity in his first comments after a landslide victory that left the country's reformist movement virtually powerless and threatened to further complicate relations with the United States.
In an address on state radio, Mr. Ahmadinejad, a religious conservative, said he would work toward building "an Islamic, exemplary, advanced and powerful nation," and urged Iranians to "forget all our rivalries and turn them into friendships."
But his rival in the race, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was anything but conciliatory, lashing out in a statement that accused his opponents of smearing him during the campaign. "I am sure that those who spent billions from the public funds to ruin the reputation of me and my family in a vicious way, and those who took advantage of the regime's tools and intervened in the elections in an organized way will pay back in life and after death," he said in the statement.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's rise to the presidency - the most important elected post in the country - reflected a desire by Iranian voters to change the economy and rid the nation of corruption.
In his campaign, Mr. Ahmadinejad (pronounced ah-ma-DEE-nay-jahd), who came from humble origins as a blacksmith's son to become an engineer and in 2003 the mayor of Tehran, outlined a domestic agenda that can be described as Islamic socialism - protecting the core values of the Islamic revolution while using state resources to provide a financial safety net for all Iranian families, especially the poor.
But the consolidation of power in the hands of conservatives could prove troublesome for United States and the European Union, which is scheduled to resume talks with Iran in July over its nuclear program. While the election might not fundamentally change the country's foreign policy positions, which are controlled by the clerics who have final say over all government actions, Mr. Ahmadinejad's fierce nationalism could undermine any chance of a reconciliation with the United States, as well as complicate the nuclear talks.
Members of the European Union expressed concern about those talks on Saturday. The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said he hoped Iran under Mr. Ahmadinejad would "take early steps to address international concerns about its nuclear program."
The White House responded to the election result by reiterating charges made previously by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the legitimacy of the vote, noting that "over 1,000 candidates were disqualified from running and there were many allegations of election fraud and interference."
Mr. Ahmadinejad's victory, like the victory in 1997 of the departing president Mohammad Khatami, amounted to protest votes by an electorate eager for change. In Mr. Khatami's case, it was a desire for social change - this time for economic change. But in both elections, the vote was a rebuff of the candidates voters perceived as representing the ruling elite.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's opponent in the runoff election on Friday, the former two-term president Mr. Rafsanjani, saw his prospect for victory fade in part because he was widely viewed as the candidate of the system that voters wanted to reform.
Yet Mr. Ahmadinejad is also an insider. He has long worked with some of this country's most conservative institutions, from the Basij - the militia that often patrols the streets and enforces strict codes of dress and conduct - to the Revolutionary Guards. In addition, his main support came from the conservatives, including the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who control the most powerful institutions in the country. His victory on Friday gives the conservatives a monopoly on power and is expected to give those forces a freer hand in running the country.
The nation's leading reformers seemed stunned by the victory of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president and chief aid to the departing president, said in an analysis posted on his popular blog that Mr. Ahmadinejad won in part because of missteps by reformists, from offering unrealistic campaign promises, to losing touch with average people.
"In the political atmosphere of the advertisements, little was said about the economic issues," he wrote. "We focused our attention on elites and forgot the ordinary people who are trying to get their daily bread."
Assadolah Athari, a political analyst with close ties to the reform movement said Iranians were "just frustrated with the bad economy and high prices."
"They are frustrated with a small group that is in power and is filthy rich," he said. Part of the vote was also a protest vote for the founders of the revolution. They wanted to vote for somebody else to get rid of the older leaders.
In the runoff election on Friday, voters chose between candidates with very different visions for the country: Mr. Rafsanjani, 70, who promised social changes, privatization and better relations with the United States; and Mr. Ahmadinejad, 49, who focused almost exclusively on the nation's economic needs and appealed to Iranians' national pride.
According to final figures issued Saturday by the Interior Ministry, Mr. Ahmadinejad won 17.2 million votes compared with just over 10 million for Mr. Rafsanjani. The ministry said about 28 million voters went to the polls, for a turnout of about 60 percent, about the same as in the first round.
In his campaign, Mr. Ahmadinejad presented himself as eager to help Iran improve its international relations, acknowledging that it is impossible for Iran to cut itself off. But he has maintained that foreign relations must always be on Iran's terms.
"In our foreign policy, in addition to the Islamic world and the Iranian domain of civilization, any country that has no intention of enmity with the Islamic Republic can enjoy broad relations with us," he said at a news conference last week when he announced he had made it into the runoff.
But Mr. Ahmadinejad has lashed out at foreign governments he views as hostile. In 2001, for example, when German officials formally complained about the arrest and conviction of reformers who had taken part in a conference in Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder then postponed a trip to Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad was quoted in the Iranian daily Resalat as saying, "Germany's mentality is exactly the same as during the Hitler era." At the time he was a leading member of the Islamic Association of Engineers, a conservative group.
But that kind of vitriolic language was largely missing from the campaign for the presidency. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his campaign surrogates rejected extremism, refusing even to publicly criticize Mr. Rafsanjani, whom they complimented as a leader and a statesman whom they would turn to for advice if Mr. Ahmadinejad were elected.
Mr. Ahmadinejad instead emphasized his piety and independence, insisting that he did not represent any political party but was a man of the people. His core supporters, the ultrareligious, spoke of him with reverence, as though he were a religious figure and not a politician. It was his everyman posture, compared to the regal style of Mr. Rafsanjani, that won many people over. On election day, Mr. Ahmadinejad waited with average citizens before casting his vote.
"All through my life I have never seen a presidential candidate standing in a queue like ordinary people," said Seyed Mohammad Shekarabi, 75, who broke into tears when he saw Mr. Ahmadinejad take his place in the line.
It was Mr. Rafsanjani whom voters perceived as the embodiment of a system they have grown to distrust. A former president and cleric, who has become a very wealthy businessman, Mr. Rafsanjani carried himself as royalty during the campaign, never taking to the streets, and never seeming to understand that his history as an elder statesman of the republic was viewed as a liability, not an asset.
Sadeq Zibakalam, a political analyst and supporter of Mr. Rafsanjani, said conservatives had a core support of 7 million to 10 million voters nationwide.
"The rest of the votes," Mr. Zibakalam said, "were from people convinced it was Rafsanjani who was responsible for the awful mess of the economy."
Mr. Rafsanjani tried to win by taking his cues from Mr. Khatami's playbook, holding campaign events with loud rock music where young men and women mingled, and promising to protect social freedoms.
But interviews with voters, political analysts and politicians demonstrated that Mr. Rafsanjani did not understand the priorities of the public. With modest social successes already achieved, many voters said they turned their attention to more immediate concerns like jobs, food prices, health insurance and, perhaps most of all, a perception of honesty.
Some said that they valued the social reforms that had given them more control over their personal lives, but that they were voting for Mr. Ahmadinejad because they wanted better management of the country and because they no longer viewed reformist parties as viable vehicles of change.
President Khatami's failure to push through significant social and economic reforms during his eight years in office left many people as distrustful of the left as the right.
"Iranians are not fed up with reforms because they are still interested in change," said Amir Ali Nourbakhsh, a political and economic consultant based in Tehran. "But what they are looking for is someone they can trust."
Mehdi Ebrahimi, 32, is exactly the kind of voter Mr. Rafsanjani should have been able to attract. He is upper middle class and lives in the leafy neighborhood of northeast Tehran. Mr. Ebrahimi, who is married and is not conservative in his religious views, owns a business that does landscaping for the city of Tehran.
Under previous mayors, Mr. Ebrahimi said, his company was often paid as late as six months after completing the work. He said he found that especially annoying, given the lavish lifestyles of the former officials. But, he said, since Mr. Ahmadinejad became mayor, the city has been paying on time while the mayor has continued to live as an average citizen.
This mayor streamlined the municipal bureaucracy, Mr. Ebrahimi said of Mr. Ahmadinejad. "He is not like other mayors. He is simple. He has been able to cut spending in the city. He is honest."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
---------------------------
Ali Shah's last stand
The Khamenei regime's consolidation of power in Iran has a last-ditch feel to it
Martin Woollacott
Monday June 27, 2005
The Guardian
Ali Shah is the disrespectful nickname Iranians have in recent years bestowed on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme religious leader of the Islamic republic. It captures what they see as the monarchial aspirations and the clear limitations of the man who took over the function of "guiding" the republic from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 18 years ago and who now, after an election that has put his man in as president, controls all the major institutions of the Iranian state.
Those years have seen a slow draining away of legitimacy from the republic and its leaders, and in particular from Khamenei, who could never match the dominating presence of Khomeini and who could not stem the increasing hostility of most of the Iranian people to political religion, but who nevertheless has been determined, along with his satraps within the system, to maintain his grip on power. The ultimate destination in a journey of this kind is an authoritarian state without authority, and that prospect seems much closer today in Iran. For years the men in charge of the key positions in Iran, including the Council of Guardians, the judiciary, the security ministries and the security forces, have periodically been able to recapture some popular support by allowing reformists a margin for manoeuvre in parliament and in the presidency, particularly under President Mohammad Khatami.
But, with the subversion of the 2004 parliamentary elections by the conservatives, who banned most liberal candidates and made the resources of the state available to the rightwingers, that era began to close. It is now definitively over, with the election to the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former mayor of Tehran whose politics are fundamentalist to the point of simple-mindedness, marking the point at which the Khamenei regime has passed over into a fearful consolidation of power that has no room even for a loyal opposition.
Khomeini, whatever else may be said about him, was a man big enough in his achievements to spread his aura over the whole apparatus that the revolution created, even though he ejected the liberal partners, both secular and religious, who had helped make that revolution.
Khamenei and his fellow conservatives, by contrast, have increasingly come to depend only on the security state, and upon the physical coercion, or the threat of it, which that dependence implies. They have also begun, as it increases, to admit representatives of the security arms into the inner circle of power, hitherto confined to clerics and a few devout laymen. Ahmadinejad is himself a former Revolutionary Guard.
Certainly, the losing candidates in the presidential election charge that the assets of the security state were deployed on a large scale to ensure his victory. The meetings of liberal candidates were disrupted, mysterious bombs went off - presumably the contribution of the intelligence services - government money was said to have been made available in large quantities and the volunteer militia groups, which dot every community, were on hand as unpaid election workers and enforcers. In addition, there are so many of these people - 300,000 in the militia, police, and Revolutionary Guard, not counting the regular armed forces - that the impact of their votes, if directed toward a particular candidate, is bound to be significant.
Whether such support was as extensive as some of the losers claimed, it was not the only reason Ahmadinejad won. His diatribes against corruption and his pledge that oil wealth would be used to improve the lives of ordinary people had an impact. Yet this is precisely the field in which he cannot deliver.
The Islamic republic is both a corrupt regime and one where connections count for everything. All but an honourable handful of the clerico-political class have enriched themselves, some illegally and some by simply taking advantage of their positions. Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's main opponent in the election, is one of the most prominent examples, and he suffered for it in the campaign. But among the men who helped get Ahmadinejad in are many who have profited as much or almost as much. Is Mr Clean going to go after them?
For western countries, the main problem represented by this victory is that it entrenches those least sympathetic to rapprochement with Europe and America and least likely, in particular, to give way on nuclear enrichment, which the Khamenei regime is trying to turn into a nationalist touchstone.
The regime's dilemma - which is that it needs western investment and expertise if it is to provide the prosperity that will help it stay in power, but fears the corrosive political impact of dealings with western countries - will intensify. Its confrontation with the US will almost certainly sharpen, and the possibility of a US attack, if there is no concession on nuclear matters, while still not high, will increase.
What is both worrying and hopeful for Iranians is that this consolidation of power has a last-ditch aspect about it. Khamenei has increased control, but the regime has lost flexibility and much of whatever legitimacy remained.
m.woollacott@guardian.co.uk
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Winner in Iran Calls for Unity; Reformists Reel
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
TEHRAN, June 25 - Iran's newly elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Saturday that he wanted to create a strong Islamic nation and issued a call for unity in his first comments after a landslide victory that left the country's reformist movement virtually powerless and threatened to further complicate relations with the United States.
In an address on state radio, Mr. Ahmadinejad, a religious conservative, said he would work toward building "an Islamic, exemplary, advanced and powerful nation," and urged Iranians to "forget all our rivalries and turn them into friendships."
But his rival in the race, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was anything but conciliatory, lashing out in a statement that accused his opponents of smearing him during the campaign. "I am sure that those who spent billions from the public funds to ruin the reputation of me and my family in a vicious way, and those who took advantage of the regime's tools and intervened in the elections in an organized way will pay back in life and after death," he said in the statement.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's rise to the presidency - the most important elected post in the country - reflected a desire by Iranian voters to change the economy and rid the nation of corruption.
In his campaign, Mr. Ahmadinejad (pronounced ah-ma-DEE-nay-jahd), who came from humble origins as a blacksmith's son to become an engineer and in 2003 the mayor of Tehran, outlined a domestic agenda that can be described as Islamic socialism - protecting the core values of the Islamic revolution while using state resources to provide a financial safety net for all Iranian families, especially the poor.
But the consolidation of power in the hands of conservatives could prove troublesome for United States and the European Union, which is scheduled to resume talks with Iran in July over its nuclear program. While the election might not fundamentally change the country's foreign policy positions, which are controlled by the clerics who have final say over all government actions, Mr. Ahmadinejad's fierce nationalism could undermine any chance of a reconciliation with the United States, as well as complicate the nuclear talks.
Members of the European Union expressed concern about those talks on Saturday. The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said he hoped Iran under Mr. Ahmadinejad would "take early steps to address international concerns about its nuclear program."
The White House responded to the election result by reiterating charges made previously by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the legitimacy of the vote, noting that "over 1,000 candidates were disqualified from running and there were many allegations of election fraud and interference."
Mr. Ahmadinejad's victory, like the victory in 1997 of the departing president Mohammad Khatami, amounted to protest votes by an electorate eager for change. In Mr. Khatami's case, it was a desire for social change - this time for economic change. But in both elections, the vote was a rebuff of the candidates voters perceived as representing the ruling elite.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's opponent in the runoff election on Friday, the former two-term president Mr. Rafsanjani, saw his prospect for victory fade in part because he was widely viewed as the candidate of the system that voters wanted to reform.
Yet Mr. Ahmadinejad is also an insider. He has long worked with some of this country's most conservative institutions, from the Basij - the militia that often patrols the streets and enforces strict codes of dress and conduct - to the Revolutionary Guards. In addition, his main support came from the conservatives, including the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who control the most powerful institutions in the country. His victory on Friday gives the conservatives a monopoly on power and is expected to give those forces a freer hand in running the country.
The nation's leading reformers seemed stunned by the victory of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president and chief aid to the departing president, said in an analysis posted on his popular blog that Mr. Ahmadinejad won in part because of missteps by reformists, from offering unrealistic campaign promises, to losing touch with average people.
"In the political atmosphere of the advertisements, little was said about the economic issues," he wrote. "We focused our attention on elites and forgot the ordinary people who are trying to get their daily bread."
Assadolah Athari, a political analyst with close ties to the reform movement said Iranians were "just frustrated with the bad economy and high prices."
"They are frustrated with a small group that is in power and is filthy rich," he said. Part of the vote was also a protest vote for the founders of the revolution. They wanted to vote for somebody else to get rid of the older leaders.
In the runoff election on Friday, voters chose between candidates with very different visions for the country: Mr. Rafsanjani, 70, who promised social changes, privatization and better relations with the United States; and Mr. Ahmadinejad, 49, who focused almost exclusively on the nation's economic needs and appealed to Iranians' national pride.
According to final figures issued Saturday by the Interior Ministry, Mr. Ahmadinejad won 17.2 million votes compared with just over 10 million for Mr. Rafsanjani. The ministry said about 28 million voters went to the polls, for a turnout of about 60 percent, about the same as in the first round.
In his campaign, Mr. Ahmadinejad presented himself as eager to help Iran improve its international relations, acknowledging that it is impossible for Iran to cut itself off. But he has maintained that foreign relations must always be on Iran's terms.
"In our foreign policy, in addition to the Islamic world and the Iranian domain of civilization, any country that has no intention of enmity with the Islamic Republic can enjoy broad relations with us," he said at a news conference last week when he announced he had made it into the runoff.
But Mr. Ahmadinejad has lashed out at foreign governments he views as hostile. In 2001, for example, when German officials formally complained about the arrest and conviction of reformers who had taken part in a conference in Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder then postponed a trip to Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad was quoted in the Iranian daily Resalat as saying, "Germany's mentality is exactly the same as during the Hitler era." At the time he was a leading member of the Islamic Association of Engineers, a conservative group.
But that kind of vitriolic language was largely missing from the campaign for the presidency. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his campaign surrogates rejected extremism, refusing even to publicly criticize Mr. Rafsanjani, whom they complimented as a leader and a statesman whom they would turn to for advice if Mr. Ahmadinejad were elected.
Mr. Ahmadinejad instead emphasized his piety and independence, insisting that he did not represent any political party but was a man of the people. His core supporters, the ultrareligious, spoke of him with reverence, as though he were a religious figure and not a politician. It was his everyman posture, compared to the regal style of Mr. Rafsanjani, that won many people over. On election day, Mr. Ahmadinejad waited with average citizens before casting his vote.
"All through my life I have never seen a presidential candidate standing in a queue like ordinary people," said Seyed Mohammad Shekarabi, 75, who broke into tears when he saw Mr. Ahmadinejad take his place in the line.
It was Mr. Rafsanjani whom voters perceived as the embodiment of a system they have grown to distrust. A former president and cleric, who has become a very wealthy businessman, Mr. Rafsanjani carried himself as royalty during the campaign, never taking to the streets, and never seeming to understand that his history as an elder statesman of the republic was viewed as a liability, not an asset.
Sadeq Zibakalam, a political analyst and supporter of Mr. Rafsanjani, said conservatives had a core support of 7 million to 10 million voters nationwide.
"The rest of the votes," Mr. Zibakalam said, "were from people convinced it was Rafsanjani who was responsible for the awful mess of the economy."
Mr. Rafsanjani tried to win by taking his cues from Mr. Khatami's playbook, holding campaign events with loud rock music where young men and women mingled, and promising to protect social freedoms.
But interviews with voters, political analysts and politicians demonstrated that Mr. Rafsanjani did not understand the priorities of the public. With modest social successes already achieved, many voters said they turned their attention to more immediate concerns like jobs, food prices, health insurance and, perhaps most of all, a perception of honesty.
Some said that they valued the social reforms that had given them more control over their personal lives, but that they were voting for Mr. Ahmadinejad because they wanted better management of the country and because they no longer viewed reformist parties as viable vehicles of change.
President Khatami's failure to push through significant social and economic reforms during his eight years in office left many people as distrustful of the left as the right.
"Iranians are not fed up with reforms because they are still interested in change," said Amir Ali Nourbakhsh, a political and economic consultant based in Tehran. "But what they are looking for is someone they can trust."
Mehdi Ebrahimi, 32, is exactly the kind of voter Mr. Rafsanjani should have been able to attract. He is upper middle class and lives in the leafy neighborhood of northeast Tehran. Mr. Ebrahimi, who is married and is not conservative in his religious views, owns a business that does landscaping for the city of Tehran.
Under previous mayors, Mr. Ebrahimi said, his company was often paid as late as six months after completing the work. He said he found that especially annoying, given the lavish lifestyles of the former officials. But, he said, since Mr. Ahmadinejad became mayor, the city has been paying on time while the mayor has continued to live as an average citizen.
This mayor streamlined the municipal bureaucracy, Mr. Ebrahimi said of Mr. Ahmadinejad. "He is not like other mayors. He is simple. He has been able to cut spending in the city. He is honest."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
---------------------------
Ali Shah's last stand
The Khamenei regime's consolidation of power in Iran has a last-ditch feel to it
Martin Woollacott
Monday June 27, 2005
The Guardian
Ali Shah is the disrespectful nickname Iranians have in recent years bestowed on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme religious leader of the Islamic republic. It captures what they see as the monarchial aspirations and the clear limitations of the man who took over the function of "guiding" the republic from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 18 years ago and who now, after an election that has put his man in as president, controls all the major institutions of the Iranian state.
Those years have seen a slow draining away of legitimacy from the republic and its leaders, and in particular from Khamenei, who could never match the dominating presence of Khomeini and who could not stem the increasing hostility of most of the Iranian people to political religion, but who nevertheless has been determined, along with his satraps within the system, to maintain his grip on power. The ultimate destination in a journey of this kind is an authoritarian state without authority, and that prospect seems much closer today in Iran. For years the men in charge of the key positions in Iran, including the Council of Guardians, the judiciary, the security ministries and the security forces, have periodically been able to recapture some popular support by allowing reformists a margin for manoeuvre in parliament and in the presidency, particularly under President Mohammad Khatami.
But, with the subversion of the 2004 parliamentary elections by the conservatives, who banned most liberal candidates and made the resources of the state available to the rightwingers, that era began to close. It is now definitively over, with the election to the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former mayor of Tehran whose politics are fundamentalist to the point of simple-mindedness, marking the point at which the Khamenei regime has passed over into a fearful consolidation of power that has no room even for a loyal opposition.
Khomeini, whatever else may be said about him, was a man big enough in his achievements to spread his aura over the whole apparatus that the revolution created, even though he ejected the liberal partners, both secular and religious, who had helped make that revolution.
Khamenei and his fellow conservatives, by contrast, have increasingly come to depend only on the security state, and upon the physical coercion, or the threat of it, which that dependence implies. They have also begun, as it increases, to admit representatives of the security arms into the inner circle of power, hitherto confined to clerics and a few devout laymen. Ahmadinejad is himself a former Revolutionary Guard.
Certainly, the losing candidates in the presidential election charge that the assets of the security state were deployed on a large scale to ensure his victory. The meetings of liberal candidates were disrupted, mysterious bombs went off - presumably the contribution of the intelligence services - government money was said to have been made available in large quantities and the volunteer militia groups, which dot every community, were on hand as unpaid election workers and enforcers. In addition, there are so many of these people - 300,000 in the militia, police, and Revolutionary Guard, not counting the regular armed forces - that the impact of their votes, if directed toward a particular candidate, is bound to be significant.
Whether such support was as extensive as some of the losers claimed, it was not the only reason Ahmadinejad won. His diatribes against corruption and his pledge that oil wealth would be used to improve the lives of ordinary people had an impact. Yet this is precisely the field in which he cannot deliver.
The Islamic republic is both a corrupt regime and one where connections count for everything. All but an honourable handful of the clerico-political class have enriched themselves, some illegally and some by simply taking advantage of their positions. Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's main opponent in the election, is one of the most prominent examples, and he suffered for it in the campaign. But among the men who helped get Ahmadinejad in are many who have profited as much or almost as much. Is Mr Clean going to go after them?
For western countries, the main problem represented by this victory is that it entrenches those least sympathetic to rapprochement with Europe and America and least likely, in particular, to give way on nuclear enrichment, which the Khamenei regime is trying to turn into a nationalist touchstone.
The regime's dilemma - which is that it needs western investment and expertise if it is to provide the prosperity that will help it stay in power, but fears the corrosive political impact of dealings with western countries - will intensify. Its confrontation with the US will almost certainly sharpen, and the possibility of a US attack, if there is no concession on nuclear matters, while still not high, will increase.
What is both worrying and hopeful for Iranians is that this consolidation of power has a last-ditch aspect about it. Khamenei has increased control, but the regime has lost flexibility and much of whatever legitimacy remained.
m.woollacott@guardian.co.uk
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Dakwah dan Kepedulian Sosial
Dakwah dan Kepedulian Sosial
28 Jun 2005, Putrajaya
MASYARAKAT Islam tidak mungkin dapat mengekalkan kemurnian ajaran Islam sejak zaman RasuluLlah S.A.W. hingga ke hari ini sekiranya masyarakat Islam tidak mempunyai kepedulian sosial untuk memperkasa dan memantapkan benteng ketahanannya dalam menghadapi cabaran zaman dan tuntutan lingkungannya. Perjuangan dakwah masyarakat Islam hari ini sesungguhnya terangkai di dalam sejarah panjang perjuangan para nabi dan rasul, sejak zaman Nabi Adam a.s. sehinggalah kepada Nabi Muhammad S.A.W., mohor angkatan para nabi dan rasul (khatamu 'l-nabiyyin). Perjuangan dakwah bukanlah satu perjuangan terpisah dalam contoh-contoh yang terpencil (isolated cases), yang dilakukan secara takut-takut, malu-malu dan main-main.
Kepedulian sosial membayangkan satu semangat dan rasa sanubari yang sensitif terhadap apa jua permasalahan, kemelut dan pergolakan yang berlaku di dalam masyarakat, khususnya masyarakat Islam. Namun rasa kepedulian sosial tidaklah pula terbatas hanya kepada masyarakat Islam kerana ada banyak isu-isu yang berlaku adalah merupakan isu-isu yang turut meliputi masyarakat bukan Islam, termasuklah isu-isu akhlak dan seumpamanya. Rasa kepedulian sosial ini bukanlah satu keinginan untuk memaksa pemikiran kita diterima, lalu "memastikan" (dalam pengertian memaksa) masyarakat kita melakukan sesuatu yang tidak mampu dan tidak perlu. Kepedulian sosial yang sebenar ialah rasa "empathy" yang lahir setelah berinteraksi dengan kemelut masyarakat dan seterusnya menampilkan penyelesaian yang meyakinkan untuk dilaksanakan.
Rasa "emphathy" ini mampu dipunyai oleh mana-mana individu, tanpa mengira latar belakang, kecenderungan politik, agama, kaum dan bangsa mahupun status sosial seseorang. Di atas kemampuan ini, mana-mana individu berhak pula untuk mengetengahkan cadangan penyelesaian. Yang menjadi persoalan di sini ialah apakah keberkesanan cadangan penyelesaian tersebut? Mungkinkah cadangan penyelesaian kepada kemelut sosial ini dapat dilaksanakan secara individu dan perseorangan? Perlukah kita kepada gemblengan tenaga secara terpadu oleh semua individu yang turut sama mempunyai sikap kepedulian sosial?
Di atas pertimbangan inilah, maka kehadiran sebuah angkatan dan gerakan dirasakan amat relevan. Berlatarbelakangkan senario kemelut sosio-politik masyarakat Islam yang begitu menyedihkan sejak Merdeka, maka kita ditubuhkan pada Ogos 1971, oleh sekumpulan anak-anak muda yang sedar tentang kemelaratan umat. Rasa kepedulian sosial yang dijana dari pemerhatian dan pengalaman di tengah-tengah umat, dengan isu-isu seperti kemiskinan dan keterpinggiran masyarakat Islam di Tanah Merdeka ini (ketika dekad 1960-an dan 1970-an), disebarluaskan kepada semua masyarakat termasuklah mereka yang memimpin, yang segelintirnya dirasakan telah "mati" rasa kepedulian sosialnya. Kita melihat bahawa dalam tahun-tahun awal Merdeka, negara bergerak bagaikan "bahtera megah yang kehilangan arah". Kerana itu kita yakin bahawa rasa kepedulian sosial ini perlu dikongsi bersama oleh seluruh rakyat, sahabat dan kerabat. Lalu kita tampil dengan agenda dakwah yang berjaya menangkap imaginasi rakyat (capture the imagination of the people).
Di sinilah tersemainya keyakinan kita bahawa penyelesaian kepada kemelut sosial adalah secara berkumpulan (berjemaah) dan berdasarkan pengalaman sejarah ini jugalah tersemainya keyakinan kita bahawa perjuangan dakwah secara "jama'iy" ini adalah untuk mengembalikan keadilan sosial (al-'adalat al-ijtima'iyyah) di dalam masyarakat Malaysia. Ketidakadilan sejarah perlu diperbetulkan! Yang benar perlu dibenarkan! Yang palsu perlu dipinggirkan demi menyelamatkan masyarakat kita dari rosak dan tercemar! Sesungguhnya inilah agenda dakwah kita!
Iltizam kita sebagai sebuah gerakan Islam tidak pernah surut untuk menjadi jurubicara umat dan memeratakan agenda dakwah kepada setiap lapisan masyarakat, sama ada golongan pimpinan mahupun yang dipimpin, golongan dewasa mahupun remaja, lelaki mahupun perempuan, di kota mahupun di desa. Perspektif dakwah kita sesungguhnya luas ~ seluas makna dan cakupan Islam itu sendiri. Sebagai sebuah gerakan, kita merasakan perjuangan dakwah harus berencana dan berhikmah, bukannya secara semberono ~ membelasahi setiap apa jua permasalahan tanpa mengira untung dan ruginya kepada umat. Perspektif dan pertimbangan kita ialah survival umat kerana "kuasa keabsahan" (legitimacy power) perjuangan dakwah kita adalah umat. Idealisme ini masih terus segar mengalir di dalam kita.
Pada masa yang sama, oleh kerana permasalahan dan kumpulan sasaran dakwah di dalam masyarakat sangatlah berbagai, kita merasakan sangat wajar sekiranya kepelbagaian wadah dan wasilah, kumpulan-pertubuhan dan pendekatan dakwah ini dimanfaatkan ~ termasuklah gandingan antara pihak berkuasa agama dan badan-badan dakwah. Soalnya di sini bukanlah sangat kita perlu berbeza atau tidak berbeza kerana selagimana manusia menggunakan akalnya, manusia akan sentiasa berbeza. Yang pentingnya, kita tidak menolak dan menghancurkan amal dakwah mereka yang berbeza melainkan ternyata ia merugikan umat dalam pengertian menyeleweng dan merosakkan umat; kerana penyelewengan dan kerosakan itu bukan lagi agenda perjuangan dakwah, tetapi "fasad" yang menghancurkan.
Apa yang ingin ditegaskan di sini ialah kepedulian sosial menginginkan kita sebagai para pendakwah, turun ke bawah merasai denyut nadi umat, dan tidak terbuai dengan goda pesona duniawi dan janji-janji yang tidak pernah dipenuhi. Dakwah kita akan terus mengakar ke bawah, mengadun dan menggemblengkan potensi tenaga sekelian yang turut merasai kepedulian sosial dalam orientasi masa depan yang terarah. Bukankah kita telah diperingatkan oleh para leluhur silam: kalau sudah mendongak ke langit, jangan lupa rumput di bumi!
28 Jun 2005, Putrajaya
MASYARAKAT Islam tidak mungkin dapat mengekalkan kemurnian ajaran Islam sejak zaman RasuluLlah S.A.W. hingga ke hari ini sekiranya masyarakat Islam tidak mempunyai kepedulian sosial untuk memperkasa dan memantapkan benteng ketahanannya dalam menghadapi cabaran zaman dan tuntutan lingkungannya. Perjuangan dakwah masyarakat Islam hari ini sesungguhnya terangkai di dalam sejarah panjang perjuangan para nabi dan rasul, sejak zaman Nabi Adam a.s. sehinggalah kepada Nabi Muhammad S.A.W., mohor angkatan para nabi dan rasul (khatamu 'l-nabiyyin). Perjuangan dakwah bukanlah satu perjuangan terpisah dalam contoh-contoh yang terpencil (isolated cases), yang dilakukan secara takut-takut, malu-malu dan main-main.
Kepedulian sosial membayangkan satu semangat dan rasa sanubari yang sensitif terhadap apa jua permasalahan, kemelut dan pergolakan yang berlaku di dalam masyarakat, khususnya masyarakat Islam. Namun rasa kepedulian sosial tidaklah pula terbatas hanya kepada masyarakat Islam kerana ada banyak isu-isu yang berlaku adalah merupakan isu-isu yang turut meliputi masyarakat bukan Islam, termasuklah isu-isu akhlak dan seumpamanya. Rasa kepedulian sosial ini bukanlah satu keinginan untuk memaksa pemikiran kita diterima, lalu "memastikan" (dalam pengertian memaksa) masyarakat kita melakukan sesuatu yang tidak mampu dan tidak perlu. Kepedulian sosial yang sebenar ialah rasa "empathy" yang lahir setelah berinteraksi dengan kemelut masyarakat dan seterusnya menampilkan penyelesaian yang meyakinkan untuk dilaksanakan.
Rasa "emphathy" ini mampu dipunyai oleh mana-mana individu, tanpa mengira latar belakang, kecenderungan politik, agama, kaum dan bangsa mahupun status sosial seseorang. Di atas kemampuan ini, mana-mana individu berhak pula untuk mengetengahkan cadangan penyelesaian. Yang menjadi persoalan di sini ialah apakah keberkesanan cadangan penyelesaian tersebut? Mungkinkah cadangan penyelesaian kepada kemelut sosial ini dapat dilaksanakan secara individu dan perseorangan? Perlukah kita kepada gemblengan tenaga secara terpadu oleh semua individu yang turut sama mempunyai sikap kepedulian sosial?
Di atas pertimbangan inilah, maka kehadiran sebuah angkatan dan gerakan dirasakan amat relevan. Berlatarbelakangkan senario kemelut sosio-politik masyarakat Islam yang begitu menyedihkan sejak Merdeka, maka kita ditubuhkan pada Ogos 1971, oleh sekumpulan anak-anak muda yang sedar tentang kemelaratan umat. Rasa kepedulian sosial yang dijana dari pemerhatian dan pengalaman di tengah-tengah umat, dengan isu-isu seperti kemiskinan dan keterpinggiran masyarakat Islam di Tanah Merdeka ini (ketika dekad 1960-an dan 1970-an), disebarluaskan kepada semua masyarakat termasuklah mereka yang memimpin, yang segelintirnya dirasakan telah "mati" rasa kepedulian sosialnya. Kita melihat bahawa dalam tahun-tahun awal Merdeka, negara bergerak bagaikan "bahtera megah yang kehilangan arah". Kerana itu kita yakin bahawa rasa kepedulian sosial ini perlu dikongsi bersama oleh seluruh rakyat, sahabat dan kerabat. Lalu kita tampil dengan agenda dakwah yang berjaya menangkap imaginasi rakyat (capture the imagination of the people).
Di sinilah tersemainya keyakinan kita bahawa penyelesaian kepada kemelut sosial adalah secara berkumpulan (berjemaah) dan berdasarkan pengalaman sejarah ini jugalah tersemainya keyakinan kita bahawa perjuangan dakwah secara "jama'iy" ini adalah untuk mengembalikan keadilan sosial (al-'adalat al-ijtima'iyyah) di dalam masyarakat Malaysia. Ketidakadilan sejarah perlu diperbetulkan! Yang benar perlu dibenarkan! Yang palsu perlu dipinggirkan demi menyelamatkan masyarakat kita dari rosak dan tercemar! Sesungguhnya inilah agenda dakwah kita!
Iltizam kita sebagai sebuah gerakan Islam tidak pernah surut untuk menjadi jurubicara umat dan memeratakan agenda dakwah kepada setiap lapisan masyarakat, sama ada golongan pimpinan mahupun yang dipimpin, golongan dewasa mahupun remaja, lelaki mahupun perempuan, di kota mahupun di desa. Perspektif dakwah kita sesungguhnya luas ~ seluas makna dan cakupan Islam itu sendiri. Sebagai sebuah gerakan, kita merasakan perjuangan dakwah harus berencana dan berhikmah, bukannya secara semberono ~ membelasahi setiap apa jua permasalahan tanpa mengira untung dan ruginya kepada umat. Perspektif dan pertimbangan kita ialah survival umat kerana "kuasa keabsahan" (legitimacy power) perjuangan dakwah kita adalah umat. Idealisme ini masih terus segar mengalir di dalam kita.
Pada masa yang sama, oleh kerana permasalahan dan kumpulan sasaran dakwah di dalam masyarakat sangatlah berbagai, kita merasakan sangat wajar sekiranya kepelbagaian wadah dan wasilah, kumpulan-pertubuhan dan pendekatan dakwah ini dimanfaatkan ~ termasuklah gandingan antara pihak berkuasa agama dan badan-badan dakwah. Soalnya di sini bukanlah sangat kita perlu berbeza atau tidak berbeza kerana selagimana manusia menggunakan akalnya, manusia akan sentiasa berbeza. Yang pentingnya, kita tidak menolak dan menghancurkan amal dakwah mereka yang berbeza melainkan ternyata ia merugikan umat dalam pengertian menyeleweng dan merosakkan umat; kerana penyelewengan dan kerosakan itu bukan lagi agenda perjuangan dakwah, tetapi "fasad" yang menghancurkan.
Apa yang ingin ditegaskan di sini ialah kepedulian sosial menginginkan kita sebagai para pendakwah, turun ke bawah merasai denyut nadi umat, dan tidak terbuai dengan goda pesona duniawi dan janji-janji yang tidak pernah dipenuhi. Dakwah kita akan terus mengakar ke bawah, mengadun dan menggemblengkan potensi tenaga sekelian yang turut merasai kepedulian sosial dalam orientasi masa depan yang terarah. Bukankah kita telah diperingatkan oleh para leluhur silam: kalau sudah mendongak ke langit, jangan lupa rumput di bumi!
Monday, June 27, 2005
The Day Hang Tuah Walked Through My Door
The Day Hang Tuah Walked Through My Door
by Adlan Benan Omar (date?)
Everyone knows who Hang Tuah is. Everyone knows that he was a great warrior, that he was loyal to his king, that he fought and defeated Hang Jebat in a gruelling duel. But I knew more about Hang Tuah than anyone else. No... I didn't read more than anyone else (how much more could a twelve-year-old have read anyway?). I knew more about Hang Tuah because he came to live with us a few months ago.
Yes, you heard me right. Hang Tuah did come to live with me and my family. Abah took him home one day. He had found the old man walking around the local playground one evening, while he was out jogging. It was getting dark and the old man had no place to go, so we took him in. Mak was not too happy about that, she thought the old man looked crooked. He was dirty and he didn't wear shoes. Mak said that people might think our family has gone weird. Abah just laughed. "Kasihan ...dia orang tua," he said.
My friends didn't believe me at first. They thought I was dreaming, or making things up, or just plain lying.
Azraai said that the old man was an alien from Mars and not Hang Tuah. Eqhwan laughed at me and said that either I or the old man must be mad. Anuar said that if Hang Tuah was still alive I wouldn't be able to understand what he said because he spoke classic Malay like in the hikayats. Hilmi (our local school's smart alec) tried to explain to me that the Melaka Empire was no more and that Hang Tuah was just a legend. He said that if Hang Tuah was still alive he would be at least five and a half centuries old and the latest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records stated that the oldest man in the world lived only to 120 years. Only Farid sympathised with me... and that was because he had an imaginary friend whom he always took along to play marbles with us.
I really didn't care what they said. I knew that old man was Hang Tuah. I know because I asked him myself.
The morning after we took the old man in, Mak asked me to wake him up for breakfast. I went to the spare room and found that he was already awake. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with a blue batik bundle on his lap.
"Jemput makan, Tok," I said, politely.
"Terima kasih," he said.
I was curious, so I asked, "Apa dalam buntil tu Tok?"
"Barang Tok... barang orang miskin," he replied.
Then he opened it up slowly. I saw him fiddle for something, then he took out a long keris with an ivory sheath. It was at least a foot long and studded with jewels.
"Ini keris Taming Sari," said the old man.
I snickered, "He! He! He!". I thought the old man was joking. Everyone knew that Taming Sari belonged to Hang Tuah and that it must have disappeared with its master.
The old man looked up at me. His eyes stared into mine. I felt a little queasy at that. His _expression changed, he began to look angry. Suddenly his eyes drooped and he looked more hurt than angry.
"Kenapa cucu gelak?" he asked.
"Tak ada kenapa," I answered, a little frightened.
"Tok tahu, cucu ingat Tok bergurau." I kept quiet.
He began again, "Inilah keris Taming Sari yang sebenar. Ini keris Tok sendiri."
"Kalau begitu Tok ni tentulah..."
"Hang Tuah," he interjected, "nama Tok ialah Hang Tuah."
"Tapi Hang Tuah sudah mati."
He laughed, "Tidak, Tok belum mati. Tapi Tok sudah tua..."
"Berapa umur Tok?" I questioned.
"540 tahun."
Mak didn't really like Tok Tuah. But she didn't say anything when he just stayed on and on in the house. She didn't say a word when Abah and I took him to Hankyu Jaya to get some new clothes. She just kept quiet when Tok Tuah joined us to watch TV in the living room after dinner. I told her (and Abah) that the old man said that his name was Hang Tuah. She wrinkled her face (and Abah just laughed).
It was a Wednesday night and RTM had a slot then called "Teater P. Ramlee". It so happened that they were showing Phani Majumdar's "Hang Tuah". P. Ramlee, so young and thin, acted as the hero and the late Haji Mahadi was Sultan Mansor Shah.
When Jebat got killed, Tok Tuah pipped in, "Tidak langsung macam tu..."
Abah stared at Tok Tuah. Mak stared at Tok Tuah. I too, stared at Tok Tuah.
"Aku sudah tua masa tu, Jebat muda lagi. Jebat kuat. Dia sepak aku hingga aku tertiarap, kemudian aku berguling. Aku himpit dia. Aku kata sama dia 'baik sajalah kau mengalah'. Apa gunanya kita dua bersaudara bergaduh?"
Mak started to look worried again.
"Jebat tak mati."
Abah looked surprised. He said, "Habis tu, apa jadi pada dia?"
Tok Tuah said, "Aku tak mahu Sultan bunuh dia. Aku tahu Sultan zalim. Jadi, aku sorokkan dia di Ulu Melaka. Macam Tun Perak sorokkan aku masa aku difitnahkan. Lepas Melaka kalah dengan Portugis, Jebat ikut aku merantau."
I said, "Bila Jebat mati?"
Tok Tuah laughed, "Jebat belum mati. Baru tahun lepas aku jumpa dia. Dia meniaga di Kedah."
"Meniaga?" I said.
"Ya, Jebat duduk di Kulim. Dia meniaga kereta. Apa tu? Kereta 'second-hand' kata orang. Proton, Honda dan Nissan. Laku jualannya. Banyak orang beli."
One day, I took Tok Tuah on a walk around KL. He got bored just sitting in our small bungalow in Bukit Bandar Raya. So after school, we took the mini-bus to Central Market. Tok Tuah really enjoyed the walk. "Banyaknya orang..." he wondered. We ate at McDonald's. He didn't like the cheeseburger (well, he didn't like the cheese, though he loved the burger itself). After lunch, we went to Muzium Negara.
I showed him the frieze of a young Hang Tuah which was sculpted by an Englishwoman in the 1950s. It showed a handsome Hang Tuah in 'Baju Melayu' and 'samping'. He was holding Taming Sari in his hand.
"Siapa tu," Tok Tuah asked.
"Itu Tok-lah. ltulah orang putih gambarkan sebagai Hang Tuah. Hensem, kan?"
Tok Tuah chuckled, "Apa tulisan atas tu?"
"Ta' Melayu Hilang di-Dunia. Eh, takkan Tok tak ingat? Itu kan Tok yang cakap dulu?"
He kept quiet. Slowly he mumbled, "Ta' Melayu Hilang di-Dunia? Tak ingat pun."
Suddenly, he started, "Oh! Bukannya Ta' Melayu Hilang di-Dunia. Silap tu. Tok tak pernah cakap macam tu..."
"Habis tu?" I asked.
"Masa tu Tok tengah pergi masjid untuk sembahyang Maghrib. Isteri Tok ikut sekali. Dia tengah ambil air sembahyang di tepi perigi, kemudian kakinya tergelincir. Dia terjatuh masuk. Orang ramal pun menjerit-jerit sebab perigi itu dalam. Apa lagi, Tok pun terjunlah untuk selamatkan dia. Isteri Tok bukan sebarang orang, namanya Tun Sa'odah, anak Bendahara Tun Perak."
"Kemudian?" I urged.
"Bila Tok bawak dia naik, Temenggung Tun Mutahir ketawa. Katanya, Tok sayang betul pada isteri Tok. Tok pun jawab, "Mestilah... Ta' Isteriku Hilang di-Telaga. Jadi, mungkin orang silap dengar...!"
Tok Tuah stayed with our family for more than six months. He stayed at home in the first few weeks but he felt guilty not doing anything to contribute. So, one morning, he followed Abah to work. Abah was manager of a factory in Sungai Buluh which made video tapes and CDs. They needed a new 'jaga' or watchman. Tok Tuah got the job. Abah said, "Who better to guard us than the great Malay admiral Hang Tuah?"
The workers got along well with him. Amin, Abah's driver, said that Tok Tuah told them lots of funny jokes about Sultan Mansor of Melaka and his fifteen wives. Tok Tuah also got to know Rajalinggam, the sweeper, who he said reminded him of Mani Purindan, the father of Bendahara Tun Ali. Like Rajalinggam, Mani Purindan too came from Tamil Nadu and cooked delicious dhal curry.
One morning, my teacher at school said, "Tomorrow I want you all to bring a model of an old artefact. Then I want you all to explain its importance in front of the whole history class."
Hilmi (always the teacher's pet) spent days working on a matchstick model of the Kuala Lumpur Railway Station. Azraai decided to build a spaceship instead. Eqhwan bought Anuar's origami keris for fifteen dollars and brought that to school. Farid asked his imaginary friend to draw a picture of Mel Gibson as Sir William Wallace. I? Well, I just brought Tok Tuah along.
My teacher was flabbergasted. She said, "Why have you brought this 'jaga' along?"
I smiled, "He's not just a 'jaga'. He's the great warrior Hang Tuah!"
My teacher said, "I'll call your father and tell him you're playing jokes in class."
"Please, Cikgu. Just listen to what he has to say," I insisted.
Tok Tuah stood in front of the class. He coughed. My teacher sighed. I smiled. My friends sneered. "Assalamualaikum," he said. "Wa'alaikum Salam," we answered.
Tok Tuah began his speech. He started out by saying that the Melaka we read about in the history books was very different from the real Melaka. He explained how the Sultan used to let anyone come to the palace with any complaints at all, and he would settle it there and then. He told us that he and his four friends used to go on tours to Pahang and Terengganu and Ujung Tanah, even to Siam, on great galliards with five big sails. He described to us that Melaka had 120,000 citizens, each of whom had land and houses of their own and that no beggars were allowed to go even a day without food and shelter. He mimicked Sultan Mansor's snarl, and Tun Perak's twitching handlebar moustaches and Jebat's swaggering walk. Finally, he told us how Melaka got corrupted by its wealth and warned us not to do the same now.
That day, Tok Tuah got a standing ovation. Even Teacher clapped. I? I got an 'A' for History.
Tok Tuah died seven weeks after that. He was 542 years old. It was during the Puasa month and he took the LRT from Sungai Buluh. He wanted to stop and buy some sweetmeats (he absolutely loved 'pau kaya'). When he arrived at Chow Kit station, he collapsed on the platform with a massive stroke.
They rushed him in an ambulance to Kuala Lumpur General Hospital but he was already gone. He didn't feel a thing.
We buried him at Ampang Cemetery, right across from the grave of Tan Sri P. Ramlee, who played him in that film. I visit the grave sometimes just to tell him that I'm now a lecturer in Malay History at Leyden University.
I still remember the day he walked through my door. It's as if it was just yesterday. Ah, well...
By the way, did I tell you I met King Henry VIII whilst I was studying in Cambridge? He worked as a night porter at my college. But that, as they say, is a different story.
by Adlan Benan Omar (date?)
Everyone knows who Hang Tuah is. Everyone knows that he was a great warrior, that he was loyal to his king, that he fought and defeated Hang Jebat in a gruelling duel. But I knew more about Hang Tuah than anyone else. No... I didn't read more than anyone else (how much more could a twelve-year-old have read anyway?). I knew more about Hang Tuah because he came to live with us a few months ago.
Yes, you heard me right. Hang Tuah did come to live with me and my family. Abah took him home one day. He had found the old man walking around the local playground one evening, while he was out jogging. It was getting dark and the old man had no place to go, so we took him in. Mak was not too happy about that, she thought the old man looked crooked. He was dirty and he didn't wear shoes. Mak said that people might think our family has gone weird. Abah just laughed. "Kasihan ...dia orang tua," he said.
My friends didn't believe me at first. They thought I was dreaming, or making things up, or just plain lying.
Azraai said that the old man was an alien from Mars and not Hang Tuah. Eqhwan laughed at me and said that either I or the old man must be mad. Anuar said that if Hang Tuah was still alive I wouldn't be able to understand what he said because he spoke classic Malay like in the hikayats. Hilmi (our local school's smart alec) tried to explain to me that the Melaka Empire was no more and that Hang Tuah was just a legend. He said that if Hang Tuah was still alive he would be at least five and a half centuries old and the latest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records stated that the oldest man in the world lived only to 120 years. Only Farid sympathised with me... and that was because he had an imaginary friend whom he always took along to play marbles with us.
I really didn't care what they said. I knew that old man was Hang Tuah. I know because I asked him myself.
The morning after we took the old man in, Mak asked me to wake him up for breakfast. I went to the spare room and found that he was already awake. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with a blue batik bundle on his lap.
"Jemput makan, Tok," I said, politely.
"Terima kasih," he said.
I was curious, so I asked, "Apa dalam buntil tu Tok?"
"Barang Tok... barang orang miskin," he replied.
Then he opened it up slowly. I saw him fiddle for something, then he took out a long keris with an ivory sheath. It was at least a foot long and studded with jewels.
"Ini keris Taming Sari," said the old man.
I snickered, "He! He! He!". I thought the old man was joking. Everyone knew that Taming Sari belonged to Hang Tuah and that it must have disappeared with its master.
The old man looked up at me. His eyes stared into mine. I felt a little queasy at that. His _expression changed, he began to look angry. Suddenly his eyes drooped and he looked more hurt than angry.
"Kenapa cucu gelak?" he asked.
"Tak ada kenapa," I answered, a little frightened.
"Tok tahu, cucu ingat Tok bergurau." I kept quiet.
He began again, "Inilah keris Taming Sari yang sebenar. Ini keris Tok sendiri."
"Kalau begitu Tok ni tentulah..."
"Hang Tuah," he interjected, "nama Tok ialah Hang Tuah."
"Tapi Hang Tuah sudah mati."
He laughed, "Tidak, Tok belum mati. Tapi Tok sudah tua..."
"Berapa umur Tok?" I questioned.
"540 tahun."
Mak didn't really like Tok Tuah. But she didn't say anything when he just stayed on and on in the house. She didn't say a word when Abah and I took him to Hankyu Jaya to get some new clothes. She just kept quiet when Tok Tuah joined us to watch TV in the living room after dinner. I told her (and Abah) that the old man said that his name was Hang Tuah. She wrinkled her face (and Abah just laughed).
It was a Wednesday night and RTM had a slot then called "Teater P. Ramlee". It so happened that they were showing Phani Majumdar's "Hang Tuah". P. Ramlee, so young and thin, acted as the hero and the late Haji Mahadi was Sultan Mansor Shah.
When Jebat got killed, Tok Tuah pipped in, "Tidak langsung macam tu..."
Abah stared at Tok Tuah. Mak stared at Tok Tuah. I too, stared at Tok Tuah.
"Aku sudah tua masa tu, Jebat muda lagi. Jebat kuat. Dia sepak aku hingga aku tertiarap, kemudian aku berguling. Aku himpit dia. Aku kata sama dia 'baik sajalah kau mengalah'. Apa gunanya kita dua bersaudara bergaduh?"
Mak started to look worried again.
"Jebat tak mati."
Abah looked surprised. He said, "Habis tu, apa jadi pada dia?"
Tok Tuah said, "Aku tak mahu Sultan bunuh dia. Aku tahu Sultan zalim. Jadi, aku sorokkan dia di Ulu Melaka. Macam Tun Perak sorokkan aku masa aku difitnahkan. Lepas Melaka kalah dengan Portugis, Jebat ikut aku merantau."
I said, "Bila Jebat mati?"
Tok Tuah laughed, "Jebat belum mati. Baru tahun lepas aku jumpa dia. Dia meniaga di Kedah."
"Meniaga?" I said.
"Ya, Jebat duduk di Kulim. Dia meniaga kereta. Apa tu? Kereta 'second-hand' kata orang. Proton, Honda dan Nissan. Laku jualannya. Banyak orang beli."
One day, I took Tok Tuah on a walk around KL. He got bored just sitting in our small bungalow in Bukit Bandar Raya. So after school, we took the mini-bus to Central Market. Tok Tuah really enjoyed the walk. "Banyaknya orang..." he wondered. We ate at McDonald's. He didn't like the cheeseburger (well, he didn't like the cheese, though he loved the burger itself). After lunch, we went to Muzium Negara.
I showed him the frieze of a young Hang Tuah which was sculpted by an Englishwoman in the 1950s. It showed a handsome Hang Tuah in 'Baju Melayu' and 'samping'. He was holding Taming Sari in his hand.
"Siapa tu," Tok Tuah asked.
"Itu Tok-lah. ltulah orang putih gambarkan sebagai Hang Tuah. Hensem, kan?"
Tok Tuah chuckled, "Apa tulisan atas tu?"
"Ta' Melayu Hilang di-Dunia. Eh, takkan Tok tak ingat? Itu kan Tok yang cakap dulu?"
He kept quiet. Slowly he mumbled, "Ta' Melayu Hilang di-Dunia? Tak ingat pun."
Suddenly, he started, "Oh! Bukannya Ta' Melayu Hilang di-Dunia. Silap tu. Tok tak pernah cakap macam tu..."
"Habis tu?" I asked.
"Masa tu Tok tengah pergi masjid untuk sembahyang Maghrib. Isteri Tok ikut sekali. Dia tengah ambil air sembahyang di tepi perigi, kemudian kakinya tergelincir. Dia terjatuh masuk. Orang ramal pun menjerit-jerit sebab perigi itu dalam. Apa lagi, Tok pun terjunlah untuk selamatkan dia. Isteri Tok bukan sebarang orang, namanya Tun Sa'odah, anak Bendahara Tun Perak."
"Kemudian?" I urged.
"Bila Tok bawak dia naik, Temenggung Tun Mutahir ketawa. Katanya, Tok sayang betul pada isteri Tok. Tok pun jawab, "Mestilah... Ta' Isteriku Hilang di-Telaga. Jadi, mungkin orang silap dengar...!"
Tok Tuah stayed with our family for more than six months. He stayed at home in the first few weeks but he felt guilty not doing anything to contribute. So, one morning, he followed Abah to work. Abah was manager of a factory in Sungai Buluh which made video tapes and CDs. They needed a new 'jaga' or watchman. Tok Tuah got the job. Abah said, "Who better to guard us than the great Malay admiral Hang Tuah?"
The workers got along well with him. Amin, Abah's driver, said that Tok Tuah told them lots of funny jokes about Sultan Mansor of Melaka and his fifteen wives. Tok Tuah also got to know Rajalinggam, the sweeper, who he said reminded him of Mani Purindan, the father of Bendahara Tun Ali. Like Rajalinggam, Mani Purindan too came from Tamil Nadu and cooked delicious dhal curry.
One morning, my teacher at school said, "Tomorrow I want you all to bring a model of an old artefact. Then I want you all to explain its importance in front of the whole history class."
Hilmi (always the teacher's pet) spent days working on a matchstick model of the Kuala Lumpur Railway Station. Azraai decided to build a spaceship instead. Eqhwan bought Anuar's origami keris for fifteen dollars and brought that to school. Farid asked his imaginary friend to draw a picture of Mel Gibson as Sir William Wallace. I? Well, I just brought Tok Tuah along.
My teacher was flabbergasted. She said, "Why have you brought this 'jaga' along?"
I smiled, "He's not just a 'jaga'. He's the great warrior Hang Tuah!"
My teacher said, "I'll call your father and tell him you're playing jokes in class."
"Please, Cikgu. Just listen to what he has to say," I insisted.
Tok Tuah stood in front of the class. He coughed. My teacher sighed. I smiled. My friends sneered. "Assalamualaikum," he said. "Wa'alaikum Salam," we answered.
Tok Tuah began his speech. He started out by saying that the Melaka we read about in the history books was very different from the real Melaka. He explained how the Sultan used to let anyone come to the palace with any complaints at all, and he would settle it there and then. He told us that he and his four friends used to go on tours to Pahang and Terengganu and Ujung Tanah, even to Siam, on great galliards with five big sails. He described to us that Melaka had 120,000 citizens, each of whom had land and houses of their own and that no beggars were allowed to go even a day without food and shelter. He mimicked Sultan Mansor's snarl, and Tun Perak's twitching handlebar moustaches and Jebat's swaggering walk. Finally, he told us how Melaka got corrupted by its wealth and warned us not to do the same now.
That day, Tok Tuah got a standing ovation. Even Teacher clapped. I? I got an 'A' for History.
Tok Tuah died seven weeks after that. He was 542 years old. It was during the Puasa month and he took the LRT from Sungai Buluh. He wanted to stop and buy some sweetmeats (he absolutely loved 'pau kaya'). When he arrived at Chow Kit station, he collapsed on the platform with a massive stroke.
They rushed him in an ambulance to Kuala Lumpur General Hospital but he was already gone. He didn't feel a thing.
We buried him at Ampang Cemetery, right across from the grave of Tan Sri P. Ramlee, who played him in that film. I visit the grave sometimes just to tell him that I'm now a lecturer in Malay History at Leyden University.
I still remember the day he walked through my door. It's as if it was just yesterday. Ah, well...
By the way, did I tell you I met King Henry VIII whilst I was studying in Cambridge? He worked as a night porter at my college. But that, as they say, is a different story.
Khalid Jafri Bersalah!
Bernama, 25 Jun 2005
Penulis buku "50 Dalil Mengapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Jadi PM", Datuk Abdul Khalid @ Khalid Jafri Bakar Shah, Sabtu didapati bersalah oleh Mahkamah Sesyen Ampang di sini dan disabitkan dengan tuduhan menulis maklumat palsu dalam buku berkenaan.
Hakim Mohamad Saman Mohamed Ramli berkata pihak pendakwaan telah membuktikan kes yang melampaui keraguan munasabah. Beliau menetapkan 6 Julai ini untuk mitigasi dan menjatuhkan hukuman.
Khalid Jafri, 65, didakwa melakukan kesalahan itu di pejabat Media Pulau Lagenda, Taman Kosas, Ampang di sini, pada Mei 1998. Dia didakwa mengikut Seksyen 8A (1) Akta Mesin Cetak dan Penerbitan 1984 yang membawa hukuman maksimum penjara tiga tahun atau denda RM20,000 atau kedua-duanya jika sabit kesalahan.
Khalid mengaku tidak bersalah terhadap pertuduhan tersebut pada 12 Ogos 1998 dan pada peringkat pendakwaan seramai 11 saksi memberi keterangan.
Pada 19 Feb 2003, Mohamad Saman mengarahkan Khalid membela diri selepas memutuskan pihak pendakwaan berjaya membuktikan satu kes prima facie terhadapnya.
Pembelaan telah mengemukakan dua saksi iaitu Khalid sendiri dan Timbalan Ketua Polis Negara Datuk Musa Hassan serta memanggil semula saksi pendakwaan Supt Mohd Rodwan Mohd Yusof.
Pendakwaan dijalankan oleh Timbalan Pendakwa Raya Kamal Baharin Omar manakala Khalid diwakili oleh peguam Sashi Menon.
Penulis buku "50 Dalil Mengapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Jadi PM", Datuk Abdul Khalid @ Khalid Jafri Bakar Shah, Sabtu didapati bersalah oleh Mahkamah Sesyen Ampang di sini dan disabitkan dengan tuduhan menulis maklumat palsu dalam buku berkenaan.
Hakim Mohamad Saman Mohamed Ramli berkata pihak pendakwaan telah membuktikan kes yang melampaui keraguan munasabah. Beliau menetapkan 6 Julai ini untuk mitigasi dan menjatuhkan hukuman.
Khalid Jafri, 65, didakwa melakukan kesalahan itu di pejabat Media Pulau Lagenda, Taman Kosas, Ampang di sini, pada Mei 1998. Dia didakwa mengikut Seksyen 8A (1) Akta Mesin Cetak dan Penerbitan 1984 yang membawa hukuman maksimum penjara tiga tahun atau denda RM20,000 atau kedua-duanya jika sabit kesalahan.
Khalid mengaku tidak bersalah terhadap pertuduhan tersebut pada 12 Ogos 1998 dan pada peringkat pendakwaan seramai 11 saksi memberi keterangan.
Pada 19 Feb 2003, Mohamad Saman mengarahkan Khalid membela diri selepas memutuskan pihak pendakwaan berjaya membuktikan satu kes prima facie terhadapnya.
Pembelaan telah mengemukakan dua saksi iaitu Khalid sendiri dan Timbalan Ketua Polis Negara Datuk Musa Hassan serta memanggil semula saksi pendakwaan Supt Mohd Rodwan Mohd Yusof.
Pendakwaan dijalankan oleh Timbalan Pendakwa Raya Kamal Baharin Omar manakala Khalid diwakili oleh peguam Sashi Menon.
Results of Iran's Election 2005
June 25, 2005, The Times
Hardliner victorious in Iran
From Anthony Loyd in Tehran
THE ultra-conservative Mayor of Tehran coasted to a shock victory in Iran's presidential elections last night, a development that threatens to stifle the social reforms initiated by his predecessor and set his country on a new collision course with the West. With more than 80 per cent of the votes counted, election officials said that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 49, held a commanding lead of 61 per cent over his reformist rival, Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 70.
The Interior Ministry declared Mr Ahmadinejad the winner. "Poor provinces have voted massively for Ahmadinejad," an unnamed ministry official said. With five candidates knocked out in the first round of voting last week, the run-off pitted Mr Ahmadinejad, against Hojatoleslam Rafsanjani, a restyled reformist and former president. Reformists had pinned their hopes on the young people who initially boycotted the election voting to block Mr Ahmadinejad, whose proposed punishment for criminals is to chop off their hands. "This is a fight between reformists and conservatives," said Nafisa, a 21-year-old student, as she cast her ballot at Fakhrabad Mosque in Tehran.
"I didn’t vote last time as I didn’t believe in it. Now everyone is saying that Ahmadinejad might win so all my friends are voting for Rafsanjani. It's the difference between bad and worst."
Although polls were extended by four hours, turnout was lower than last week. Officials said that 22 million, or 47 per cent, had voted, well down on the turnout of 63 per cent in the first round a week ago.
The mayor shocked rivals by his sudden ascent in the first round. The religious conservative has the support of the regime and has captured the attention of the Iranian poor with his ascetic message of socialist-style economic reform and cultural discipline.
His campaigning has been a stroke of genius. The slick, Western-style campaigns of the other candidates backfired, alienating working-class voters who were not impressed by colourful posters and abstract talk of modernisation.
In contrast, Mr Ahmadinejad played up his humble origins and sold himself as a man of the people.
Campaign leaflets showed him sitting cross-legged on a Persian rug eating a modest meal of bread and cheese promising to solve poverty, unemployment and corruption.
"We need a fundamentalist running the country," said Ali, 28, a university teacher. "We have corruption and many cultural problems here. The US cultural attack in Iran, using the internet and satellite TV has caused many difficulties. We need Ahmadinejad to put
us back in place."
Mr Ahmadinejad’s critics predicted that a victory for his fundamentalist Islamic values would mean a return to the dark days of the regime, when flogging and imprisonment for petty crimes— such as mixing with the opposite sex and wearing make-up — were common.
"I never thought I’d vote in my life," said Kayvan, a businessman who imports food. "But if Ahmadinejad gets in, I’m going to have to leave Iran."
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has banned all victory celebrations. "Dragging people on to the streets . . . under any pretext is against the interests of the country," he declared.
Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.
---------------------------
The New York Times
Hard-Liner Urges Reconciliation After Victory in Iranian Vote
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 25, 2005
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The winner of Iran's presidential election, whose landslide victory dealt a setback to reformers, said Saturday he seeks to make his country a "modern, advanced, powerful, and Islamic" model for the world.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's taped statement, broadcast on state-run radio, appeared aimed at easing worries that his ultraconservative views would clash with Iran's attempts to expand its economy and international ties. Ahmadinejad, however, made no mention of any new policies regarding the social reforms opposed by some of his supporters.
"Let's convert competition to friendship. We are all a nation and a big family," he said in apparent reference to the rifts between liberals and hard-liners in Iran that deepened in the campaign for Friday's runoff election.
"My mission is creating a role model of a modern, advanced, powerful and Islamic society," he said in the short message broadcast shortly after the announcement of final results sealed his stunning defeat of moderate statesman Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The results, announced on state television, gave Ahmadinejad, currently Tehran's mayor, 61.6 percent of the vote over Rafsanjani's 35.9 percent. The rest of the ballots were deemed invalid.
Nearly 28 million ballots were cast, or more than 59 percent of Iran's approximately 47 million eligible voters. In last week's election, the turnout was close to 63 percent.
The victory gives conservatives control of Iran's two highest elected offices -- the presidency and parliament -- enabling the non-elected theocracy to rule with a freer hand.
Real power in Iran lies with the country's clerics and their supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who can overrule elected officials. But reformers, who lost parliament in elections last year, had been hoping to retain some hand in government to preserve the greater social freedoms they've been able to win, such as looser dress codes, more mixing between the sexes and openings to the West.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore indicated the result would not change the U.S. view of Iran, and what it considered to be a fundamentally flawed election that refused to accept scores of candidates, particularly women.
"With the conclusion of the elections in Iran, we have seen nothing that sways us from our view that Iran is out of step with the rest of the region in the currents of freedom and liberty that have been so apparent in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon," Moore said.
Ahmadinejad supporters will go to mosques to "thank God for this great victory," said his campaign manager Ali Akbar Javanfekr. He said no public celebrations were planned. Ahmadinejad is expected to start consultations soon on his Cabinet. He will be watched to see if he chooses clerics such as Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a firebrand who has been considered for the Culture Ministry, which controls publications as well as the arts.
Ahmadinejad, 49, campaigned as a champion of the poor, a message that resonated with voters in a country where some estimates put unemployment as high as 30 percent. He struck the image of a simple working man, casting Rafsanjani as a wealthy member of the ruling elite.
"The real nuclear bomb that Iran has is its unemployed young people," said Ali Pourassad, after voting for Ahmadinejad at a polling station set up in the courtyard of a mosque in the middle-class south of Tehran. "If nothing is done to create jobs for our young people, we will have an explosion on the streets."
But Ahmadinejad also vowed to return Iran to the principles of the Islamic Revolution more than a quarter-century ago. Such comments and reports about his inner circle of supporters -- members of the Revolutionary Guard, the vigilantes who enforce public dress codes and some of the most hard-line clerics in Iran's theocracy -- frightened Iran's reformers.
Ahmadinejad (pronounced "Aah-MA-dee-ni-JAHD") had not been expected even to make the runoff. But he squeaked ahead of his rivals into the No. 2 spot in last week's first-round vote. There were accusations that Revolutionary Guards and vigilantes intimidated voters to sway the vote in his favor.
During Friday's voting, the reformist-led Interior Ministry reported "interference" at some Tehran polling stations. A ministry worker who was at a polling station reminding officials to watch for violations was arrested after he got in an argument with
representatives of one of the two candidates, ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani said.
An Interior Ministry observers' group reported 300 complaints of violations in Tehran, said group leader Ibrahim Razini.
In the eyes of most, Rafsanjani -- who was president from 1989-97 -- represented the status quo. Backers felt confident he would continue the many social changes introduced by outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, including youth-supported freedoms such as dating, music, and colorful headscarves for women.
Rafsanjani may retain his seat on the Expediency Council, which mediates between parliament and the ruling clerics. But he appears to be finished as a politician, having already been humbled in 2000 when he failed to win a seat in parliament.
Ahmadinejad's surprising strength alarmed moderates and business groups at home and was watched with concern by international officials. He is expected to be a tough negotiating partner in Iran's talks with Europe over its nuclear program. Iran says the program is
to produce energy but the United States contends nuclear weapons are the goal.
Ahmadinejad has criticized Iran's current negotiators as making too many concessions to Europe -- particularly in freezing the uranium enrichment program -- and he was expected to put Iran's nuclear program into the hands of some avowed anti-Western clerics.
The pragmatic Rafsanjani appeared more willing to negotiate on the nuclear program. But a Foreign Ministry spokesman Friday underlined that the suspension is temporary and that enrichment will eventually be restarted no matter who wins the election.
But for many Iranians, the biggest issue was an economy that has languished despite Iran's oil and gas riches. Iran's official unemployment rate is 16 percent, but unofficially it is closer to 30 percent -- and the country has to create 800,000 jobs a year just to stand still. In the fall, another million young people are expected to enter the work force.
Ahmadinejad, the son of a blacksmith, presented himself as the humble alternative to Rafsanjani, whose family runs a large business empire. He has promised Iran's underclass higher wages, more development funds for rural areas, expanded health insurance and more social benefits for women.
Associated Press correspondent Ali Akbar Dareini contributed to this report from Tehran.
Hardliner victorious in Iran
From Anthony Loyd in Tehran
THE ultra-conservative Mayor of Tehran coasted to a shock victory in Iran's presidential elections last night, a development that threatens to stifle the social reforms initiated by his predecessor and set his country on a new collision course with the West. With more than 80 per cent of the votes counted, election officials said that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 49, held a commanding lead of 61 per cent over his reformist rival, Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 70.
The Interior Ministry declared Mr Ahmadinejad the winner. "Poor provinces have voted massively for Ahmadinejad," an unnamed ministry official said. With five candidates knocked out in the first round of voting last week, the run-off pitted Mr Ahmadinejad, against Hojatoleslam Rafsanjani, a restyled reformist and former president. Reformists had pinned their hopes on the young people who initially boycotted the election voting to block Mr Ahmadinejad, whose proposed punishment for criminals is to chop off their hands. "This is a fight between reformists and conservatives," said Nafisa, a 21-year-old student, as she cast her ballot at Fakhrabad Mosque in Tehran.
"I didn’t vote last time as I didn’t believe in it. Now everyone is saying that Ahmadinejad might win so all my friends are voting for Rafsanjani. It's the difference between bad and worst."
Although polls were extended by four hours, turnout was lower than last week. Officials said that 22 million, or 47 per cent, had voted, well down on the turnout of 63 per cent in the first round a week ago.
The mayor shocked rivals by his sudden ascent in the first round. The religious conservative has the support of the regime and has captured the attention of the Iranian poor with his ascetic message of socialist-style economic reform and cultural discipline.
His campaigning has been a stroke of genius. The slick, Western-style campaigns of the other candidates backfired, alienating working-class voters who were not impressed by colourful posters and abstract talk of modernisation.
In contrast, Mr Ahmadinejad played up his humble origins and sold himself as a man of the people.
Campaign leaflets showed him sitting cross-legged on a Persian rug eating a modest meal of bread and cheese promising to solve poverty, unemployment and corruption.
"We need a fundamentalist running the country," said Ali, 28, a university teacher. "We have corruption and many cultural problems here. The US cultural attack in Iran, using the internet and satellite TV has caused many difficulties. We need Ahmadinejad to put
us back in place."
Mr Ahmadinejad’s critics predicted that a victory for his fundamentalist Islamic values would mean a return to the dark days of the regime, when flogging and imprisonment for petty crimes— such as mixing with the opposite sex and wearing make-up — were common.
"I never thought I’d vote in my life," said Kayvan, a businessman who imports food. "But if Ahmadinejad gets in, I’m going to have to leave Iran."
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has banned all victory celebrations. "Dragging people on to the streets . . . under any pretext is against the interests of the country," he declared.
Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.
---------------------------
The New York Times
Hard-Liner Urges Reconciliation After Victory in Iranian Vote
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 25, 2005
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The winner of Iran's presidential election, whose landslide victory dealt a setback to reformers, said Saturday he seeks to make his country a "modern, advanced, powerful, and Islamic" model for the world.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's taped statement, broadcast on state-run radio, appeared aimed at easing worries that his ultraconservative views would clash with Iran's attempts to expand its economy and international ties. Ahmadinejad, however, made no mention of any new policies regarding the social reforms opposed by some of his supporters.
"Let's convert competition to friendship. We are all a nation and a big family," he said in apparent reference to the rifts between liberals and hard-liners in Iran that deepened in the campaign for Friday's runoff election.
"My mission is creating a role model of a modern, advanced, powerful and Islamic society," he said in the short message broadcast shortly after the announcement of final results sealed his stunning defeat of moderate statesman Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The results, announced on state television, gave Ahmadinejad, currently Tehran's mayor, 61.6 percent of the vote over Rafsanjani's 35.9 percent. The rest of the ballots were deemed invalid.
Nearly 28 million ballots were cast, or more than 59 percent of Iran's approximately 47 million eligible voters. In last week's election, the turnout was close to 63 percent.
The victory gives conservatives control of Iran's two highest elected offices -- the presidency and parliament -- enabling the non-elected theocracy to rule with a freer hand.
Real power in Iran lies with the country's clerics and their supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who can overrule elected officials. But reformers, who lost parliament in elections last year, had been hoping to retain some hand in government to preserve the greater social freedoms they've been able to win, such as looser dress codes, more mixing between the sexes and openings to the West.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore indicated the result would not change the U.S. view of Iran, and what it considered to be a fundamentally flawed election that refused to accept scores of candidates, particularly women.
"With the conclusion of the elections in Iran, we have seen nothing that sways us from our view that Iran is out of step with the rest of the region in the currents of freedom and liberty that have been so apparent in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon," Moore said.
Ahmadinejad supporters will go to mosques to "thank God for this great victory," said his campaign manager Ali Akbar Javanfekr. He said no public celebrations were planned. Ahmadinejad is expected to start consultations soon on his Cabinet. He will be watched to see if he chooses clerics such as Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a firebrand who has been considered for the Culture Ministry, which controls publications as well as the arts.
Ahmadinejad, 49, campaigned as a champion of the poor, a message that resonated with voters in a country where some estimates put unemployment as high as 30 percent. He struck the image of a simple working man, casting Rafsanjani as a wealthy member of the ruling elite.
"The real nuclear bomb that Iran has is its unemployed young people," said Ali Pourassad, after voting for Ahmadinejad at a polling station set up in the courtyard of a mosque in the middle-class south of Tehran. "If nothing is done to create jobs for our young people, we will have an explosion on the streets."
But Ahmadinejad also vowed to return Iran to the principles of the Islamic Revolution more than a quarter-century ago. Such comments and reports about his inner circle of supporters -- members of the Revolutionary Guard, the vigilantes who enforce public dress codes and some of the most hard-line clerics in Iran's theocracy -- frightened Iran's reformers.
Ahmadinejad (pronounced "Aah-MA-dee-ni-JAHD") had not been expected even to make the runoff. But he squeaked ahead of his rivals into the No. 2 spot in last week's first-round vote. There were accusations that Revolutionary Guards and vigilantes intimidated voters to sway the vote in his favor.
During Friday's voting, the reformist-led Interior Ministry reported "interference" at some Tehran polling stations. A ministry worker who was at a polling station reminding officials to watch for violations was arrested after he got in an argument with
representatives of one of the two candidates, ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani said.
An Interior Ministry observers' group reported 300 complaints of violations in Tehran, said group leader Ibrahim Razini.
In the eyes of most, Rafsanjani -- who was president from 1989-97 -- represented the status quo. Backers felt confident he would continue the many social changes introduced by outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, including youth-supported freedoms such as dating, music, and colorful headscarves for women.
Rafsanjani may retain his seat on the Expediency Council, which mediates between parliament and the ruling clerics. But he appears to be finished as a politician, having already been humbled in 2000 when he failed to win a seat in parliament.
Ahmadinejad's surprising strength alarmed moderates and business groups at home and was watched with concern by international officials. He is expected to be a tough negotiating partner in Iran's talks with Europe over its nuclear program. Iran says the program is
to produce energy but the United States contends nuclear weapons are the goal.
Ahmadinejad has criticized Iran's current negotiators as making too many concessions to Europe -- particularly in freezing the uranium enrichment program -- and he was expected to put Iran's nuclear program into the hands of some avowed anti-Western clerics.
The pragmatic Rafsanjani appeared more willing to negotiate on the nuclear program. But a Foreign Ministry spokesman Friday underlined that the suspension is temporary and that enrichment will eventually be restarted no matter who wins the election.
But for many Iranians, the biggest issue was an economy that has languished despite Iran's oil and gas riches. Iran's official unemployment rate is 16 percent, but unofficially it is closer to 30 percent -- and the country has to create 800,000 jobs a year just to stand still. In the fall, another million young people are expected to enter the work force.
Ahmadinejad, the son of a blacksmith, presented himself as the humble alternative to Rafsanjani, whose family runs a large business empire. He has promised Iran's underclass higher wages, more development funds for rural areas, expanded health insurance and more social benefits for women.
Associated Press correspondent Ali Akbar Dareini contributed to this report from Tehran.
Neo-Cons Will Fail!
America's neo-conservative world supremacists will fail:
Current US megalomania is rooted in the Puritan colonists' certainties
Eric Hobsbawm
Saturday June 25, 2005, The Guardian
Three continuities link the global US of the cold war era with the attempt to assert world supremacy since 2001. The first is its position of international domination, outside the sphere of influence of communist regimes during the cold war, globally since the collapse of the USSR. This hegemony no longer rests on the sheer size of the US economy. Large though this is, it has declined since 1945 and its relative decline continues. It is no longer the giant of global manufacturing. The centre of the industrialised world is rapidly shifting to the eastern half of Asia. Unlike older imperialist countries, and unlike most other developed industrial countries, the US has ceased to be a net exporter of capital, or indeed the largest player in the international game of buying up or establishing firms in other countries, and the financial strength of the state rests on the continued willingness of others, mostly Asians, to maintain an
otherwise intolerable fiscal deficit.
The influence of the American economy today rests largely on the heritage of the cold war: the role of the US dollar as the world currency, the international linkages of US firms established during that era (notably in defence-related industries), the restructuring of international economic transactions and business practices along American lines, often under the auspices of American firms. These are powerful assets, likely to diminish only slowly. On the other hand, as the Iraq war showed, the enormous political influence of the US abroad, based as it was on a genuine "coalition of the willing" against the USSR, has no similar foundation since the fall of the Berlin wall. Only the enormous military-technological power of the US is well beyond challenge. It makes the US today the only power capable of effective military intervention at short notice in any part on the world, and it has twice demonstrated its capacity to win small wars with great rapidity. And yet, as the Iraq war shows, even this unparalleled capacity to destroy is not enough to impose effective control on a resistant country, and even less on the globe.
Nevertheless, US dominance is real and the disintegration of the USSR has made it global.
The second element of continuity is the peculiar house-style of US empire, which has always preferred satellite states or protectorates to formal colonies. The expansionism implicit in the name chosen for the 13 independent colonies on the east coast of the Atlantic (United States of America) was continental, not colonial. The later expansionism of "manifest destiny" was both hemispheric and aimed towards East Asia, as well as modelled on the global trading and maritime supremacy of the British Empire. One might even say that in its assertion of total US supremacy over the western hemisphere it was too ambitious to be confined to colonial administration over bits of it.
The American empire thus consisted of technically independent states doing Washington's bidding, but, given their independence, this required continuous readiness to exert pressure on their governments, including pressure for "regime change"and, where feasible (as in the mini-republics of the Caribbean zone), periodic US armed intervention.
The third thread of continuity links the neo-conservatives of George Bush with the Puritan colonists' certainty of being God's instrument on earth and with the American Revolution - which, like all major revolutions, developed world-missionary convictions, limited only by the wish to shield the the new society of potentially universal freedom from the corruptions of the unreconstructed old world. The most effective way of finessing this conflict between isolationism and globalism was to be systematically exploited in the 20th century and still serves Washington well in the 21st. It was to discover an alien enemy outside who posed an immediate, mortal threat to the American way of life and the lives of its citizens. The end of the USSR removed the obvious candidate, but by the early 90s another had been detected in a "clash" between the west and other cultures reluctant to accept it, notably Islam. Hence the enormous political potential of the al-Qaida outrages of September 11 was immediately recognised and exploited by the Washington world-dominators.
The first world war, which made the US into a global power, saw the first attempt to translate these world-converting visions into reality, but Woodrow Wilson's failure was spectacular; perhaps it should be a lesson to the current world-supremacist ideologists in Washington, who, rightly, recognise Wilson as a predecessor. Until the end of the cold war the existence of another superpower imposed limits on them, but the fall of the USSR removed these. Francis Fukuyama prematurely proclaimed "the end of history" - the universal and permanent triumph of the US version of capitalist society. At the same time the military superiority of the US encouraged a disproportionate ambition in a state powerful enough to believe itself capable of world supremacy, as the British Empire in its time never did. And indeed, as the 21st century began, the US occupied a historically unique and unprecedented position of global power and influence. For the time being it is, by the traditional criteria of international politics, the only great power; and certainly the only one whose power and interests span the globe. It towers over all others.
All the great powers and empires of history knew that they were not the only ones, and none was in a position to aim at genuinely global domination. None believed themselves to be invulnerable.
Nevertheless, this does not quite explain the evident megalomania of US policy since a group of Washington insiders decided that September 11 gave them the ideal opportunity for declaring its single-handed domination of the world. For one thing, it lacked the support of the traditional pillars of the post-1945 US empire, the state department, armed services and intelligence establishment, and of the statesmen and ideologists of cold war supremacy - men like Kissinger and Brzezinski. These were people who were as ruthless as the Rumsfelds and Wolfowitzes. (It was in their time that a genocide of Mayas took place in Guatemala in the 1980s.)
They had devised and managed a policy of imperial hegemony over the greater part of the globe for two generations, and were perfectly ready to extend it to the entire globe. They were and are critical of the Pentagon planners and neo-conservative world supremacists because these patently have had no concrete ideas at all, except imposing their supremacy single-handed by military force, incidentally jettisoning all the accumulated experience of US diplomacy and military planning. No doubt the debacle of Iraq will confirm them in their scepticism.
Even those who do not share the views of the old generals and proconsuls of the US world empire (which were those of Democratic as well as Republican administrations) will agree that there can be no rational justification of current Washington policy in terms of the
interests of America's imperial ambitions or, for that matter, the global interests of US capitalism.
It may be that it makes sense only in terms of the calculations, electoral or otherwise, of American domestic policy. It may be a symptom of a more profound crisis within US society. It may be that it represents the - one hopes short-lived - colonisation of Washington power by a group of quasi-revolutionary doctrinaires. (At least one passionate ex-Marxist supporter of Bush has told me, only half in jest: "After all, this is the only chance of supporting world revolution that looks like coming my way.") Such questions cannot yet be answered.
It is reasonably certain that the project will fail. However, while it continues, it will go on making the world an intolerable place for those directly exposed to US armed occupation and an unsafer place for the rest of us.
Eric Hobsbawm is author of The Age of Extremes: The Short 20th Century 1914-1991. This is an edited extract from his preface to a new edition of VG Kiernan's America: The New Imperialism
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Current US megalomania is rooted in the Puritan colonists' certainties
Eric Hobsbawm
Saturday June 25, 2005, The Guardian
Three continuities link the global US of the cold war era with the attempt to assert world supremacy since 2001. The first is its position of international domination, outside the sphere of influence of communist regimes during the cold war, globally since the collapse of the USSR. This hegemony no longer rests on the sheer size of the US economy. Large though this is, it has declined since 1945 and its relative decline continues. It is no longer the giant of global manufacturing. The centre of the industrialised world is rapidly shifting to the eastern half of Asia. Unlike older imperialist countries, and unlike most other developed industrial countries, the US has ceased to be a net exporter of capital, or indeed the largest player in the international game of buying up or establishing firms in other countries, and the financial strength of the state rests on the continued willingness of others, mostly Asians, to maintain an
otherwise intolerable fiscal deficit.
The influence of the American economy today rests largely on the heritage of the cold war: the role of the US dollar as the world currency, the international linkages of US firms established during that era (notably in defence-related industries), the restructuring of international economic transactions and business practices along American lines, often under the auspices of American firms. These are powerful assets, likely to diminish only slowly. On the other hand, as the Iraq war showed, the enormous political influence of the US abroad, based as it was on a genuine "coalition of the willing" against the USSR, has no similar foundation since the fall of the Berlin wall. Only the enormous military-technological power of the US is well beyond challenge. It makes the US today the only power capable of effective military intervention at short notice in any part on the world, and it has twice demonstrated its capacity to win small wars with great rapidity. And yet, as the Iraq war shows, even this unparalleled capacity to destroy is not enough to impose effective control on a resistant country, and even less on the globe.
Nevertheless, US dominance is real and the disintegration of the USSR has made it global.
The second element of continuity is the peculiar house-style of US empire, which has always preferred satellite states or protectorates to formal colonies. The expansionism implicit in the name chosen for the 13 independent colonies on the east coast of the Atlantic (United States of America) was continental, not colonial. The later expansionism of "manifest destiny" was both hemispheric and aimed towards East Asia, as well as modelled on the global trading and maritime supremacy of the British Empire. One might even say that in its assertion of total US supremacy over the western hemisphere it was too ambitious to be confined to colonial administration over bits of it.
The American empire thus consisted of technically independent states doing Washington's bidding, but, given their independence, this required continuous readiness to exert pressure on their governments, including pressure for "regime change"and, where feasible (as in the mini-republics of the Caribbean zone), periodic US armed intervention.
The third thread of continuity links the neo-conservatives of George Bush with the Puritan colonists' certainty of being God's instrument on earth and with the American Revolution - which, like all major revolutions, developed world-missionary convictions, limited only by the wish to shield the the new society of potentially universal freedom from the corruptions of the unreconstructed old world. The most effective way of finessing this conflict between isolationism and globalism was to be systematically exploited in the 20th century and still serves Washington well in the 21st. It was to discover an alien enemy outside who posed an immediate, mortal threat to the American way of life and the lives of its citizens. The end of the USSR removed the obvious candidate, but by the early 90s another had been detected in a "clash" between the west and other cultures reluctant to accept it, notably Islam. Hence the enormous political potential of the al-Qaida outrages of September 11 was immediately recognised and exploited by the Washington world-dominators.
The first world war, which made the US into a global power, saw the first attempt to translate these world-converting visions into reality, but Woodrow Wilson's failure was spectacular; perhaps it should be a lesson to the current world-supremacist ideologists in Washington, who, rightly, recognise Wilson as a predecessor. Until the end of the cold war the existence of another superpower imposed limits on them, but the fall of the USSR removed these. Francis Fukuyama prematurely proclaimed "the end of history" - the universal and permanent triumph of the US version of capitalist society. At the same time the military superiority of the US encouraged a disproportionate ambition in a state powerful enough to believe itself capable of world supremacy, as the British Empire in its time never did. And indeed, as the 21st century began, the US occupied a historically unique and unprecedented position of global power and influence. For the time being it is, by the traditional criteria of international politics, the only great power; and certainly the only one whose power and interests span the globe. It towers over all others.
All the great powers and empires of history knew that they were not the only ones, and none was in a position to aim at genuinely global domination. None believed themselves to be invulnerable.
Nevertheless, this does not quite explain the evident megalomania of US policy since a group of Washington insiders decided that September 11 gave them the ideal opportunity for declaring its single-handed domination of the world. For one thing, it lacked the support of the traditional pillars of the post-1945 US empire, the state department, armed services and intelligence establishment, and of the statesmen and ideologists of cold war supremacy - men like Kissinger and Brzezinski. These were people who were as ruthless as the Rumsfelds and Wolfowitzes. (It was in their time that a genocide of Mayas took place in Guatemala in the 1980s.)
They had devised and managed a policy of imperial hegemony over the greater part of the globe for two generations, and were perfectly ready to extend it to the entire globe. They were and are critical of the Pentagon planners and neo-conservative world supremacists because these patently have had no concrete ideas at all, except imposing their supremacy single-handed by military force, incidentally jettisoning all the accumulated experience of US diplomacy and military planning. No doubt the debacle of Iraq will confirm them in their scepticism.
Even those who do not share the views of the old generals and proconsuls of the US world empire (which were those of Democratic as well as Republican administrations) will agree that there can be no rational justification of current Washington policy in terms of the
interests of America's imperial ambitions or, for that matter, the global interests of US capitalism.
It may be that it makes sense only in terms of the calculations, electoral or otherwise, of American domestic policy. It may be a symptom of a more profound crisis within US society. It may be that it represents the - one hopes short-lived - colonisation of Washington power by a group of quasi-revolutionary doctrinaires. (At least one passionate ex-Marxist supporter of Bush has told me, only half in jest: "After all, this is the only chance of supporting world revolution that looks like coming my way.") Such questions cannot yet be answered.
It is reasonably certain that the project will fail. However, while it continues, it will go on making the world an intolerable place for those directly exposed to US armed occupation and an unsafer place for the rest of us.
Eric Hobsbawm is author of The Age of Extremes: The Short 20th Century 1914-1991. This is an edited extract from his preface to a new edition of VG Kiernan's America: The New Imperialism
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Facts of Life?
ADIDAS
When the founders of the German sports shoe business 'Dassler Brothers' went their separate ways in 1949, no one would have guessed that they would start two of the biggest global brands of the century. Rudolph founded Puma, while Adolph started Adidas - a combination of his nickname, Adi, and the start of his last name. The famous three stripes were introduced to the shoes in 1949.
BATA
Bata was established on August 24, 1894 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia by Tomas Bata. The company first established itself in India in 1931 and commenced manufacturing shoes in Batanagar in 1936. The Batanagar factory is the first Indian shoe manufacturing unit to receive the ISO 9001 certification in 1993.
PORSCHE
In 1931, Ferdinand Porsche founded the Porsche Engineering Office in Stuttgart. Porsche's production operations are housed in a collection of established buildings on a mixed industrial estate in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. The Carrera GT and the Cayenne models are produced at the Porsche factory in Leipzig. In 1944, the engineering arm was moved from Stuttgart.
NIKE
Bill Bowerman, the legendary University of Oregon track & field coach, and Phil Knight, a University of Oregon business student and middle-distance runner under Bowerman, founded Nike. Nike, when it came into being in 1962, was known as Blue Ribbon Sports. Its first-year sales totaled $8,000. In 1972, BRS changed its name to Nike, named for the Greek winged goddess of victory.
REEBOK
In the 1890s, Joseph William Foster made some of the first known running shoes with spikes in them. By 1895, he was in business making shoes by hand for top runners; and before long his fledgling company, J.W. Foster and Sons, developed an international clientele of distinguished athletes. The family-owned business made the running shoes worn in the 1924 Summer Games by the athletes celebrated in the film Chariots of Fire. In 1958, two of the founder's grandsons started a companion company that came to be known as Reebok, named after an African gazelle.
SUN MICROSYSTEMS
The correct answer is Stanford University Network. In 1981, Bavarian-born Andreas Bechtolsheim was licensing rights to a computer he designed. Named Sun for Stanford University Network and using off-the-shelf parts, it was an affordable workstation for engineers and scientists. In that year, he met Vinod Khosla, who convinced him to form a company and expand. Khosla, Bechtolsheim and Scott McNeally, all Stanford MBAs, founded Sun in 1982.
HMV Dog
Nipper the dog was born in Bristol in Gloucester, England in 1884 and was so named because of his tendency to nip at visitors' legs. When his first master Mark Barraud died in Bristol in 1887, Nipper was taken to Liverpool in Lancashire, England by Mark's younger brother Francis, a painter. In Liverpool Nipper discovered the Phonograph, a cylinder recording and playing machine and Francis Barraud 'often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from.' Three years after Nipper died Francis committed that memory to canvas.
GM
General Motors Corp the world's largest vehicle manufacturer, employs about 325,000 people globally. Founded in 1908, GM has been the global automotive sales leader since 1931. GM today has manufacturing operations in 32 countries and its vehicles are sold in 192 countries. In 2003, GM sold nearly 8.6 million cars and trucks, about 15 percent of the global vehicle market. GM's global headquarters are at the GM Renaissance Center in Detroit. The GM Group of global partners includes Fiat Auto SpA of Italy, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., Isuzu Motors Ltd. and Suzuki Motor Corp. of Japan, which are involved in various product, powertrain and purchasing collaborations. In addition, GM is the largest shareholder in GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. of South Korea. GM also has technology collaborations with BMW AG of Germany.
TCS
TCS was founded in 1968 as an internal arm of the Tata conglomerate. The company - which has locations in 32 countries - employed some 30,000 workers at the end of 2003. Fakir Chand Kohli, former deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services, is universally regarded as the father of the Indian software industry. He has been instrumental in scripting the success story of company. Kohli has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of India's highest civilian honours, for his contribution to the Indian software industry. Kohli currently serves on the TCS' executive committee.
Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc has been known for generations as the maker of the best writing instruments the world has known. The German company, over the last couple of years, has expanded its range to include writing accessories, luxury leather goods and belts, jewellery items and even eye wear and watches. In India, the company is represented by Entrack, owned by former Test cricketer Dilip Doshi. Entrack is the sole distributor of Mont Blanc pens and has exclusive outlets in top five cities in India. The correct answer is Simplo FillerPen Company. The company was originally called Simplo FillerPen Company. The company expanded its presence to Paris, London, and Barcelona three years after it was founded and was present in most of the fashionable capitals of Europe. In 1934, the company's name was changed to Mont Blanc Simplo GmbH, after the tallest peak in Europe. Three Germans founded the company in 1906 -- Hamburg-based stationer Claus-Johannes Voss, Hamburg banker Christian Lausen and a Berlin engineer Wilhelm Dziambor. The company's international headquarter is in Hamburg.
DURACELL
The story of Duracell begins in the early 1920's with an inventive scientist named Samuel Ruben and an eager manufacturer of tungsten filament wire named Philip Rogers Mallory. Duracell is the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of high-performance alkaline batteries. Duracell also markets primary lithium and zinc air batteries as well as rechargeable nickel-metal hydride batteries.
AIR DECCAN
Bangalore-based Air Deccan has struck a deal with R K Laxman, India's most famous cartoonist, to use his legendary 'Common Man' character as the airline's mascot. The mascot exemplifies the fact that air fares are so low now that air travel is no longer the privilege of the elite few but is very much within the reach of the 'common people'
When the founders of the German sports shoe business 'Dassler Brothers' went their separate ways in 1949, no one would have guessed that they would start two of the biggest global brands of the century. Rudolph founded Puma, while Adolph started Adidas - a combination of his nickname, Adi, and the start of his last name. The famous three stripes were introduced to the shoes in 1949.
BATA
Bata was established on August 24, 1894 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia by Tomas Bata. The company first established itself in India in 1931 and commenced manufacturing shoes in Batanagar in 1936. The Batanagar factory is the first Indian shoe manufacturing unit to receive the ISO 9001 certification in 1993.
PORSCHE
In 1931, Ferdinand Porsche founded the Porsche Engineering Office in Stuttgart. Porsche's production operations are housed in a collection of established buildings on a mixed industrial estate in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. The Carrera GT and the Cayenne models are produced at the Porsche factory in Leipzig. In 1944, the engineering arm was moved from Stuttgart.
NIKE
Bill Bowerman, the legendary University of Oregon track & field coach, and Phil Knight, a University of Oregon business student and middle-distance runner under Bowerman, founded Nike. Nike, when it came into being in 1962, was known as Blue Ribbon Sports. Its first-year sales totaled $8,000. In 1972, BRS changed its name to Nike, named for the Greek winged goddess of victory.
REEBOK
In the 1890s, Joseph William Foster made some of the first known running shoes with spikes in them. By 1895, he was in business making shoes by hand for top runners; and before long his fledgling company, J.W. Foster and Sons, developed an international clientele of distinguished athletes. The family-owned business made the running shoes worn in the 1924 Summer Games by the athletes celebrated in the film Chariots of Fire. In 1958, two of the founder's grandsons started a companion company that came to be known as Reebok, named after an African gazelle.
SUN MICROSYSTEMS
The correct answer is Stanford University Network. In 1981, Bavarian-born Andreas Bechtolsheim was licensing rights to a computer he designed. Named Sun for Stanford University Network and using off-the-shelf parts, it was an affordable workstation for engineers and scientists. In that year, he met Vinod Khosla, who convinced him to form a company and expand. Khosla, Bechtolsheim and Scott McNeally, all Stanford MBAs, founded Sun in 1982.
HMV Dog
Nipper the dog was born in Bristol in Gloucester, England in 1884 and was so named because of his tendency to nip at visitors' legs. When his first master Mark Barraud died in Bristol in 1887, Nipper was taken to Liverpool in Lancashire, England by Mark's younger brother Francis, a painter. In Liverpool Nipper discovered the Phonograph, a cylinder recording and playing machine and Francis Barraud 'often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from.' Three years after Nipper died Francis committed that memory to canvas.
GM
General Motors Corp the world's largest vehicle manufacturer, employs about 325,000 people globally. Founded in 1908, GM has been the global automotive sales leader since 1931. GM today has manufacturing operations in 32 countries and its vehicles are sold in 192 countries. In 2003, GM sold nearly 8.6 million cars and trucks, about 15 percent of the global vehicle market. GM's global headquarters are at the GM Renaissance Center in Detroit. The GM Group of global partners includes Fiat Auto SpA of Italy, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., Isuzu Motors Ltd. and Suzuki Motor Corp. of Japan, which are involved in various product, powertrain and purchasing collaborations. In addition, GM is the largest shareholder in GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. of South Korea. GM also has technology collaborations with BMW AG of Germany.
TCS
TCS was founded in 1968 as an internal arm of the Tata conglomerate. The company - which has locations in 32 countries - employed some 30,000 workers at the end of 2003. Fakir Chand Kohli, former deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services, is universally regarded as the father of the Indian software industry. He has been instrumental in scripting the success story of company. Kohli has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of India's highest civilian honours, for his contribution to the Indian software industry. Kohli currently serves on the TCS' executive committee.
Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc has been known for generations as the maker of the best writing instruments the world has known. The German company, over the last couple of years, has expanded its range to include writing accessories, luxury leather goods and belts, jewellery items and even eye wear and watches. In India, the company is represented by Entrack, owned by former Test cricketer Dilip Doshi. Entrack is the sole distributor of Mont Blanc pens and has exclusive outlets in top five cities in India. The correct answer is Simplo FillerPen Company. The company was originally called Simplo FillerPen Company. The company expanded its presence to Paris, London, and Barcelona three years after it was founded and was present in most of the fashionable capitals of Europe. In 1934, the company's name was changed to Mont Blanc Simplo GmbH, after the tallest peak in Europe. Three Germans founded the company in 1906 -- Hamburg-based stationer Claus-Johannes Voss, Hamburg banker Christian Lausen and a Berlin engineer Wilhelm Dziambor. The company's international headquarter is in Hamburg.
DURACELL
The story of Duracell begins in the early 1920's with an inventive scientist named Samuel Ruben and an eager manufacturer of tungsten filament wire named Philip Rogers Mallory. Duracell is the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of high-performance alkaline batteries. Duracell also markets primary lithium and zinc air batteries as well as rechargeable nickel-metal hydride batteries.
AIR DECCAN
Bangalore-based Air Deccan has struck a deal with R K Laxman, India's most famous cartoonist, to use his legendary 'Common Man' character as the airline's mascot. The mascot exemplifies the fact that air fares are so low now that air travel is no longer the privilege of the elite few but is very much within the reach of the 'common people'
[Malaysia] ISA Found Guilty!
The New Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur
25 June 2005
ISA found guilty six-year suspension
Zubaidah Abu Bakar, Sheridan Mahavera and P. Sharmini
Federal Territories Minister and Umno vice-president Tan Sri Mohd Isa Abdul Samad was today suspended from the ruling party for six years for vote-buying.
He has 14 days to appeal the decision by the party’s disciplinary board. If his appeal fails, he will have to resign from the Cabinet and will become the most senior Umno politician to be found guilty of political corruption.
The board also suspended his political secretary Salim Sharif for three years for acting as his agent. The New Straits Times understands that the board’s decision will be made public at a news conference on Monday.
When contacted tonight, Isa said: "I do not know. You know more than I do. So I leave it to you to write whatever you want to write because you know more."
Meanwhile, speaking to reporters at Isa's Si Rusa residence in Port Dickson, Salim said the Federal Territories Minister was found guilty of five out of the nine charges.
He said he received the three-page letter informing them of the suspension today. It was signed by board chairman Tan Sri Tengku Ahmad Rithauddeen Tengku Ismail.
Salim said he and Isa, who appeared before the board to answer the charges yesterday, were saddened and also surprised that a guilty verdict was arrived at less than 24 hours later.
"We are going to appeal, either on Monday or Tuesday," he said.
Isa faced seven charges of vote-buying, including three of bribing delegates, to win an Umno vice-presidency during last September's party polls.
He garnered the highest number of votes in the contest for the three posts of vice-president.
He also faced two other charges of organising gatherings for delegates who would cast their votes in the party's polls, a practice prohibited under Umno’s Code of Ethics.
The nine offences were allegedly committed last September at Isa’s home State of Negri Sembilan and in Kuala Lumpur, Pahang, Sabah and Kedah.
He was charged following reports by more than 30 people. All the complainants were granted immunity by the disciplinary board.
Seven Umno leaders vied for the three vice-presidential positions with Isa emerging the clear leader with 1,507 votes.
His nearest rival, Malacca Chief Minister Datuk Mohd Ali Rustam, obtained 1,329 votes.
------------------------
The Star, Kuala Lumpur
26 June 2005
Saying "no" to money politics
A top Umno vice-president found guilty of vote buying and the on-going debate about party election reform suggest that Umno is quite serious about stamping out money politics in the party, writes JOCELINE TAN.
ONLY the crown of Tan Sri Mohd Isa Abdul Samad's head could be seen as media people swamped him the moment he emerged from his hearing before the Umno disciplinary board.
In the media frenzy, his aides and security officers at the Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) had to form a human cordon around the pint-sized Umno vice-president as he inched his way toward his black Perdana Executive.
He was the first really big name to be called before the disciplinary board, hence the heightened media interest.
Isa, dressed in a 60s-style beige, checked suit and yellow tie, tried to smile but he looked tensed and tired, as though he had not been sleeping well.
The usually loquacious politician was not taking any questions from the press. He had just spent two hours before the board answering to charges of misconduct and money politics during the Umno elections last year.
Isa, who is also Federal Territories Minister, had good reason to be worried.
The next day, barely 28 hours after he left the PWTC, the board notified him of his six-year suspension.
The man who made history in 1982 when he became Negri Sembilan's youngest Mentri Besar was now making history as the highest-ranking party official nailed for money politics and campaign misconduct. Isa intends to appeal but he is also staring a very possible end to his 27-year political career, 22 of which was spent as Negri Sembilan Mentri Besar
The last few months have found Umno tackling the money politics issue in a way not seen before.
A great deal of this has been as a result of the relatively free hand given to the disciplinary board headed by Umno veteran Tengku Ahmad Rithauddeen.
The Umno rank and file has been clamouring for tighter rules against money politics particularly after the last party polls. People complained that only the "small fish" had been netted.
Why, they had asked, is the "big fish" still swimming when the money had flowed most freely during the campaign in the contests for the supreme council and vice-presidents’ posts.
Yet, strangely enough, there has been no baying for Isa's blood. Instead, there was a discernible wave of sympathy from among Umno members for this top vice-president.
There are a few reasons for this.
First: The fact that Isa has been the only big name fingered and his hardcore supporters are naturally prone to ask why he is being singled out.
Second: The lightning speed of the board’s decision. It raised eyebrows in Umno.
Third: Isa is known for his grassroots ties and oratory. He may be short and ordinary-looking, but his wit and deft touch as an orator are quite unrivalled and he always finds a captive audience when he speaks at the Umno general assembly.
Fourth: He is also going through some personal crisis. His wife, Puan Sri Hazizah Tumin, is quite ill. She had been recovering from glandular cancer for some years but the disease is said to have recently spread to a vital organ.
She was being treated in Bangkok where he had been spending time with her.
The Malay cultural trait of "kesian" or compassion cannot be underestimated and many party members have empathy with him.
There was muted reaction to Isa's dilemma even in Johor, where Umno politicians have been vocal over proposals for election reform in the party.
"I don’t know what to say. I was one of those who said they should go for the big and small fish but I felt quite sad for Tan Sri Isa," said one Johor politician.
Isa’s case has set a precedent in the party.
It is never easy to act against one’s own party member. That such a high-ranking party official has been called in for alleged vote-buying shows how serious Umno seems to be about the problem of money politics.
At another level, Umno is now mulling over reforms to its election system, the primary aim being to stamp out money politics.
Umno vice-president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, who heads the party’s rules and constitution committee, has come up with several scenarios on changes to the election process and code of ethics.
Basically, Muhyiddin's proposals involved broadening the voter base to varying degrees – from an option where all three million members are allowed to vote to one where elections are held at state level.
The current system has only about 2,000 delegates deciding on the national leadership once every three years. The proposals are still at the discussion stage but Johor Umno recently caused a stir when several of its key politicians rejected the proposals. Apparently, the Johor discussion on the above proposals took place at a state party meeting. Several Johor leaders, including three ministers, spoke up and they were generally not in favour of the proposals.
They were not convinced that "bringing the vote to the ground," as the outspoken Datuk Mohamed Aziz put it, would reduce the clout of corrupt candidates vying for positions.
"Our argument is simple. You bring the vote down to the grassroots and you are also bringing money politics nearer to the ground," said Mohamed, who is Sri Gading MP and one of Johor’s most senior politicians.
The southern objection stunned many in the party especially since several other states like Pahang, Penang and Perlis had backed the proposals. The Johor stand was quickly interpreted as personal politics, even warlord politics.
The implication was that Mentri Besar Datuk Ghani Othman was playing politics since it is well known that he and Muhyiddin are not exactly political buddies.
"That’s nonsense. We spoke up because we did not think the proposals were practical. It had nothing to do with state politics," said Mohamed. To be fair to Ghani, the issue was not even on the meeting’s agenda. Neither did he take part in the discussion.
"I was just a listener. I did not express any opinion," said Ghani. The final Johor stand will probably come at the annual Johor Umno convention on July 9, the party’s annual prelude to the Umno general assembly.
Three papers will be presented at the convention, including one on "Politics" by no less than Johor Baru MP Datuk Shahrir Samad. He is also expected to dwell on reform concerning money politics.
But why has there been so much fuss over the southern stand?
For a start, it is the only state to have discussed Muhyiddin’s proposals in a formal setting. Elsewhere, it has been mainly the state Umno chiefs expressing their opinion.
Besides, Johor is the undisputed bastion of Umno. Its members are among the most rational and sophisticated in the country and its leaders feel that the burden of cleaning up the party rests heavily on their shoulders. "The crux of the problem lies in enforcement, in controlling the candidates rather than the delegates," said Ghani.
And, as Umno Youth chief Datuk Hishammuddin Hussein Onn said, rules and regulations work to a certain extent but the long-term solution lies in a change of attitude among members about election, leadership and politics.
25 June 2005
ISA found guilty six-year suspension
Zubaidah Abu Bakar, Sheridan Mahavera and P. Sharmini
Federal Territories Minister and Umno vice-president Tan Sri Mohd Isa Abdul Samad was today suspended from the ruling party for six years for vote-buying.
He has 14 days to appeal the decision by the party’s disciplinary board. If his appeal fails, he will have to resign from the Cabinet and will become the most senior Umno politician to be found guilty of political corruption.
The board also suspended his political secretary Salim Sharif for three years for acting as his agent. The New Straits Times understands that the board’s decision will be made public at a news conference on Monday.
When contacted tonight, Isa said: "I do not know. You know more than I do. So I leave it to you to write whatever you want to write because you know more."
Meanwhile, speaking to reporters at Isa's Si Rusa residence in Port Dickson, Salim said the Federal Territories Minister was found guilty of five out of the nine charges.
He said he received the three-page letter informing them of the suspension today. It was signed by board chairman Tan Sri Tengku Ahmad Rithauddeen Tengku Ismail.
Salim said he and Isa, who appeared before the board to answer the charges yesterday, were saddened and also surprised that a guilty verdict was arrived at less than 24 hours later.
"We are going to appeal, either on Monday or Tuesday," he said.
Isa faced seven charges of vote-buying, including three of bribing delegates, to win an Umno vice-presidency during last September's party polls.
He garnered the highest number of votes in the contest for the three posts of vice-president.
He also faced two other charges of organising gatherings for delegates who would cast their votes in the party's polls, a practice prohibited under Umno’s Code of Ethics.
The nine offences were allegedly committed last September at Isa’s home State of Negri Sembilan and in Kuala Lumpur, Pahang, Sabah and Kedah.
He was charged following reports by more than 30 people. All the complainants were granted immunity by the disciplinary board.
Seven Umno leaders vied for the three vice-presidential positions with Isa emerging the clear leader with 1,507 votes.
His nearest rival, Malacca Chief Minister Datuk Mohd Ali Rustam, obtained 1,329 votes.
------------------------
The Star, Kuala Lumpur
26 June 2005
Saying "no" to money politics
A top Umno vice-president found guilty of vote buying and the on-going debate about party election reform suggest that Umno is quite serious about stamping out money politics in the party, writes JOCELINE TAN.
ONLY the crown of Tan Sri Mohd Isa Abdul Samad's head could be seen as media people swamped him the moment he emerged from his hearing before the Umno disciplinary board.
In the media frenzy, his aides and security officers at the Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) had to form a human cordon around the pint-sized Umno vice-president as he inched his way toward his black Perdana Executive.
He was the first really big name to be called before the disciplinary board, hence the heightened media interest.
Isa, dressed in a 60s-style beige, checked suit and yellow tie, tried to smile but he looked tensed and tired, as though he had not been sleeping well.
The usually loquacious politician was not taking any questions from the press. He had just spent two hours before the board answering to charges of misconduct and money politics during the Umno elections last year.
Isa, who is also Federal Territories Minister, had good reason to be worried.
The next day, barely 28 hours after he left the PWTC, the board notified him of his six-year suspension.
The man who made history in 1982 when he became Negri Sembilan's youngest Mentri Besar was now making history as the highest-ranking party official nailed for money politics and campaign misconduct. Isa intends to appeal but he is also staring a very possible end to his 27-year political career, 22 of which was spent as Negri Sembilan Mentri Besar
The last few months have found Umno tackling the money politics issue in a way not seen before.
A great deal of this has been as a result of the relatively free hand given to the disciplinary board headed by Umno veteran Tengku Ahmad Rithauddeen.
The Umno rank and file has been clamouring for tighter rules against money politics particularly after the last party polls. People complained that only the "small fish" had been netted.
Why, they had asked, is the "big fish" still swimming when the money had flowed most freely during the campaign in the contests for the supreme council and vice-presidents’ posts.
Yet, strangely enough, there has been no baying for Isa's blood. Instead, there was a discernible wave of sympathy from among Umno members for this top vice-president.
There are a few reasons for this.
First: The fact that Isa has been the only big name fingered and his hardcore supporters are naturally prone to ask why he is being singled out.
Second: The lightning speed of the board’s decision. It raised eyebrows in Umno.
Third: Isa is known for his grassroots ties and oratory. He may be short and ordinary-looking, but his wit and deft touch as an orator are quite unrivalled and he always finds a captive audience when he speaks at the Umno general assembly.
Fourth: He is also going through some personal crisis. His wife, Puan Sri Hazizah Tumin, is quite ill. She had been recovering from glandular cancer for some years but the disease is said to have recently spread to a vital organ.
She was being treated in Bangkok where he had been spending time with her.
The Malay cultural trait of "kesian" or compassion cannot be underestimated and many party members have empathy with him.
There was muted reaction to Isa's dilemma even in Johor, where Umno politicians have been vocal over proposals for election reform in the party.
"I don’t know what to say. I was one of those who said they should go for the big and small fish but I felt quite sad for Tan Sri Isa," said one Johor politician.
Isa’s case has set a precedent in the party.
It is never easy to act against one’s own party member. That such a high-ranking party official has been called in for alleged vote-buying shows how serious Umno seems to be about the problem of money politics.
At another level, Umno is now mulling over reforms to its election system, the primary aim being to stamp out money politics.
Umno vice-president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, who heads the party’s rules and constitution committee, has come up with several scenarios on changes to the election process and code of ethics.
Basically, Muhyiddin's proposals involved broadening the voter base to varying degrees – from an option where all three million members are allowed to vote to one where elections are held at state level.
The current system has only about 2,000 delegates deciding on the national leadership once every three years. The proposals are still at the discussion stage but Johor Umno recently caused a stir when several of its key politicians rejected the proposals. Apparently, the Johor discussion on the above proposals took place at a state party meeting. Several Johor leaders, including three ministers, spoke up and they were generally not in favour of the proposals.
They were not convinced that "bringing the vote to the ground," as the outspoken Datuk Mohamed Aziz put it, would reduce the clout of corrupt candidates vying for positions.
"Our argument is simple. You bring the vote down to the grassroots and you are also bringing money politics nearer to the ground," said Mohamed, who is Sri Gading MP and one of Johor’s most senior politicians.
The southern objection stunned many in the party especially since several other states like Pahang, Penang and Perlis had backed the proposals. The Johor stand was quickly interpreted as personal politics, even warlord politics.
The implication was that Mentri Besar Datuk Ghani Othman was playing politics since it is well known that he and Muhyiddin are not exactly political buddies.
"That’s nonsense. We spoke up because we did not think the proposals were practical. It had nothing to do with state politics," said Mohamed. To be fair to Ghani, the issue was not even on the meeting’s agenda. Neither did he take part in the discussion.
"I was just a listener. I did not express any opinion," said Ghani. The final Johor stand will probably come at the annual Johor Umno convention on July 9, the party’s annual prelude to the Umno general assembly.
Three papers will be presented at the convention, including one on "Politics" by no less than Johor Baru MP Datuk Shahrir Samad. He is also expected to dwell on reform concerning money politics.
But why has there been so much fuss over the southern stand?
For a start, it is the only state to have discussed Muhyiddin’s proposals in a formal setting. Elsewhere, it has been mainly the state Umno chiefs expressing their opinion.
Besides, Johor is the undisputed bastion of Umno. Its members are among the most rational and sophisticated in the country and its leaders feel that the burden of cleaning up the party rests heavily on their shoulders. "The crux of the problem lies in enforcement, in controlling the candidates rather than the delegates," said Ghani.
And, as Umno Youth chief Datuk Hishammuddin Hussein Onn said, rules and regulations work to a certain extent but the long-term solution lies in a change of attitude among members about election, leadership and politics.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
[Malaysia] Pelihara Anjing Bukan Budaya Cina
Pelihara anjing bukan budaya orang Cina, kata AJK bantahan
Jun 24, 05 Malaysiakini
Jawatankuasa Sementara Gerakan Membantah Gangguan Anjing Jiran Semenanjung Malaysia menyangkal dakwaan sesetengah pihak kononnya memelihara anjing satu budaya masyarakat Cina.
"Kalau ia budaya Cina, kenapa kerajaan Republik China sendiri mengharamkan pemeliharaan anjing di kawasan bandaraya Beijing, manakala anjing yang hendak dipelihara di Shanghai diwajibkan melalui proses pembedahan kotak suara," kata pengerusi jawatankuasa itu yang hanya mahu dikenali sebagai Low kepada Bernama.
Malah, menurut beliau, di Singapura mereka yang memelihara anjing dan tidak menjaganya dengan baik sehingga menganggu ketenteraman jiran boleh dikenakan denda sebanyak SD2,500.
Menurut Low, memelihara anjing tidak lebih daripada pilihan individu, maka atas sebab itulah anjing turut dipelihara sejak zaman berzaman di kalangan orang barat dan Eropah.
Sehubungan itu, beliau mengulangi desakan agar semua kerajaan tempatan di negara ini melaksanakan dengan tegas Akta Pemeliharaan Anjing untuk mengelakkan anjing menjadi haiwan pengganggu atau pengancam kepada manusia serta membantut usaha meningkatkan integrasi, perpaduan dan keharmonian kaum di negara ini.
Low menganggap anjing sebagai pengganggu kerana salakannya yang tidak mengira masa, lebih-lebih lagi pada musim mengawan, boleh mengganggu ketenangan jiran khususnya anak mereka yang sedang menelaah buku untuk menghadapi peperiksaan atau menyiapkan kerja harian sekolah.
Daripada segi ancaman pula, katanya, anjing bukan saja sering kali menyerang, mencedera dan kadang kala menyebabkan kematian manusia, tetapi turut menyebar kuman pembawa penyakit yang sangat berbahaya, menerusi sejenis virus yang amat sukar dihapus.
Kutu bawa virus
Dalam konteks itu, Low mengangkat tabik kepada Nabi Muhammad S.A.W yang telah mengharamkan umat Islam menyentuh atau memelihara anjing tanpa sebab yang munasabah, atas alasan ia punca sejenis penyakit kerana terdapat kutu yang membawa sejenis virus yang amat berbahaya pada tubuh haiwan itu.
Kebimbangan Nabi Muhammad itu terbukti dengan beberapa kes yang pernah berlaku termasuk yang terbaru di Xinjiang, China di mana dua beradik berumur 12 dan 18 tahun yang memelihara anjing sejak kecil menderita sakit tulang belakang dan kini lumpuh.
"Apabila dibawa ke hospital untuk menjalani rawatan, doktor telah mengesan sejenis cacing (Dipylidium Caninum) yang virusnya disebar oleh kutu anjing, pada bahagian tulang belakang mereka," katanya.
Selain itu, di Canton, beberapa bayi mendapat penyakit sawan gila babi kerana terdedah kepada bunyi salakan anjing yang berterusan semasa masih berada dalam kandungan.
"Sebenarnya Nabi Muhammad lebih pintar daripada sesetengah saintis moden termasuk Einstein kerana telah hampir 1,500 tahun mengetahui tentang bahana yang boleh tercetus daripada pemeliharaan anjing," katanya. Sehubungan itu beliau menggesa pemeliharaan semua baka anjing di negara ini didaftar dan dikawal melalui peruntukan akta berkenaan, dan anjing yang tidak dikawal mestilah ditangkap atau dihapuskan, manakala pemiliknya dikenakan hukuman.
Katanya, kerajaan tempatan lain patut mencontohi Majlis Perbandaran Shah Alam yang mewajibkan sesiapa yang ingin memelihara anjing terlebih dahulu mendapat persetujuan jiran, terutama yang tinggal di hadapan, belakang, kiri dan kanan kediaman masing-masing sebelum diberikan permit pemeliharaan.
Tempatkan dalam rumah
Menurut Low, peraturan pemeliharaan anjing bukanlah satu perkara baru kerana di negara lain juga sudah mempunyai peraturan yang ketat berhubung dengannya.
Low berkata gerakannya bukan menghalang masyarakat daripada memelihara anjing tetapi pemeliharanya mestilah menghormati perasaan dan sensitiviti jiran. Menurutnya, bayaran untuk permit memelihara anjing juga mestilah dinaikkan bagi memastikan tuan punya mampu menyelenggara anjing berkenaan serta lebih bertanggungjawab.
Selain itu, anjing perlu ditempatkan dalam rumah anjing yang kebal bunyi dan tidak boleh dibiarkan merayau keluar dari kawasan rumah, dipasang dengan simpai mulut dan jangan dibiarkan membuang najis di tempat awam.
"Kenapa kita perlu bermusuh dengan jiran hanya kerana mahu memelihara anjing dan kenapa mesti kita mengutamakan hak binatang dan memandang ringan hak manusia," katanya. Low mendakwa kempen yang dijalankan oleh jawatankuasa berkenaan telah menyebabkan beberapa pihak tidak berpuas hati sehingga beliau sendiri pernah menerima ancaman bunuh daripada beberapa individu yang tidak dikenali.
Beliau gembira kerana kempen di kalangan pemelihara anjing yang dijalankan itu telah memberi kesan yang positif. Misalnya, kini terdapat hanya kira-kira 50 ekor anjing peliharaan di kawasan Selayang Baru, dekat sini, yang mempunyai kira-kira 50,000 kediaman, termasuk kira-kira 4,000 yang didiami masyarakat Cina.
Jun 24, 05 Malaysiakini
Jawatankuasa Sementara Gerakan Membantah Gangguan Anjing Jiran Semenanjung Malaysia menyangkal dakwaan sesetengah pihak kononnya memelihara anjing satu budaya masyarakat Cina.
"Kalau ia budaya Cina, kenapa kerajaan Republik China sendiri mengharamkan pemeliharaan anjing di kawasan bandaraya Beijing, manakala anjing yang hendak dipelihara di Shanghai diwajibkan melalui proses pembedahan kotak suara," kata pengerusi jawatankuasa itu yang hanya mahu dikenali sebagai Low kepada Bernama.
Malah, menurut beliau, di Singapura mereka yang memelihara anjing dan tidak menjaganya dengan baik sehingga menganggu ketenteraman jiran boleh dikenakan denda sebanyak SD2,500.
Menurut Low, memelihara anjing tidak lebih daripada pilihan individu, maka atas sebab itulah anjing turut dipelihara sejak zaman berzaman di kalangan orang barat dan Eropah.
Sehubungan itu, beliau mengulangi desakan agar semua kerajaan tempatan di negara ini melaksanakan dengan tegas Akta Pemeliharaan Anjing untuk mengelakkan anjing menjadi haiwan pengganggu atau pengancam kepada manusia serta membantut usaha meningkatkan integrasi, perpaduan dan keharmonian kaum di negara ini.
Low menganggap anjing sebagai pengganggu kerana salakannya yang tidak mengira masa, lebih-lebih lagi pada musim mengawan, boleh mengganggu ketenangan jiran khususnya anak mereka yang sedang menelaah buku untuk menghadapi peperiksaan atau menyiapkan kerja harian sekolah.
Daripada segi ancaman pula, katanya, anjing bukan saja sering kali menyerang, mencedera dan kadang kala menyebabkan kematian manusia, tetapi turut menyebar kuman pembawa penyakit yang sangat berbahaya, menerusi sejenis virus yang amat sukar dihapus.
Kutu bawa virus
Dalam konteks itu, Low mengangkat tabik kepada Nabi Muhammad S.A.W yang telah mengharamkan umat Islam menyentuh atau memelihara anjing tanpa sebab yang munasabah, atas alasan ia punca sejenis penyakit kerana terdapat kutu yang membawa sejenis virus yang amat berbahaya pada tubuh haiwan itu.
Kebimbangan Nabi Muhammad itu terbukti dengan beberapa kes yang pernah berlaku termasuk yang terbaru di Xinjiang, China di mana dua beradik berumur 12 dan 18 tahun yang memelihara anjing sejak kecil menderita sakit tulang belakang dan kini lumpuh.
"Apabila dibawa ke hospital untuk menjalani rawatan, doktor telah mengesan sejenis cacing (Dipylidium Caninum) yang virusnya disebar oleh kutu anjing, pada bahagian tulang belakang mereka," katanya.
Selain itu, di Canton, beberapa bayi mendapat penyakit sawan gila babi kerana terdedah kepada bunyi salakan anjing yang berterusan semasa masih berada dalam kandungan.
"Sebenarnya Nabi Muhammad lebih pintar daripada sesetengah saintis moden termasuk Einstein kerana telah hampir 1,500 tahun mengetahui tentang bahana yang boleh tercetus daripada pemeliharaan anjing," katanya. Sehubungan itu beliau menggesa pemeliharaan semua baka anjing di negara ini didaftar dan dikawal melalui peruntukan akta berkenaan, dan anjing yang tidak dikawal mestilah ditangkap atau dihapuskan, manakala pemiliknya dikenakan hukuman.
Katanya, kerajaan tempatan lain patut mencontohi Majlis Perbandaran Shah Alam yang mewajibkan sesiapa yang ingin memelihara anjing terlebih dahulu mendapat persetujuan jiran, terutama yang tinggal di hadapan, belakang, kiri dan kanan kediaman masing-masing sebelum diberikan permit pemeliharaan.
Tempatkan dalam rumah
Menurut Low, peraturan pemeliharaan anjing bukanlah satu perkara baru kerana di negara lain juga sudah mempunyai peraturan yang ketat berhubung dengannya.
Low berkata gerakannya bukan menghalang masyarakat daripada memelihara anjing tetapi pemeliharanya mestilah menghormati perasaan dan sensitiviti jiran. Menurutnya, bayaran untuk permit memelihara anjing juga mestilah dinaikkan bagi memastikan tuan punya mampu menyelenggara anjing berkenaan serta lebih bertanggungjawab.
Selain itu, anjing perlu ditempatkan dalam rumah anjing yang kebal bunyi dan tidak boleh dibiarkan merayau keluar dari kawasan rumah, dipasang dengan simpai mulut dan jangan dibiarkan membuang najis di tempat awam.
"Kenapa kita perlu bermusuh dengan jiran hanya kerana mahu memelihara anjing dan kenapa mesti kita mengutamakan hak binatang dan memandang ringan hak manusia," katanya. Low mendakwa kempen yang dijalankan oleh jawatankuasa berkenaan telah menyebabkan beberapa pihak tidak berpuas hati sehingga beliau sendiri pernah menerima ancaman bunuh daripada beberapa individu yang tidak dikenali.
Beliau gembira kerana kempen di kalangan pemelihara anjing yang dijalankan itu telah memberi kesan yang positif. Misalnya, kini terdapat hanya kira-kira 50 ekor anjing peliharaan di kawasan Selayang Baru, dekat sini, yang mempunyai kira-kira 50,000 kediaman, termasuk kira-kira 4,000 yang didiami masyarakat Cina.
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