Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Apr 20)

Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Sun Aug 27, 2017 1:29 pm

bnm-forex-scandal-investigation-reveals-unreported-rm315-bil-trading-losses
https://www.theedgesingapore.com/bnm-fo ... ing-losses
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Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Mon Sep 04, 2017 2:20 pm

M’sia to recoup millions: RM10 tourism tax per room per night from Sept. 1, 2017
https://mothership.sg/2017/09/msia-to-r ... pt-1-2017/
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Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:24 pm

Johor policeman removed from duty after allegedly being caught “flirting” with woman
https://mothership.sg/2017/10/johor-pol ... ith-woman/
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Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:54 pm

Worried about religious divide, Malaysia’s monarchs make rare collective call for greater tolerance and respect
https://mothership.sg/2017/10/worried-a ... d-respect/
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Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Thu Oct 19, 2017 6:54 pm

Najib doesn’t have GE14 in the bag
http://www.newmandala.org/najib-doesnt-ge14-bag/
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Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Sun Nov 12, 2017 8:35 pm

Eyes on the prize

Malaysia’s prime minister will call an election soon

Despite being implicated in embezzlement, he may well win


THE opposition, naturally, has been making hay out of the goings-on at 1MDB, a Malaysian state-owned investment fund. Over the past few months it took a road show, complete with snazzy slides on shell companies and international transfers, to rural areas to explain how almost $4bn of taxpayers’ money was siphoned out of the firm—quite a lot of it, American investigators say, by Najib Razak, the prime minister.

But in the two years since the scandal first broke, Mr Najib (pictured) has worked assiduously to bury it, while purging opponents and distracting voters. He now looks ready to call—and win—an election.

Mr Najib does not dispute that roughly $700m entered his personal bank accounts shortly before the previous election, in 2013. But he says it was a gift from an unnamed Saudi royal, and that most of it was returned. (The donor, Mr Najib’s allies say, was Prince Turki bin Abdullah, who was recently arrested for alleged corruption.) America’s Justice Department, however, says the money was looted from 1MDB.

America, Switzerland and Singapore have conducted investigations into 1MDB. In theory, Malaysia has too. But the only person convicted in Malaysia in relation to the scandal is an opposition politician who leaked parts of the auditor-general’s investigation because the government declared it an official secret.

Mr Najib fired the attorney-general for pursuing the matter, and then other senior members of his party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), when they protested.

Although prosecutors show no interest in the billions stolen from 1MDB, they are always on the lookout for misdeeds by the opposition. Anwar Ibrahim, a leader of Pakatan Harapan (PH), an opposition coalition, has been put behind bars for sodomy (a crime in Malaysia), on flimsy evidence.

Later this month the government will oppose a suit calling for his release. Meanwhile another senior figure in PH, Lim Guan Eng, the chief minister of the state of Penang, conveniently faces two sets of corruption charges (he is accused of buying a house at an artificially low price).

Two leaders of an opposition party in the state of Sabah, set up by a former vice-president of UMNO sacked as a minister for complaining about 1MDB, have also been scooped up in a recent corruption probe.

Piety before propriety

Meanwhile UMNO has positioned itself as the defender of Islam, the faith of the Malay majority. This worries ethnic-Chinese and -Indian voters, the largest minority groups. Mr Najib is courting a conservative Islamic party as a possible new member of his ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional. It supports public caning and other harsh punishments.

When a launderette in the state of Johor put up a sign in September that read “For Muslim customers only”, Mr Najib, the head of a multi-ethnic coalition, kept mum. Instead, the local sultan, who is the head of the Muslim faith in the state, rebuked the owners for discriminating against minorities.

Last month he and the country’s eight other sultans, who take it in turns to serve as head of state, released an unusual statement deploring growing Muslim intolerance as “beyond all acceptable standards of decency”.

Gerrymandering will also help Mr Najib. At the last election, although the opposition won 51% of the vote, it secured only 40% of the 222 seats in parliament. The election commission, with government-appointed members, has proposed boundaries for the next contest which will see even more of those who usually vote for the opposition, such as the ethnic-Chinese, crammed into huge constituencies, many of them urban.

In practice this means their votes count for less than those of Malays in sparsely populated rural constituencies, who tend to favour UMNO. The state of Selangor, controlled by an opposition party, has challenged the new boundaries; a decision in the past week by the federal court allows them to stand everywhere else.

Mr Najib is also showering voters with cash. The 280bn ringgit ($66bn) budget for 2018, announced late last month, cuts taxes for more than 2m people. It also provides bonuses to some 1.6m civil servants which will be paid in two instalments—the first in January and the second in June—with the election likely to fall between the two. Billions will be set aside for rural infrastructure, too.

Not everything is going the prime minister’s way. The PH coalition has been boosted by the inclusion of a new party, Bersatu, founded by Mahathir Mohamad, a former prime minister and head of UMNO for more than two decades. It signed up around 200,000 members in just a few months.

Confronted with a strengthening opposition, Mr Najib might choose to hold the election sooner, rather than later. But a vote in the next two months would probably coincide with seasonal flooding in rural areas, which might both suppress the vote and make the voters who do turn out irritable.

A short delay could avoid this. But the prime minister will not want to wait for long, given that Mr Anwar may walk free as early as April. The sweet spot may come after Chinese New Year in February. For those opposed to Mr Najib, however, the outcome may be bitter.


Source: The Economist
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Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Mon Dec 04, 2017 9:01 pm

ISEAS Johor survey: Malays becoming more conservative, reflects growing importance of religion in Malaysian politics
https://mothership.sg/2017/11/iseas-joh ... -religion/
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Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Sun Mar 11, 2018 2:49 pm

American officials say he already stole millions from taxpayers


IN MOST countries a government that allowed $4.5bn to go missing from a state development agency would struggle to win re-election. If some $681m had appeared in the prime minister’s personal account around the same time, which he breezily explained away as a gift from an unnamed admirer, the task would be all the harder.

An apparent cover-up, involving the dismissal of officials investigating or merely complaining about the scandal, might be the last straw for voters. But in Malaysian elections, alas, voters do not count for much.

Under any reasonable electoral system, the coalition running Malaysia would not be in office in the first place. The Barisan Nasional, as it is known, barely squeaked back into power at the most recent election, in 2013.

It lost the popular vote, earning only 47% to the opposition’s 51%. But thanks to the shamelessly biased drawing of the constituencies, that was enough to secure it 60% of the 222 seats in parliament.

This ill-deserved victory, however, occurred before news broke of the looting of 1MDB, a development agency whose board of advisers was chaired by the prime minister, Najib Razak. America’s Justice Department has accused him and his stepson, among others, of siphoning money out of 1MDB through an elaborate series of fraudulent transactions.

Much of the money went on luxuries, it says, including paintings by Picasso and Monet, a private jet, diamond necklaces, a penthouse in Manhattan and a gambling spree in Las Vegas. In February Indonesia seized a $250m yacht that the Americans say was bought with Malaysian taxpayers’ money. Authorities in Switzerland and Singapore have also been investigating.

Mr Najib denies any wrongdoing—and of course he has loyal supporters. But his administration has not tried very hard to clear things up. Only one person has been charged in connection with the missing billions: an opposition politician who leaked details of the official investigation after the government had refused to make it public.

All this is unlikely to have improved Mr Najib’s standing with voters. Yet an election must be held by August. Faced with the risk of losing power, the government is rigging the system even more brazenly. Parliament will soon vote on new constituency boundaries. The proposed map almost guarantees Mr Najib another term, despite his appalling record.

How to rig an election

One trick is gerrymandering, drawing constituency boundaries so that lots of opposition voters are packed into a few seats, while ruling-party supporters form a narrow majority in a larger number. Lots of this goes on in Malaysia, as elsewhere: the new boundaries put two opposition bastions in the state of Perak into the same seat.

Gerrymandering is made even easier by another electoral abuse called malapportionment. This involves creating districts of uneven populations, so that those which support the opposition are much bigger than those that back the government. That means, in effect, that it takes many more votes to elect an opposition MP than it does a government one.

The practice is so unfair that it is illegal in most countries, including Malaysia, where the constitution says that electoral districts must be “approximately equal” in size.

Nonetheless, the constituencies in the maps proposed by the government-appointed election commission range in size from 18,000 voters to 146,000 (see article). The Barisan Nasional controls all the 15 smallest districts; 14 of the 15 biggest ones are in the hands of the opposition. The average Barisan seat has 30,000 fewer voters than the average opposition one. And this is the election commission’s second go at the maps—the first lot were even more lopsided.

Unfortunately, the electoral boundaries are not the only way in which the system is stacked against the opposition. The media are supine. The police and the courts seem more interested in allegations of minor offences by opposition figures than they are in the blatant bilking of the taxpayer over 1MDB and the open violation of the constitution at the election commission. The latest budget seems intended to buy the loyalty of civil servants, by promising a special bonus to be disbursed just after the likely date of the election.

But these biases, as bad as they are, are not the same as fiddling constituencies. As long as the electoral system is fair, Malaysians will be able to judge the government and vote accordingly. But a rigged system will rob their votes of meaning. That is the point, of course.

Mr Najib may be venal, but he is not stupid. He fears that most voters would not return him to office if given a choice, so he is taking their choice away.

Source: The Economist
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Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 17)

Postby behappyalways » Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:04 pm

The (re)making of Malaysia and its fabulous 1963 promise
https://www.newmandala.org/remaking-mal ... 3-promise/
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Re: Malaysia 04 (Jun 16 - Dec 18)

Postby behappyalways » Tue Apr 10, 2018 7:28 pm

M’sia’s Polling Day falls on a weekday, voters might need to take leave
https://mothership.sg/2018/04/malaysian ... ay-9-2018/
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