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Gifts of hearts
TWO THINGS STRUCK ME when I read of the donations of hearts for a 14
year old girl. The first is that, contrary to Bell
curve advocates down in Singapore,
the successful operations demonstrate that the Malays are not inherently
stupid as they claim. The highly skilled and tiring job was done by Malay
surgeons.
I once visited an acquaintance of mine who was a third class patient, a
Chinese educated man working in a factory, who was seriously ill and was
saved by doctors who had him moved from BM to George Town for an immediate
operation that saved his life. On the eve of the operation several doctors
(one of whom was the anaesthetist ) introduced themselves to him to tell him
not to be afraid. After the operation, two or three of them again visited him
to ask him if he was o.k. The astonished and delighted man told me that he
had changed his mind about the Malays. He was even more convinced of
the superiority of their culture when he was roughly treated by the
Chinese nurse who made it loud and clear that attending 3rd class patients
was below her dignity. He was overwhelmed by the courtesy of the Malay nurses
who talked to him as if addressing an elder brother, even though his Malay
was primitive.
The other was that the parents who gave her their son's heart for the first
transplant were Malays. It was an impressive demonstration that the
people, contrary to British propaganda, are basically at peace with one
another. It is the politicians who create "animosities" for
their evil ends, something that Walter Scott noticed way back in 1817.
Of the perceived differences between the English and Scottish people,
he wrote: "Such seeds of national dislike remained between the two
countries, the natural consequences of their existence as separate and rival
states. We have seen recently the breath of a demagogue blow these
sparks into a temporary flame, which I sincerely hope is now extinguished in
its own ashes."
Can't trust the police ?
One would have thought that the police should be left alone to get to the
bottom of the Lingam tape but, no, the government has instead appointed
a committee of three - not experts - to investigate if the tape is authentic
And as if that double investigation were not enough, the Attorney
General instructed the Anti Corruption Agency to record a
statement from the lawyer Lingam to verify the authenticity of the video
clip.
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Experienced lawyers who have good contacts have more than a
suspicion that the man on the phone is in fact the lawyer Lingam and that he
was talking to the CJ, Fairuz, at the other end. Fairuz's "no
comment," and the silence of Lingam only serve to harden the guess into
fact.
That highly interesting conversation on the phone reminded me of piece
written by the late MGG Pillai, the well known journalist, several years ago,
which put in a nutshell the public unease:
" A man is jailed three years for stealing a bra
from a supermarket. A lawyer is jailed six months for not renewing his
practising certificate on time. Another is jailed three months for
filing an affidavit which threatened to scandalize the court. A third
is jailed six months for comments he made as a litigant. One man gets
six months for killing his wife by driving a car over her. But it is 24
years - in four concurrent terms of six years - for one who exceeded his
authority in asking the police which had cleared his name - to get a
retraction from those who had accused him of sodomy and adultery. One
journalist is jailed three months for writing about a case involving the son
of a Court of Appeal judge without identifying himself as the husband of the
vice principal of the school. A defamation case took barely six months
to complete but the Federal Court more than two years, after hearing the
appeal, to not deliver judgement, with no immediate prospect in sight. One lawyer
writes the judgement in a high profile case in which he represents the
plaintiff. In that case, the court conveniently hands him half the RM20
million he demanded in defamations, without any proof of loss. Judges
are warned to deliver judgements in six months, but the Court of Appeal judge
who delivered this homily is soon to be in contempt of his own
prescription. The Chief Justice, as head of a coram in one case,
already is, delaying judgement for more than two years.
"This disturbing judicial trend of seeming
selective vindictiveness against defendants, the special favours given to one
particular lawyer who boasts of going with the Chief Justice and the
Attorney-General and their families on holidays, the demand that the Prime
Minister would only appear as a witness in a case he had earlier agreed to
after he is told why his evidence is important, the Bar Council ordered to
pay nearly a million ringgit -- with more to come - when an attempt to
discipline this friend of the Chief Justice and Attorney-General successfully
appealed all the way to the Federal Court, to institute a trend which, with
other pressures, turns the Bar Council into a toothless mouse, puts the
judiciary on a spotlight.
"Although the opposition has filed quite a few elections
petitions, many would withdraw for the penalty for not succeeding is heavy
costs; and election petitions, as we all know, succeed almost always
when it is the National Front that files it. The capriciousness with
which the judiciary seems to work, with the Chief Justice wanting to control
developments so that those he wants destroyed shall stay destroyed at the
Court of Appeal. After MGG. Pillai got his leave to appeal from the
Federal Court, Tun Eusof Chin decided he shall in future appear in all leave
applications. Judges do not seem to be selected for their competence
but for their loyalty.
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"It is this which frightens the
citizen from appearing in the courts to seek justice. The more
reflective judges worry about it endlessly. The judge in one case bluntly
told the parties in a defamation case that he would not allow Court of Appeal
Judgement in the MGG. Pillai v Vincent Tan libel case to be raised in a
defamation case before him. It is widely believed, even among the
judges, the Federal Court would announce the judgement of the MGG. Pillai
appeal after some defamation cases -- principal plaintiff's lawyer, Dato'
V.K. Lingam -- are settled to the plaintiff's complete satisfaction.
That the judiciary's independence has to be restated time and time again by
the Chief Justice, like an endless mantra, to convince us and them that what
is not is. The judiciary, by and large, does a good job. But
because the Chief Justice marks judges as being for him or against him, many
otherwise excellent judges swat flies while others are overloaded...
The judge who allowed a lawyer to write a judgement, now in the Court of
Appeal, is awaiting preferment to the Federal Court, the stumbling block
being the Conference of Rulers who, until the last session, would not
agree. Ultimately, the judiciary must be responsible for its own
reputation. But a drop of indigo discolours a cup of vanilla, and so
long as there are powerful indigo judges, this cannot happen. Until
then, remember: if you must commit a crime, never steal a bra; instead
go beat up the deputy prime minister to near death. Tan Sri Rahim Noor
was so sure of this that he told his wife to prepare goreng pisang (fried
bananas) for evening tea on the day he was convicted for murderously assaulting
He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost".
I don't want to be too critical but I do think that the people involved in
getting signatories to the petition to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to set up a
royal commission to investigate the affair are taking a road they should be
avoiding. While others are pulling us towards a Caliphate, their
enthusiasm may have the unintended promotion of King worship, Thai
style. They should remember that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong is only the
chairman of the council of Rulers. A creation of statute, upon election takes
the oath of allegiance to the constitution and Malaysia as do the judges,
assemblymen and others. He is without sovereignty. He has none of the
attributes of a divine king and is therefore not the fountain of justice.
The petitioners should be careful to avoid being put n the same category
as those politicians who proclaim their belief in democracy and condemn
the ISA and the police state, yet rush off to Papa Police to complain about
some act of a political opponent they deem fit to be punished.
Subversive lap top
The seizure of a student's lap top at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) is a
stark reminder of the sorry state of our police- run universities. It does
not surprise that the vice-chancellor Nik Mustapha R Abdullah today
defended the action of campus authorities in seizing a student activist's
laptop and 12 other items during a spot check on his hostel room. He said
that the student, Yee Yang Yang, was suspected of having leaflets produced by
‘unregistered' organisations and that his laptop contained pornographic
material. He said the authorities acted according to procedure and described
Yee's accusation that UPM was attempting to intimidate him due to his
involvement in student activism as a "lie."
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"The action taken by the UPM security department was in
accordance with the rules and regulations that relate to disciplinary
violations made by Yee. His accusations are lies," said the VC.
I am glad that a public outcry forced the police state university to return
the lap top but there was face saving, Yang Yang had to get the lap top
and other personal belongings from the police. Active players in this
drama were the security unit and the Special Task Unit. Rather sinister isn't
it?
To quote Dr Syed Husin Ali, a former
professor of sociology at Universiti Malaya and a PKR deputy president,
"Some of these vice-chancellors were more interested in becoming
‘policemen' against students or to butter up ministers in order to
ensure extension of tenure."
What Nadeswaran learnt
A very interesting story appeared in The Sun the other day. It was R Nadeswaran describing his visit to the mass
communications students at a university. He was not questioned
but was shocked to learn that most did not read the newspapers and were not
in touch with current affairs which reminded me of the visit of Lena Jaeger,
the Labour MP from England
and a powerful member of the Socialist International, now Lady Jaeger,
to Singapore for two
lectures at Singapore
University. She
wrote in the "New Statesman and Nation" that the students
were a bunch of sheep and scared to ask questions, if I remember right. She
was promptly told by Singapore
that she was persona non gratia and not welcome to Singapore. But she had her own back.
She was the one who moved to have Singapore expelled from the
Socialist International. Clever Singapore withdrew from the
International before the vote was taken.
Grilling of Syed Hamid
Albar
After many emails asking me to look at the interview the BBC had of Syed Hamid Albar,
the foreign minister, I simply had to look. I was impressed with the cool and
articulate way he handled the interviewer, an aggressive, often rude woman
called Sarah Montague. That is the style of Western interviewers these days;
aggressiveness is equated with intellectual brilliance.
But there were many things I thought Syed Hamid said that were wrong. He said the NEP was
important: look at the Malays, they are still poor and the Chinese are
still rich and even the Indians have progressed, he said. But he could
not have been expected to speak the truth which is that the NEP benefits only
the UMNO clique (for example the notorious Zakaria,
Port Klang assemblyman, who recently invited press
to the opening of his palace of 21 bathrooms, 16 bedrooms, swimming pool and
a master bedroom bigger than a low cost house ). When he
spoke of religion and the Lina Joy case he should
have mentioned that when Dr Mahathir invited the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar for a two week lecture tour during which he
stressed again and again that there is no compulsion in religion (these
remarks were prompted by the case of a Muslim girl who went to Singapore and
married a Christian), the religious department's pronouncements made
clear they had different views.
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When the foreign
minister was asked about "creeping islamisation,"
a stupid phrase, if I may say so, he astonished me by agreeing with the
interviewer. But he should have mentioned that the Wahabi
influence was growing as evidenced by the appearance of more and more women
wearing the Arabic black robe that exposes only the eyes and the growing
inclination of religious teachers to stress the separateness of
Muslims, resulting in children talking about infidels and the
decreasing numbers of Malays in the coffee shops.
I wonder why the foreign minister went through that grilling. Surely the PM
or the Number 2 in UMNO would have been a more authoritative voice.
Dumping the common law
THE Chief Justice, Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim,
in his opening speech at Ikim's seminar titled
"Ahmad Ibrahim: His Intellectual Thought and Contributions,"
expressed his disappointment over the 'captive mentality' of our legal
experts, practitioners, judges and lawyers, in reference to the high esteem
they accorded English law, or to be more specific, English Common Law (ECL).
Common law is nothing but judge made law, for example, providing
remedies that Parliament did not give. If someone's bag of flour fell from
high and killed your donkey there was then nothing in the statutes to give
you compensation, the judges granted "damages," and thus created
the law of negligence, The CJ should know that or else he is not fit to be
Chief Justice. But let us see what a man who is presumably
untrained in the history of law says. He is Dr Wan Azhar Wan Ahmad of IKIM. He writes:
"For a common law system in our
pluralistic society to become manifest, the basis should be Islam, and
arguably to a lesser extent, Malay customs."
Let us suppose a case comes before the doctor's court, say, a case of
trespass on somebody's land. Is there compensation for this sort of thing and
how much damages to pay? Who is to define what "Malay custom" says
about such a situation? Is the claimant required to call experts on
Malay custom as witnesses or is the judge to be given a free hand to decide?
There will be many who will contend that it is for Parliament to decide how
to go about proving Malay custom, in which case it will no longer be the
doctor's common law but statute law that decides. The doctor and the chief
justice will have to think again.
Putting two and two together, I suspect a movement to pave the way for
bringing Islamic law into the legal system by misleading the Muslim man in
the street about common law and bypassing parliament.
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BullyLand?
The misbehaviour and hooliganism never ends. Shocking treatment of a
German of Indian origin and RELA fails to recognise the papers of an
Indonesian diplomat.
And from a report:
"Donald Luther Kolobita, 47, was
part of the Indonesian team competing in the Asian Karate Championships in
Kuala Lumpur on August 24 when he was confronted by four plain clothes police
officers late at night outside his hotel. Thinking they were trying to rob
him, Kolobita put up a fight before he was
overpowered, handcuffed and taken to the police station, where he was
savagely assaulted.
"Kolobita returned to
Jakarta in a
wheelchair and the Indonesian team withdrew from the championship. The
Speaker of Indonesia's parliament, Agung Laksono, called the attack "an arrogant act on the
part of the Malaysian police against an Indonesian citizen", and
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono demanded that the Malaysian police apologize.
"On Friday, Malaysian Police Chief Musa Hassan
sent a written apology to Kolobita, which was
hand-delivered to his hospital bedside in Jakarta by Malaysian Ambassador Zainal Abidin Zain. But anger in Indonesia has not yet subsided,
with young activists continuing their protests outside the Malaysian Embassy.
I should have thought that the apology should have come from the government.
But will anyone be punished?
And one reads that Martin Wright, US Navy lawyer was "treated like a
dog", and the wrongful arrest and detention of Yahweh Passim
Nam,
ex US Navy and an engineer. Surely because they were black. And no one
has apologised.
Bollywood and Indian novels are not shy about
stories of naughty policemen. But if some wrote or made a film about our demi-god policemen they would I am afraid be cast into
jail under the ISA for being subversive and their film/book banned.
Shame
When two women were killed the police arrested two Nigerians on suspicion but
they were released. But the local politicians, like our policemen, don't like
blacks; they organised a protest with such slogans as "We don't
want blacks in our community." If the real murderer turns out to be
Chinese what banner will we see on the streets? Or are the would
be local Ku Klux Klan but a part of the culture of colonial racism that
grossly mistreated Martin Wright and Yahweh Passim Nam?
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Music's magic
El Sistema is 30 years old. Its founder, Jose
Antonio Abreu, has made many under privileged
Venezuelans classical musicians. The National System of Venezuelan Youth and
Children's Orchestras are like football stars, inspiring 23 countries to
launch similar music education programmes.
There were only two symphony orchestras in the entire country when the Youth
Orchestra's gave its first concert in 1975 with 11 musicians. Now there are
about 200.
About 90% of students there are from the country's lowest economic class.
In Sarria they are not allowed to take their
instruments home because of the risk of being mugged, and some come to class
with headaches because their families cannot afford food.
In the orchestra is Lennar Acosta, 23, with a history of drug use and armed
robbery. The youth orchestra gave him a scholarship. He now earns his
living at a music institute, and is studying to perform Mozart's clarinet
concerto. The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra's Gustavo Dudamel won the Bamberg Symphony's Gustav Mahler
Conducting Competition last year. The press were impressed with his
conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in September. Edicson
Ruiz joined the Berlin Philharmonic as a double bassist at just 20 years of
age. One was appointed conductor in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. They have
recently made a recording for EMI
Above is a summary I have done of the news of the orchestra. As I read the
extraordinary story I thought of this Bolehland
chasing Mount Everest, the North Pole, the
South pole and money like mad. Why don't the Boleh-men
sit down and do something like that instead of thinking of instant punishment
for young people in general and Mat Rempit in
particular?
Boat killers
After what was said to be the worst bus crash in history comes the story of
the Tioman ferry deaths, yet one more sad story the
Bolehland way of life. I stopped going to Pulau Redang for diving when my group and I were passengers on
a sampan licensed for 11 persons. We divers totalled 18 and plus our diving
gear that made the gunwales dip under the waves all the two and half hours
boating from Trengganu.
RM3 hair cuts
The Penang Hairdressers Association complains about imported barbers charging
only RM3 for a haircut when the Association rate was RM7 reminds me of a
story told to me by a barber when I asked him to explain why there were
barbers down the road who did haircuts by asking customers to point to a
photo of a style they wanted. Customers had thought they were dumb. But my
barber explained that they were cheap labour from India, and could not speak
Malay, that was why they used the photos. They were only
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paid RM300 per month and two meals a day by their importer/exploiter
boss. That made cheaper haircuts.
American manners
Americans it seems have no manners when they address Asians. The president of
Iran was invited to Columbia University but before question time,
his host, the president of the university, addressed his guest in
shocking and rude language.
Burning flags
It is a sign of jingo madness when "patriots" cry murder when the
national flag is burnt. It is a shame that the DAP leader Lim Kit Siang
also thinks the same. In the US even the right wing are silent
when protesters burn the flag as a sign of protest. Andrew Sia The Tarik
Venice in Penang
The Star 14.7.2002 - Sungai Pinang to be recreational spot in five
years. Federal Government allocated RM50 millions to clean up river.
The Sun 29.8.2007 - Sungai Pinang will be rehabilitated and the stench
in Sungai Tiram and at the Penang Bridge
will be reduced with treatment. Drainage and Irrigation department has
appointed a consultant to come up with the best method to rehabilitate the
rivers.
The Sun 25.9.07 DID director says Sungai
Pinang will be clean enough for swimming and drinking by 2010.
Mega firms
I see that a lawyer's firm is merging with a Singapore firm to form a
conglomerate of 400 lawyers We are following the US style of creating
mega firms which try to get as much work in as possible with a view to
chasing profits as big corporations do. And no doubt some will not even
practice law but do the entertainment side of the business as the former
president Nixon did when he was with a mega firm, lobbying Congressmen
on behalf of railway interests.
Danger on the sands
I see that horse riding is again being encouraged along the Batu Ferringhi beach. A friend
of mine from Sarawak stopped coming to Penang
when their son, who was building sandcastles, was nearly knocked down by a
horse. Do the people there realise that horse
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riding is very dangerous with beginners who can
without realising it send the wrong signal and send the horse flying over the
sands? Once upon a time the D.O. was against it but he was overruled by
UMNO. In 1992 it is forbidden because a tourist was knocked down but
permitted a few years later. It is typical of this country: always
sabotaging its own efforts ( For former references in The Penang File see
issue of jan-2005 - news38 and of sep-2006 - letter from Pulau Tikus).
Savages
Whipping for undsciplined students may be
introduced. Newspaper report.
Five stars * * * * *
The sewer manhole cover was leaking all over the road at Hillside.
The Indah water gang sprang to action immediately a call was made to them by
my neighbour They reported it was not their pipe but the water authority's. A
call brought Water to the spot and the repair was immediately done. This is
the sort of welcome service that should be emulated.
Beauty
Seen on a roadside poster:
eyebrow shaping
eyebrow tattoo
eyelashes perming
K L Chai
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