Saturday, April 27, 2013

Professionalism missing in Malaysia's Sir Humphrey?

There is yet another excellent article in Malaysiakini by Dr Bridget Welsh, an associate professor of political science at Singapore Management University. She is travelling around Malaysia to provide her GE13 analyses exclusively to Malaysiakini.



Her latest article is titled People or party? Wooing civil servants in which she wrote:

In caretaker Premier Najib Abdul Razak’s political targeting, one group has received special attention - civil servants. Why would those in the heart of government garner such special focus for an election? The reality is that in Malaysia’s close electoral races, civil servants can be decisive in shaping the final tallies. This is one of the groups that I will be highlighting as decisive in this campaign.

Over the past few years Najib’s administration has worked to stem the erosion of support from his traditional base of government employees with mixed results.

Civil servants make up 1.4 million voters, or 10.5 percent of the electorate. The civil service is made up of senior appointments, the police, army personnel, teachers, and a variety of industrial and manual (IMG) groups. There are also an estimated 657,000 government pensioners.


Sir Humphrey Appleby

There is an incorrect tendency to label all civil servants as pro UMNO, though it's true many are.

In fact, as mentioned by RPK, some civil servants provided (maybe still provide) him with information unfavourable to the BN government which they wanted exposed, indicating those civil servants were not supportive of BN.

My uncle who (postal) voted in 1969 as an army officer told me how a couple of army administrative officers (popularly known by the British Raj term of Admin-wallahs because our military was nurtured by the colonial British military), who administered the military postal voting process in May 1969, were urging the Malay soldiers to vote PAS and the non-Malays (in the non-RMR services) to vote DAP and Gerakan, wakakaka.

And as we have witnessed recently, PKR and PAS have a few senior (retired) military officers of flag rank (admiral, generals) in their membership. So not all civil servants or military members would automatically be pro UMNO. But to reiterate, the majority would be.

But yes, it can be said that most of the middle ranking and senior civil servants have favoured the conservative BN, in particular UMNO.

This is not be so strange as in most countries like Australia, Britain and USA, there is similar political proclivity, where their military stationed overseas would be expected to (postal) vote conservative (eg. Coalition in Australia, Conservative in Britain and Republican in USA), thus like their civilian counterparts, the military middle ranking and senior officers would be in general (but not completely) pro conservative (in Malaysia's case, UMNO).


Western Civil Services (except possibly in the USA)
are known to be professionally impartial

But I want to talk about a couple of things regarding our very much bloated civil service, probably the biggest civil service per population in the world. The last statistic for the Malaysia Civil Service (MCS) that I know is 1.3 million, equating that to approximately 1 civil servant for every 23 Malaysian citizens.

On that basis we should be well served, but I doubt you'd agree to this.


above was Malaysia's 2005 stats
Malaysia's population today is approx. 30 million
Its civil service is said to number at 1.3 million

Then, when you consider the police as part of the civil service and our disgraceful crime rates - in recent days we have had a mother, Irene Ong, stabbed to death in front of her daughter while they were out jogging, and just then we heard of the deputy DG of Custom, Shaharuddin Ibrahim, being assassinated in broad daylight in Putrajaya - you wonder WTF is going on with the Malaysian police?

It's little wonder Dr Welsh stated: The police force in particular remains the least trusted institution in the country, which is of concern given the persistence of high crime and the critical role this organisation is supposed to play in security ...

... and not just that, the police leadership show they are incompetent and not up to the task of public safety and security.



There is an Asian saying that fish rots from its head. I believe the only way to clean up the police force is to purge, just as a start, its top 3 layers of officers, namely, (i) IGP and DIGP, (ii) all Commissioners and (iii) all Deputy Commissioners.

And as a reminder, that's only the start. It annoys me considerably because Malaya-Malaysia ONCE had the best police force in Asia, bar none. The rot started about thirty years ago (or slightly earlier) and one can only lament at how fast the deterioration in standards has set in, not only in the police force but the civil service in general.

Mind you, there still are some damn good civil service, police and military officers but their population is fast shrinking. Professionalism has given way to pariah-ism driven by corruption, incompetence and crony-ism.

Dr Mahathir's Operasi Isi Penuh in 1980 was, IMHO, a bad decision though he had embarked on that massive recruitment for the civil service in order to deal with unemployment during a period of economic depression. But in fixing a tactical problem he endowed us with a strategic headache.

My uncles told me that Operasi Isi Penuh was seen to be profligate in its implementation, where they recall department heads being urged and even pressured to 'top up' their staffing a.s.a.p.

I wonder whether such profligacy, as in our numerous cases of profligacy over the past 35 years, was an outcome from the curse of our considerable oil and gas assets. Would we have a far better though poorer Malaysia if we haven't have oil and gas, depending only on our rubber, tin, palm oil, cocoa and light industry as in the days of Tunku?

The end result of Operasi Isi Penuh only saw the humongous bloating of the civil service with its inevitable jatuh standard and, worse, an increasing (unmentioned but nonetheless official) trend towards ethnocentric recruitment, which was not just confined to the Malaysian Civil Service (including the Police) but the military as well.

There is a deliberate contrived myth, yes a myth, that the Chinese shun the Civil Service (including the police force) and the military because they prefer the lucrativeness of business rather than the staid salary of the public service, and that the civil service is an alien concept of employment to Chinese culture.

The latter, the civil service being an alien concept to Chinese culture, is 101% pure grade bullshit because the Chinese have in their several thousands of years of civilisation enjoyed (or suffered) from the Chinese civil service. In fact the Chinese invented the civil service.


sitting Imperial Exams to enter Imperial Civil Service - Sui Dynasty

This is what Wikipedia has to say:

The origin of the modern meritocratic civil service can be traced back to Imperial examinations founded in Imperial China. The Imperial exam based on merit was designed to select the best administrative officials for the state's bureaucracy. This system had a huge influence on both society and culture in Imperial China and was directly responsible for the creation of a class of scholar-bureacrats irrespective of their family pedigree.


Note the mention of 'meritocratic civil service' and the selection of 'the best administrative officials for the state's bureaucracy'!

From the time of the Han Dynasty (206 BC to AD 220) until the implementation of the imperial examination system, most appointments in the imperial bureaucracy were based on recommendations from prominent aristocrats and local officials whilst recommended individuals were predominantly of aristocratic rank. Emperor Wu of Han started an early form of the imperial examinations, transitioning from inheritance and patronage to merit, in which local officials would select candidates to take part in an examination of the Confucian classics. The system reached its apogee during the Song dynasty.

The Chinese civil-service system gave the Chinese empire stability for more than 2,000 years and provided one of the major outlets for social mobility in Chinese society.

The modern examination system for selecting civil service staff also indirectly evolved from the imperial one. This system was admired and then borrowed by European countries from the 16th century onward, and is now the model for most countries around the world.

So the myth about Chinese viewing the civil service as alien to their culture or career path is what it is, a myth that has been repetitively used by some people to explain why there are too few Chinese Malaysians in the Malaysian Civil Service, when of course the real reason is they were obstructed from joining or just not welcomed.

In March I have also posted Chinese policemen to show (a) firstly, Pak Kadir Jasin, a pro UMNO blogger, that he was wrong in his sly insult to Chinese on their purported 'reluctance' to join the police and military services to the nation, and (b) secondly, the blatant but perennial lie of this myth.



In that post I listed several Chinese policemen who gave their lives in the course of their service. Please read my post to know how many Seri Pahlawan Gagah Perkasa (SP) and Pingat Gagah Berani (PGB) were won by Chinese service personnel.

I also modified my post into a letter to Malaysiakini for wider readership as it's important to debunk the naughty but cheap racial insinuations.

Additionally, in February 2010, well known writer AB Sulaiman wrote in a Malaysiakini article titled Malay-dominated civil service no good to no one that:



Shagul Hamid Abdullah, director-general of the National Civics Bureau, wrote a sobering article in the Star (Jan 30) about the Malaysian civil service.

He claimed that in our history non-Malays had shown little interest in working in this sector due to two factors: the relatively low pay, and the perception of them having discriminatory career prospects.


I happen to have some direct and personal experience in government employment being a clerk in the Ministry of Finance in the mid-60s, and some three years later a civil servant in another government ministry. Based on this I feel qualified to dispute his twin contentions.

At the Treasury, I remember that the office staff had a good ethnic mix. Looking back, I'd venture the racial composition to be at about 30 percent Malay, another 30 percent Indian-Malaysian, 30 percent Chinese-Malaysian and the remaining 10 percent of other races.

Yes, ‘1Malaysia' had been with us before.

Many ethnic Indians were the descendants of the early indentured labourers from the estates. Government employment was their first stepping-stone of escape from the relative poverty of rubber estates.





In the case of the Chinese-Malaysians, they were also the children of struggling tin-mine labourers and yes, estate workers. Their parents or grandparents came into this country with hardly anything at all beyond a bundle of clothing.

The fact of the matter is that before Independence, most if not all of our parents and grandparents - the early Malaysians - were living in relative poverty.




In other words, everybody came from poor families. There was hardly any middle class then. The salary level might not be comparable to the private sector but was ‘adequate' and there is the coveted pension at the end of the day.

In any case, beyond the tin mines and estates, the private sector was limited in size and offering limited employment opportunities. Getting a government job was a highly favoured dream for all ethnic segments for it provided stable and secure employment.

The contention that non-Malays shunned government employment is not quite apt.




AB Sulaiman then said: Career advancement has been a problem for the non-Malays since the 70s and early 80s, ie the period of the NEP ...

... and if I may say, Operasi Isi Penuh.

I'd say that this period saw the birth of the ‘Malaysation' programme of the political leadership, later known by the label ‘Ketuanan Melayu.' This era saw the marginalising of non-Malays in government employment.

This self-proclaimed label has turned out to be the premise for the government's lower recruitment of non-Malays to government employment and sidelining those already in its employment.

Consider the following: 100 percent of vice-chancellors of public universities are Malays. 90 percent of University of Technology student enrolment is Malay. 90 percent of nurse and teacher intakes are Malay.

In short virtually all government or government-related bureaucracies and agencies were manned and meant for Malays, for their employment levels are in the higher 90 percent level.

Surely this collective situation is the direct result of the preferential treatment given to Malays in government recruitment. These figures are indicatives, but I believe not too far away from the actual, give or take a few percent.

Worse, I read sometime back that the government has made it a habit of even putting application forms from non-Malays into the dustbin.

So in more than one way, I suppose we have Dr Mahathir as the principal personality to thank for the beginning of the rot in our civil service.

Let's examine some lamentable products of the Malaysian Civil Service in recent times.

In June 2010, Malaysiakini’s Guan Eng wants SDO to explain arches fiasco reported Lim questioned the erection of two controversial arches on the way to the Penang Botanical Garden by the federal government.

The Penang state development officer (SDO), was Nik Ali Mat Yunos, a federal civil servant in charge of the project. Lim was so incensed by the arrogant non-accountability of the SDO that he remarked Nik Ali was "openly and blatantly" sabotaging the state government.

Lim stated: "He is like a little Napoleon in the civil service who gets high pay and does nothing for the people, but instead causes losses to them."

MKINI reported: Lim wants Nik Ali to come clean about the RM150,000 plus losses over the planned demolition of the two twin arches recently built for an expansion project under the Tourism Ministry. […]

Lim has taken offence with Nik Ali for refusing to explain who - which department, state or federal government - was responsible for the staggering losses.

Can you f* beat that, a civil servant refusing to account to the CM of a Malaysian State? What hope then do we earthly mortals have in terns of accountability from a Malaysian civil servant?

Would Nik Ali Mt Yunos dare to be biadap towards an UMNO MB like Khir
even if Khir were to present him with a broom for piss-poor performance?

"If he is willing to tell us that, we will not pursue the matter. Every sen counts, because it is a question of public trust," Lim added.

Lim has also seen red over a letter sent by the SDO's office dated Oct 13, 2009 to the Drainage and Irrigation Department, giving a "RM5 million ultimatum" to the state.

The letter states that the state would have to settle "pending issues" on the Botanic Gardens' facade and pavilion development, failing which, federal funding of RM5 million for the project would be withdrawn.

"This is an example of how the SDO's office is trying to rush development projects through without due consultation and feedback," said Lim.

As if that was not bad enough, the SDO responded by calling the Chief Minister 'biadap' - yes, believe it or not, a civil servant abusing a people's fully elected representative with the gross insult of 'biadap'.

Maybe he thought he was the great great great (ditto etc) grandson of Sultan Mansur Shah of Malacca with the powers to f* off Hang Lim GE?




But wait, there were more worse things! Against the very heart of civil service policy, he made his attack against a people’s representative at a gathering organized by UMNO, a political party.

I suppose a biadap, arrogant and politically biased person like him does not understand protocol, civil service etiquette, basic courtesy and the apolitical nature of the Malaysian Civil Service (MCS).

Maybe this bloke has been exactly whom former PM AAB had in mind when he termed some public servants as ‘Little Napoleons’.

Technically he should be chastised if not sacked in ignominy for violating the Civil Service code of conduct (many times over) by the Chief Secretary but as it’s obvious he’s allied to UMNO, it was hardly surprising that Mohd Sidek, the Chief Secretary, defended him instead.

wakakaka, waste of money printing this
those who are professional won't need it
those who aren't won't heed it

Given that this is Malaysia, it was not totally unexpected, but nonetheless the brazen disregard by Mohd Sidek of Nik Ali’s breach of the civil service code of conduct and sheer bad manners in his most unprofessional politically partisan behaviour was still breathtaking.

Tun Ghazali Shafie, one of the luminaries of the MCS would have turned in his grave in shame and despair at that example of gross pathetic and unprofessional standard of his once-proud service.

Also, read MIKINI’s (August 2010) New BN move ruffles feathers in Komtar penned by my Penang laang Susan Loone for more of the sabotaging nonsense, where the Penang state government had to get the approval of ‘coordinators’ when applying for housing and local government allocations.

But when the ‘coordinators’ were (are?) all BN politicians, some of whom were defeated in the 2008 general election, this meant that that f* little Napoleon introduced a procedure where the representatives elected by the rakyat had to go with begging bowl to those rejected by the rakyat.

And that’s the utter lack of professionalism of quite a few officers of the Malaysian Civil Service.

meritocracy has been declared missing for years


Anyway, sometimes when Dr Mahathir grumbled or cried about Melayu mudah lupa and the ingratitude of Malays I do wonder whether he was thinking of his Operasi Isi Penuh and its favouring of Malays, and his consequential anger at those Malays who supported the opposition, wakakaka.

But I have absolutely no sympathy for him when those civil servants crossed over to PAS or PKR, because we have too many of them in UMNO already.

You know, this coming election has been touted as an American style presidential election between Najib and Anwar (instead of a Westminster style between or among parties). If Pakatan does win, perhaps we can capture that American style election by sweeping out the top echelons of the MCS together with their UMNO masters.

Much as I dislike matters American, this may not be entirely an unwelcome process.



27 comments:

  1. In the American system , the top 2 or 3 levels of the public service are political appointees, and they are replaced with every change of Presidential administration. Their job is to ensure the President's policies are carried out accordingly.
    This does not mean they are politicians. In fact, many of the top civil servce posts are filled with top-notch acknowledged experts in their field. They are nevertheless politically aligned, because there is always an element of politics in the choice of appointees. There is also the disadvantage that they have little knowledge to start with of the ins and outs of the administrative structure of the Federal Deparments.

    Malaysia has had a Defacto political appointee Senior Civil Service system for years, certainly since the Mahathir years.
    Almost All the top Government officers are aligned to UMNO. The most obvious examples being the EC Chairman and Deputy, the IGP, most of the current top Generals, ROC, ROS, etc. etc.

    A new Pakatan Rakyat Federaladministration would have to remove all of these UMNO-Servants, otherwise it will be impossible to carry out its Ubah Agenda.

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  2. Me, almost my entire extended family, almost every one I know in my social circle and work circle are going with the "Ubah" tide.
    The corrupt system has to end, and the time is Now, May 5 2013.

    We are on very unfamiliar territory though. My area is being contested by BN and PAS.

    Voting for the Moon is going to be a weird experience...hahaha...

    Does the Moon represent my Heart ?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv_cEeDlop0

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    1. incidentally Rosmah Mansoh's fave Chines song which she belts out occasional to fawning Chinese towkays, wakakaka

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  3. I remember Isi Penuh was initiated during Hussein Onn's rule in 1979, and likely continued to Mahathir's, the latter took office in 1981.

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    1. by then, Tun Hussein was more or less on his way out

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  4. Even in Petaling Jaya, you need to lodge a complaint before they come and clean clogged drains, clear rubbish stacked up, patch up holes on roads etc. Why can't the supervisors do the monitoring and take the necessary actions? When a complain is made about rubbish rotting and smelling foul at night in restaurants in SS2, the officers come and check and issue warnings after warnings and the same issue still persists. It is a very frustrating civil servive.

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    1. i personally think lodge complaint is a logical step, both problem and action taken is properly recorded. the thing i dislike most is complain at the back talk 3 talk 4 not even want to make an initiative to call.

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  5. KTEmoc, If Kadir had perpetrated a myth about Chinese disinterest in Civil Service, you are perpetrating another myth that the Chinese invented the Civil Service. There were other more advanced in cultures at that time, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia and Persia and India with already well established civil services. Perhaps the Chinese who came to study in India (there were many) after Siddharta Gautama Buddha had caused the rise of first universities of the world in India took their knowledge to China in creating the Chinese Civil Service. Are you aware of the existence of ancient Indian texts on governance? This kind of knowledge sharing was and is good but not to claim credit where it is not due. Your claim is somewhat similar to Arabs being credited with the inventing the modern numbers when in fact they were learnt from India. China rarely acknowledged the knowledge obtained from other sources. Just check for example on the religious side and find out for yourself where all the Gods and Godesses of China came from. You might even be surprised to find many common words between Indians and Chinese.

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    1. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service#cite_note-China_Imperial-3

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    2. "China rarely acknowledged the knowledge obtained from other sources."

      Cite please?

      Chinese never fail to acknowledge the introduction of Buddhism into China. Even here in this blog we repeat the assertion many times, the Chinese also never deny they learn almost everything contemporary and modern from the West. Not sure the same about India.

      http://www.learn.columbia.edu/nanxuntu/html/state/ideas.pdf

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    3. Some points. Yes the Chinese might have invented the modern civil service as you claim and it is not alien to Chinese culture. However the civil service was pretty much a privilege to those who had passed the imperial examination, which was something not everyone could do. Also during the late 19th/early 20th century period, there was much opposition to the old Imperial civil service. It was not an alien concept, but the Chinese typically found employment elsewhere, if they encountered too many obstacles to join the civil service. I should add though, that the occupation of soldier has a very low status in Chinese culture.

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    4. Dont misunderstood. China is the earlies to recruit government officer base on merits, i think no one here claim that Chinese invented the civil services. It is not necessary for civil servant to pass examinition, but officer yes. The opposition were towards the substance of the imperial examinition that was limited to 4 Books 5 Classics, and a rigid (stereotyped) way to compose essay, Chinese name it Ba Gu.

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    5. "that the occupation of soldier has a very low status in Chinese culture."

      Partly correct, but in which society soldier has a very high status? To Chinese, perhaps during Qin and Communist risen to power and reign, Song was the worst, Ming after Yongle didnt fare any better, and who become soldier in Singapore and Taiwan? American soldier have very esteem status i guess because they have to non-stop fighting the communist, muslim, chinese.....so many crusade so little time and and so little life. Dont you think we should look deeper and not simply generalising a culture?

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  6. KT......a very good write up !

    Trust the propaganda goons in Umno to create the myth that "the civil service being an alien concept to Chinese culture"........yes, a 101% pure grade bullshit.

    World's first examination came from the chinese state examination that took place 1500 years ago in the Sui Dynasty. Until the 18th century, exams don't exist in the West. Matteo Ricci was the first person to introduce this to the West.

    Studying in ancient China to qualify for this state exam will require the exam takers to memorize up to 350,000 chinese characters.

    On the day of the examination, they file into the large examination hall, a walled-compound divided into 4000 tiny cells, each one equipped with a desk and chair. Each province had its own examination facility and on the day of the exam, over a million people from all over the country came. The exam grounds were surrounded by tall walls and proctors observed the exam takers from watch towers.

    In order to enter the examination grounds, everyone had to be thoroughly searched to prevent any cheating. In these tiny cubicles, people took the 9-day examination, which were divided into three 3-day examinations. There are even artifacts showing how fierce the competition these exams were back then at the State Examination System Museum in Hubei Province.

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    1. and u shit n pee in the same small cell.

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  7. There was also a military version with the syllabus covering military strategies, tactics, logistics of war, weaponry, etc.

    The rare graduate of both (civilian and military) exams was extolled as the scholar-warrior, an iconic label of the highest esteem which could even win for the graduate the hand of Emperor's daughter or favourite niece.

    Many British military officers including scions of the royal family (Prince Charles, his son, etc) in fact modelled themselves after this scholar-warrior model. Singapore attempted to project Lee Hsien Loong as one, wakakaka.

    The current Sultan of Selangor as a teenager was sent by his late dad to Port Dickson for basic military training but I was told he couldn't take the training and like Prince Edward (Prince Charles' youngest brother who joined the Royal Marines) quitted prematurely from his course.

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  8. The present policies of the BN government (NEP) may not be able to build a stable, sustainable and strong economy. But a strong sustainable and stable economy will be able to enhance the Malaysian Economy including the NEP

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  9. Civil servant......the word 'servant' is a misnomer here. The rakyat, especially the lower-to-middle-income groups of the non-malay category, have to grit their teeth and take in all their crap lordings......"our mission is not the serve, but to show who's boss to these kelings and cina apeks". Even RPK in one of his postings, having reached the end of his patience by their trademarked sourfaced lacklustre 'service' was moved to describe them as slothful, incompetent ' fuckface', wakakaka.

    Dr M's Operasi Isi Penuh has created a situation whereby we see 4 civil servants doing the job of one person......so much so that we see the gaji buta and goyang kaki in most governmental departments whiling away their office hours with plenty of knittings and crochetings, with some more enterprising among them openly and busily hawking their Amway products.

    While the lower end clerical staff are busy with their knitting and Amway multilevel second career during the office hours, the higher up little napoleons are notorious for subverting governmental directives and policies......their favorite tactic is to deliberately hide those allocations (minute though they might be compared to those allocated to the sons of the soils) meant for the non Malays.

    For example, Chinese and Indian farmers were totally in the dark about the small grant for innovative, new start-up for organic farming practice or the free bag of fertilizers and seedlings although in 2005, rm 1.5 billion in total were allocated to improve the agriculture sector during Pak Lah's reign. In contrast, the bumiputra counterparts were fully and timely briefed of all the available perks and support allocated. Replicate this napoleonic lordings over the nons in other sectors....education, fishery, sports, medical, etc....then one see the full scale of these horrendous, blatant discrimination perpetuated by these civil 'servants'. And their political bosses are not only fully aware of such practices by these 'servants' in the implementation stage, but are actually in tacit approval of such tactics instead.

    Hidup melayu.

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  10. See why I fuckingly despised Malaysia Chronicle

    http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=92931:karpal-dont-be-arrogant-and-think-only-of-daps-seats&Itemid=2

    WHAT THE FUCK HUA YONG GONNA ON THIS FUCKING ONSLAUGHT COMMENT FROM HIS BOSS HEAVENLY SNAKE

    Karpal has the right to comment on this......It holds to the origin of the constitution......WHY CAN'T THOSE FUCKERS PKR FOCUS ON WINING THEIR SEATS INSTEAD & KEEP THEIR FUCKING MOUTH SHUT.....SAME TO PAS FUCKERS ESPECIALLT HARON DIN

    HARON DIN IS ANOTHER HASSAN ALI

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    1. DUMB ASS! Read below from LChuah:

      I'd been a DAP supporter ever since S.P. Seenivasagam took PPP to BN and DAP came to the Kinta valley to wipe out that once-glorious party of D.R. Seenivasagam. I listened to Goh Hock Guan's rousing speeches in Klang, especially the one near Ping Hua school at Meru Road. I knew Rameson, who often asked me to join the DAP. Of course, at the time, Fan Yew Teng was a big guy in my National Union of Teachers (NUT).

      I stopped taking note of Malaysian politics after I left this country at the end of the 1970s. However, around the year 2000 I started participating in DAP's Bungaraya website mostly because that party became a partner of Barisan Alternative. I thought, for the first time, that the Opposition had a chance to dent UMNO's hegemonic rule.

      It was not to be so, partly because of Keadilan's attitude and PAS's unilateral revision of the BA manifesto. But matters were not helped because of certain rigid leaders - and followers! - within the DAP itself. And the person who played a significant role in breaking BA was none other than Karpal Singh.

      No one should insist that Karpal Singh or any DAP member, leader or otherwise, shut up. But it is uncanny that this particular person often opens up at moments when the BN and particularly UMNO is in trouble. I don't want to call him a mole, but I know of no other word more appropriate than that one. I don't want to dwell here on his sedition case, and how his son supported the appointment of a CJ tainted by the Anwar frame-up when that case was approaching. Was there a quid pro quo? I don't know and, in truth, I prefer not to know.

      But it's precisely his present attack on LKS himself that has renewed my faith in some DAP leaders. Any Opposition leader criticized by Karpal must have something UMNO hates.

      I believe that, had the DAP not withdrawn from BA, what has happened on March 8 would've happened about eight years earlier. The DAP political program was a sound one, but the party must learn to compromise in order to move forward. I'm glad the party has since moved in the right direction under Lim Guan Eng.

      Anyone who calls himself educated knows that all fields of human endeavor are perpetually contested arenas. As such, it's stupid to think that one should wait for that perfect moment before entering into a relationship, or having a baby, or starting up a business, or forming a political alliance. The person who thinks that way will most likely never have a spouse or lover, or become a parent, or rule any state. We take action when sufficient conditions exist for the success of that action - there being no such thing as perfect conditions.

      Thus having Pakatan does not mean an end to disagreements among the parties, or even within each component party. We know, for example, of the schism between the Nik Aziz and the Hadi groups in PAS, and no doubt there're factions within PKR and DAP as well. Yet all these groups have, thus far, been able to come together to win in several states, so without doubt the common goal of taking over the entire country is a doable project. This is the goal all Pakatan members must focus on, despite the knowledge that intra-party contests WILL INEVITABLY CONTINUE EVEN AFTER A NATIONAL VICTORY. So don't listen to those who say we've some problems with this or that Pakatan component and therefore have no choice but to disband or go it alone. This is what UMNO/BN would love the DAP to do and this is what their proxies and moles hope would happen.

      Getting Pakatan to rule the country does not signify the realization of Paradise. But it could signify the beginning of a better country, a country that's less racist, less corrupted, and more people-oriented. Such a prospect surely jives with the political philosophies of DAP and PKR, and ought to resonate in PAS's religious beliefs as well.

      LChuah

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  11. under PR govt, the civil servants are the same nepoleons.

    two truck loads of MPKj officers came by (about 20 fellas) to dismantle two tents (erected next to a school) after an event.

    the 2 truck drivers remained in the truck (not helping).

    1 fella look like supervisor, always yakking on phone, not working. 3 fellas going around to do the work with another 3 fellas watching and pretending to help (but hardly lift a finger). the rest, walk about and also pretend to work. all in, took 20 minutes.

    this could have been done by just 1 truck driver with another 2 assistants, also within 20 minutes. Ops Isi Penuh - is BN's way to buy votes (giving free salary away).

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  12. Kadir Jasin's boss once said the self-proclaimed Scribe cannot even write his own epitaph correctly. And when Anwar was being vilified he was not sure where his loyalties should be until he was given some magazines to run out of the NSTP stable - then he called M his true boss. With the waves now rolling in favor of Anwar, we can all sit back to watch his impending change in loyalty again.

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  13. http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/228353

    "Altantuya not a candidate" - so says EC, 15th member of BN coalition.

    They got it wrong - Altantuya's ghost is very much a Super-Candidate in the election. She's in every seat, every ballot box....and that is one reason why Najib is destined to lose this election.

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  14. Lim Kit Siang needs to come clean on his role during May 13, 1969.

    There are still many serious questions regarding what DAP did in the events surrounding that fateful tragedy, and what role Lim Kit Siang played, if at all.

    The same way Anwar Ibrahim has much to answer about his racist past, allegations that he promised to silence Hindu temple bells "forever" during the Kampung Rawa incident.

    Pakatan Rakyat needs to clean on its past before it can be considered at all to form the future government.

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    Replies
    1. Did Najib come clean over his parang incident a stadium in the 80s?

      For that matter, Mahathir never went back on his ideas in his Malay Dilemma book, and the Chinese wholeheartedly gave him 22 years of uninterrupted rule. He actually lifted the ban on his book on coming to power.

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  15. This orang putih will not get it. This is Malaysia where even the top lembu is stupid.

    Case in point is from a report in the Sun Daily 29/04 that Elections Commission chief, Datuk Kamaruddin, proudly boasted that only 3 persons knew the colour of the indelible ink that is going to be used so "that it cannot be duplicated"!

    This idiot does not realise that the purpose of the indelible ink to is to PREVENT people from voting more than ONCE! So why would any one want to "duplicate" the ink?

    I am more worried that if the ink is supplied by UMNO, it will NOT be indelible.

    The fact is if you hire rubbish, your get rubbish output. Hopefully Pakatan will ensure that all these stupidos are pastured out so they can borak borak in their clubs and dream of the days when they were king.

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  16. Guess you were right after all. There are reports that our brave Election Commission is to investigate if the "indelible ink" can be washed off in a few minutes using tap water and much quicker using detergent.

    I am confident that, based on past performance,the results of any proper investigation (IF ONE IS EVER CARRIED OUT PROPERLY) will not be ready in time for the elections. This the EC hopes will result in the Erection of Najib as PM and some parties will get their Komisyen, all in line with the body's name. If the allegations are true and when Pakatan wins, the first heads on the chopping block has to be of those involved, beginning at the very top.

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