Despite complaints over inflation, increased of crime rates and ethnic tension, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced the dissolution of the national parliament.
Voting must be held within the next 60 days at a date to be fixed by the election commission, which will be announced soon. Some say it could fall on March 2.
This is going to be my first year casting my vote. Personally, I don't think Barisan Nasional deserves a landslide victory after poor performance in the last term. However, I doubt the opposition parties have the credibility and experience to rule the country. Honestly I'm not convinced at all.
My hope is pretty simple: Barisan Nasional continues to run the country but rakyat have to deny BN's 2/3 majority in the parliament.
Updates: It's confirmed that the Election Commission has set Feb 24 for parties to nominate candidates for 12th general election and Malaysia will go to the polls on March 8.
Sex tape scandal? What a way to topple a man's political career especially in our country where moral values and family institution are our main priorities.
Shadowfox already speculated the man in the sex tape by New Year Eve. Talking about first hand news whereas all the mainstream media dare not even mention the name of the minister when I tried to catch the evening news.
Well, I don't care if this is a political war to end the minister's career. To me, Chua is a senior member in MCA and what more a Health Minister and therefore he has the responsibility to uphold the moral values in this country.
Personally, I believe he should resign from his current post. Our beloved PM should handle this scandal well and unlike Rafidah's case - keep quiet, act as if nothing happens.
Well, hopefully the police will be able to find the culprit behind this scandal soon because I seriously condemning the intrusion of someone's private life, what more someone's sex life.
UPDATED: And so Chua resigned from all his party and government posts with immediate effect. Now the focus can be totally on finding out the culprit behind the sex tape. And finally the sex tape has surfaced in the blogosphere.
Voicing out my opinion about politics in my blog is wrong. What more I'm a pro government in this blogosphere where majority Malaysian bloggers are supporting the opposition parties. Sure kena bombard habis.
Now I just need to keep my mouth shut and just blog what I normally blog.
This year supposed to be Visit Malaysia Year and our 50th Independence. However, it seems that the people in this country no longer respect that.
Few weeks ago, the opposition party took over the street and barely a month after that, the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) who said to be representing the entire Indian community protest in the street of Jalan Ampang blamed the British government for their poor economic status in this country.
After a series of roadblocks in the past couple of days in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya, which caused inconvenience for the public road users, the rally still continues with over ten thousands of Indians joined the protest while I'm still soundly asleep.
To be honest, demanding for trillions of dollars and carrying banners that says "We Want Our Right" is rather inappropriate or should I say rather late. Why waited for 50 years only to stand up for their right? What about the other ethnic group (read Chinese) whom their great grandparents migrate to Malaya penniless and without the support from the British government and yet managed to build their economic status here from scratch? And let's not forget, we have a lot of successful Indians in our community which a lot of them are well respected.
Please don't spoil a happy Sunday and the peace in this country which the rest of us enjoy all this years.
To be honest, I love Sanjaya the first time I saw him at the American Idol audition. I loved him even more when he showed his love for his sister as soon as he knew his sister didn't made it to the next round at Hollywood audition.
If you read the forum at the American Idol website, you knew he was the most popular guy until Antonella Barba case was exposed. Barba didn't lasted long in the show but Sanjaya fame continues to rise not because of his talent but his personality and hairdo.
The rating of the show continues to fall but I don't think anyone should blame Sanjaya. The show is bland: Melinda Doolittle and Lakisha Jones are flawless even Simon didn't know what to comment anymore, Ryan Seacrest and Simon and their homophobic jokes, Randy Jackson and his same ol' "It was a little bit too pitchy for me" comment and Paula, I don't even want to talk about her.
The American Idol show is now depending on Sanjaya for publicity. I don't watch the show as regularly as I did before. I just tune in because I want to see if he performs really bad that week and I don't want to miss the moment if he's voted off. But hey, there are other contestants like Phil Stacey and Haley Scarnato who are far worse than Sanjaya who should be voted off first but they continue to stay on.
Going into my main point, people like Gina Glocksen, Chris Sligh and my favourite Stephanie Edwards are the victims of the voting system. I have long disagree with this so-called democratic approach to find a talented singer. We didn't make a mistake the first time when we decided that Jaclyn Victor is the well-deserved winner of Malaysian Idol. But look at what happened to Malaysian Idol in season 2.
Another significant weakness of the voting system was shown in Akademi Fantasia. Mawi is not my favourite contestant in AF3 but this man deserves to win because he's really popular. But what happened to other contestants in the same batch with him? The huge gap between Mawi and his fellow friends was very demotivating because you know you did your best and received applause from judges but you will never be able to match the popularity of Mawi even though he made mistakes like forgetting lyrics, sang out of tune or received bad reviews from the judges.
Once I heard that some contestants from Blast Off spent thousands of ringgit to ensure they will go far in the competition. Another contestant in Astro Talent Quest not only won the competition through the voting system but also represented Malaysia in a TVB8 singing contest and won the most sms votes despite his lack of popularity and losing in the singing contest judged by Hong Kong celebrities.
To me the voting system is a total rip off of viewers money because for each vote, you are paying like 50 sen or 65 sen. And now Akademi Fantasia is introducing Afundi Sakan whereby viewers can place 3 or 5 votes with each call. What is so democratic about the system?
The moral of the story: the voting system in reality shows is the symbol of the democratic world we live in. Look at the suffering world around us. The influential and rich will always win or have better advantage than those who doesn't. But since we accepted the system, we made decisions on who becoming our leaders (whether you vote them or not) and hence we will have to bear the consequences of our own action.
When I first started blogging, I would sometimes blogged about the government whether in a positive or negative way. I would also read blogs written by the opposition parties not because I'm interest in their propaganda but mainly because I wanted to know what's not debated in the local newspapers and tv news.
At first I enjoyed reading their blogs. However, after some time I told myself not to read anymore because I was getting sicked of their criticisms. When one of the opposition party leader criticized the banners in UM (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about), I was pissed off by their negativity and told myself not to read their blogs again.
Yes, I'm a pro government but I'm also a rational citizen and voter. So when recently the Tourism Ministry labelled women bloggers as liars I condemned his remark too. If you have been reading the papers in these couple of days, you would not appreciate the comments (perhaps I should use the word 'attacks') by the Johor Bahru MP and Hulu Langat MP too.
Instead of making enemy with Malaysian bloggers, I suggest the government to start learning about the blogosphere and find ways to seek opportunity and gain support from bloggers instead. Many of us are more interested in learning how to make money online and discussing about the latest happenings and personal lives rather than criticizing the government. At least I am. And most of the bloggers in my community too.
I told myself I'm not going to blog about politics anymore. But I felt guilty if I do not say something about Dr M vs Pak Lah issue.
I'm a pro-government and will always be. At the same time I also support leaders who are bold enough to come forward and enlighten the government. And Dr M is one of the very few people. I'm totally agree with Dr M when he said that Pak Lah has dismantle many of his projects. However, isn't that what happen to most of our government policies and projects in the past, too? Whenever a new minister takes over the leadership role, old policies will be abolished and new policies will be introduced to the rakyat.
However, there is one thing that the government and rakyat should never forget, Dr M's Vision 2020. Ever since Pak Lah take over the PM role, we are almost forgotten that the vision ever exists. Pak Lah and his ministers never ever really mentioned about Vision 2020, except during the recent Ninth Malaysia Plan.
We are not focusing towards our goal anymore. We only worry about tomorrow, if the government will ever raised the fuel price, tax or electricity rates. Pak Lah said we will focus on the Ninth Malaysia Plan, but trust me, most of us are not well-informed of the plan. And how about the 4.8% inflation rate? Since we are expecting a higher electricity rate this month, the the inflation rate will definitely increased to more than 5%. Are we just going to sit and wait or the government is going to do something about it? We no longer have short term solutions and long term goals.
I want to see something concrete being done by the government and not focusing on less important thing like anti-smoking or budi bahasa campaigns. Solve the AP issue, explain the scrapped bridge to Singapore project, inflation issue, improve national sports, etc. Your ministers said they are behind you back, so make them help you to solve the many issues facing by our country now. Also let us know your vision.
I've been a regular reader of Kit Siang's blog ever since he started one in August. Although I'm a pro-government, I think his blog is very informative and sometimes rather controversial. In fact I do buy some of his ideas and comments based on his intelligent arguments. However there are also times when I felt his arguments are merely his own propaganda.
Whatever it is, there is no doubt that the blogosphere is a good place for politicians to buy votes and gain support from the public. How I wish local MPs or MCA leaders will start their own blogs too so that I can slam them back with complaints. Maybe they don't need a blog because there is nothing to mention about.
I rarely follow up closely with the UMNO general assembly. But this year is slightly different. No, not because of Rafidah Aziz and her AP issue that I'm interested in but rather on the educational issues often debated by UMNO delegates. However, I have nothing to comment about education as I am very satisfy that our PM strongly support meritocracy.
I admire the spirit in UMNO leaders who fight effortlessly for the betterment of their people. While they are chanting Hidup Melayu and Pak Lah addresses his speech, A Giant Step for the Malays, I am asking what can MCA do for the chinese community.
I do not see any convincing action plans by the MCA leaders. I don't even see where is our direction and where the chinese community is 15 years from now. When I read the papers, all I see was their concern in winning election.
Where do the chinese community should go from here? I doubt I can get the answer.
The barbaric act of terrorism happened in the western world last week and the Islamic world leaders do nothing except sending condolences to Blair and the Londoners and condemn the sinful act. That's it!
Perhaps the Islamic world think that this is not happening at their own backyard and it is better for them to mind their own internal issues.
However, I believe it is the time for the Islamic world leaders to own the responsibility. They should stand up, unveil the root cause and fight against terrorism that tarnish the image of Islam. Yes, terrorism has no nothing to do with religion but the world is not seeing it that way. Islamic world leaders should list terrorism as their top agenda, create a strong action plan and start to educate the world that terrorism is the no. 1 enemy of Islam.
Don't wait for Bush or Blair to take the matter into their own hands as it will only create more conflicts and prejudices against Islam.
Yesterday, our PM launched PUTERA UMNO in Malacca. The person behind this idea is none other than the head of PEMUDA himself, Datuk Hishamuddin. So why there is PUTERA when there's already PEMUDA in the first place? Probably it's because these guys doesn't want to lost out to WANITA and PUTERI UMNO.
PUTERA is for young men aged between 18-25. The purpose of PUTERA is to encourage young people to involve themselves in healthy activities through association. Come to think of it again, PUTERA is political based and most of these young men are still studying in in colleges or universities. There are many positive activities these young men can relate themselves to such as PALAPES, Rakan Muda, etc, but why politics? I thought students are not supposed to involve themselves in politics especially with the opposition parties? And now the government is promoting PUTERA. Isn't it contradicting?
Thanks to CUEPACS and now it's a dream come true for the civil servants to work 5 days a week starting July 1. I'm not really against the civil servants (no I don't envy them) just because most of us including myself work like a dog in the private sectors. I'm viewing this in a perspective of a taxpayer.
Each year CUEPACS just can't stop asking for more. Bonuses, increments, better benefits, shorter working hours/day, etc. Everyday we have to deal with the people of the servicing department and yet, they never increase the standard of the services. We talk about our teenagers having to go through the National Service to build their characters. And I suggest the government department have all the civil servants to go for a boot camp to build their character as well.
Instead of working selamba (as if there are no long queues waiting for them), going for breakfast and tea break and no teamwork (if an officer is away for a break or watever reason, don't expect her colleague will take over and attend you), civil servants should show more enthusiasm and responsibilities in their job. I don't mean to sound racist (I'm not one) but I've even seen the non-Malays are not proactive and just mind their own business just to fit in to the group (Rule #1 for non-Malay working with the government: Don't pandai-pandai want to show off that you are hardworking).
Whatever it is, the 5 days work is going to be a reality. I just hope our beloved PM will emphasize more on the productivity and upgrade the standard of the servicing departments within the government. By increasing the working hours from 8 hours to 8 1/2 hours definitely will not increase productivity. Again, I really hope CUEPACS will not fight for 4 working days (so that the civil servants can off on Friday) in the future because that will definitely decrease the productivity of the country.
Despite complaints over inflation, increased of crime rates and ethnic tension, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced the dissolution of the national parliament.
