It’s a peaceful nomination day on Feb 24.
BN got a head start as expected, winning seven of the 222 parliamentary seats and two of the 505 state seats without contest.
The surprise of the day probably belongs to PAS’s Wan Ubaidah Omar, who retained the Kijang state seat (Kelantan) after BN’s challenger was disqualified for bankruptcy… a rare unopposed win for non-BN parties.
Batu Gajah incumbent MP Fong Po Kuan has decided to retract her earlier decision to not defend her seat at the 12th General Election.
While the DAP and Fong’s supporters are singing their joy… I have different opinion about this; this is simply a huge joke from my point of view. I don’t like people who flip-flop with their decisions, and I believe I am not the only one.
People might argue that Po Kuan actually shows that she is willing to listen to the plea of her supporters, which should be respectable… but shouldn’t she be gathering the opinions BEFORE she made the decision to quit?
Her decision to u-turn might be a good thing for DAP and the people, but if there were actually rooms for her to change her mind, shouldn’t she be thinking extra carefully before making the first call?
Did she chat with the party leaders before calling it quits? Was it the last or only option she had back then? Whom had she consulted before making the call? Did she even had a good reason to quit at the first place?
If you are working in a corporate, and one of your colleague decided to quit and then retracted his/her call… you would know that this kind of gimmick is not generally popular. Most people would still give a “welcome back” greeting, but only a few really meant it.
Political field should see no exception… what she did was simply immature. She did apologised for this, but damage has already been done, for both Fong Po Kuan and DAP. Questions are, how bad the damage is, and how forgiving Batu Gajah’s voters are?
Malaysian bloggers and opposition party leaders are one sided in calling Samy Vellu to quit from the coming election (and probably from all his political posts as well)… but is Samy Vellu really that unwanted by the Indian and Malaysian community?
The Hindraf rally (and post mortem events) is a clear indication that there are serious discontent among the Indians about Samy’s leadership. There are also bloggers’ reports that Samy was being booed and insulted in various events that he attended in the past few months.
Thing is… can Hindraf and some others represent the majority voices of the Hindus or Indians? There are still large group of Indians (and non Indians) that have been silence about Hindraf and recent development about the Indian community… and we can never assume anything about what they are thinking.
Besides, those people who constantly claimed that Samy Vellu is unwanted probably have not been to Sungai Siput before… as far as I know, Sungai Siput is one of the best maintained areas in Perak, and Samy (and his representatives) has been very responsive to the community issues in the zone.
Samy is unwanted only if he can’t win at his stronghold at the end of the election day… else, it probably shows that he still has his influence after all, and that the silent majority still has some fate or hope for the MIC leader.
Let the voters decide.
Batu Gajah Member of Parliament, Fong Po Kuan has throw a bomb on DAP’s camp on last Saturday (Feb 16), announcing that she won’t be contesting for the upcoming election.
Fong didn’t state the reason for her decision, but in an email sent to DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, which was distributed during Saturday’s press conference… she mentioned that the development of internal party events in DAP Perak over the last few years has made it impossible for her to continue serving effectively, efficiently and wholeheartedly.
The public are holding mixed response about her decision. While her supporters are trying to persuade her to change her decision, some quarters are questioning her maturity to announce her decision when the General Election is in a matter of days.
Personally, I think we would have to respect Fong’s decision. Selfishness is not a question here, she is entitled to make the best decision for her personal interest rather than for the mass… it is just being human.
Off course it would be great if she could have find a better timing to announce her decision, perhaps a few months earlier… but it could be that she has just made up her mind recently. We can’t really tell without knowing the real situation.
On side note, DAP should just let go of this issue and move on. Forget about persuading Fong to rethink her decision… she already made the call, and it probably would show more immaturity if she decides to flip-flop in the end.
Besides, giving too much importance to Fong actually exposed that DAP might be lacking in quality candidates, which is probably a fact… but the DAP leaders certainly don’t need to endorse the weakness by over-focusing on getting back Fong.
My best wishes to Fong Po Kuan for her future endeavour, and hope that DAP could find a good candidate to replace the void.
[Update Feb 22] Fong retracted her decision and will contest in coming election.
ESPN has apologised to Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) for displaying the wrong FAM logo on Feb 13 during a live telephone call to FAM secretary-general Datuk Azzuddin Ahmad.
The parodied FAM logo
During the Sportscenter Asia broadcast on Wednesday, ESPN showed a parodied-logo instead of the official FAM logo.
It’s reported by Utusan that the staff from Sportscenter Asia had searched for the logo online and had mistaken that as the official logo.
I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw the ‘logo’ on Jeffrey’s website… how on earth could the ESPN staff mistaken this as the official logo? The parodi-ness is blatantly obvious.
FAM website under construction &
Malaysia web development
FAM website has been under construction for quite some time, and the ESPN staff obviously couldn’t get the logo from an official source. The website would only be back by March 1 according to Azzuddin.
It is a shame that FAM’s website has to be taken down for weeks for reconstruction. This actually exposed a serious issue on how incompetence some web development companies in Malaysia are and how some Malaysian websites are poorly managed.
I don’t count myself as an IT expert, but if I were to handle the FAM’s website reconstruction, the website shouldn’t be down for more than 2 hours; worst case scenario… 48 max. All the contents building and testing should have been done without taking down the site.
I don’t want to bore you with the technicalities… another prime example of poor website management can be seen from the Parliament official website where Chua Soi Lek is still listed as our health minister despite resigning for almost 2 months following his sex scandal.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has announced the dissolution of Parliament to pave the way for the 12th general election. The announcement was made at a media conference at his office in Putrajaya and telecast live on RTM1 at noon on Feb 13.
The dissolution of this Parliament was made 15 months before the expiry of its five-year term on May 16, 2009. According to the Election Commission (EC), the country has 10.9 million voters including about 700,000 new voters who can vote in the upcoming elections. [Bernama]
[Update Feb 14] Polling is on March 8, while nomination on Feb 24.
VK Lingam showed who’s the boss in a landmark defamation suit more than a decade ago…
From Bernama…
The judgement in a civil suit awarding RM10 million in damages to corporate figure Tan Sri Vincent Tan Chee Yioun was written by lawyer Datuk V. K. Lingam, the Royal Commission of Inquiry was told today.
Lingam’s former secretary, L. G. Jayanthi said it was subsequently incorporated as the official judgment of the then High Court judge, Datuk Mokhtar Sidin who heard the case.
She made this revelation in her statutory declaration which was produced at the inquiry, affirming that the contents of her statutory declaration were true.
Jayanthi, 45, said that between November and early December 1994, she and two other colleagues, Sumanti Jaaman and Jamilah Abdul Rahman who also worked as secretaries for Lingam, were ‘detained’ by their boss to type a confidential document.
She later discovered that the purpose of their ‘detention’ was to prepare and type a judgement in relation to a civil suit brought by Tan against seven defendants, namely Haji Hassan Hamzah, Saw Eng Lim, the late M.G.G Pillai, V. Thavanesan, Dr Barjoyai Bardai, Media Printext (M) Sdn Bhd and Ling Wah Press Sdn Bhd.
“Lingam was dictating from some handwritten notes, the draft judgment in that case, for Sumanti to type.
“I was seated somewhere in the vicinity of the office and every now and then, Lingam would order me to get various reported judgements from the library to be incorporated in the judgment,” said Jayanthi, adding that the lawyer completed dictating the full judgement about 3am, before the judgement was printed out for Lingam to read.
“Lingam then corrected in red ink on certain pages of the draft judgement such as pages 3,7,9,19,24,28,32,35,39,40,42. Sumanti then did the corrections accordingly, and made a copy of the said draft judgment in a floppy disk which was to be given to Justice Datuk Mokhtar Sidin by Lingam,” she said.
Jayanthi said she later discovered that the judgment as was written by Lingam, was fully incorporated as the official judgment of the said judge.
“I must stress here, that when Lingam was dictating the judgment that night, he was aided by his brother, Datuk V.Sivaparanjothi and Adam Bachek and W. Satchithanandan.
“I have kept Lingam’s handwritten corrections of the draft judgement in my possession until handing it over, together with the corresponding formal judgement, to lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah on the same date which I handed over the other exhibits,” she added.
Questioned by conducting officer Datuk Nordin Hassan on why she kept all documents and photographs of the holiday trip of Lingam and former chief justice Tun Eusoff Chin, Jayanthi said before she resigned from the firm, Satchithanandan advised her to keep all the document because according to Satchithanandan, Lingam was a dangerous and vengeful person.
Jayanthi also revealed that she had booked the flight tickets for both Lingam and former chief justice Eusoff Chin for their infamous New Zealand holiday in late 1994, which Lingam and Eusoff Chin have claimed that they met coincidentally.