PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim has rejected the ongoing ‘contest’ between BN and Pakatan Rakyat to label the other as treasonous.
“I agree with you (that this is regressive politics) and I do not share the view (of taking up that sort of argument),” he said today in Shah Alam.
“The issue debated was that of the (Selangor) constitution and the position of the rulers, so we should emphasis on whether this amendment will strengthen or weaken the spirit of the constitution.”
However, he said, he could not blame his Pakatan colleagues for taking up this argument as the label was first hurled by Umno.
“Umno called us treasonous, traitors to Malays and lackeys to the Chinese so (Pakatan leaders) were influenced to sometimes answer with the same language. But if it were me, I would suggest that they answer based on facts of the 1993 amendment and speeches according to the Hansard.
“The Umno leadership seems to be belittling the ability of the rulers to think for themselves, and I don’t think the rulers can be dragged in just like that.”
Asked if Pakatan would make another bid to return the power to appoint the state secretary, financial officer and legal advisor to the sultan as per the pre-1993 Selangor constitution, Anwar said: “Our position … is that we respect their (the rulers’) position as guaranteed and enshrined in the constitution, as we are a constitutional monarchy.
“The power and the authority rests with the people, the mandate is given by the people… (but) there is point having the rulers if they are not consulted as per the 1993 amendment.”
Interestingly, Anwar admitted that, in 1993, he had headed Umno’s delegation to negotiate with then Agong Sultan Azlan Shah who represented the Council of Rulers on the matter.
“I know what happened and I don’t think the Rulers forgot their experience, it’s recent history,” he said.
Debate
On another issue, he renewed his call to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to debate on the economy, particularly on Pakatan’s 100-day reform plan.
However, he said, if the PM insists on attacking him on a personal level, he is willing to take him on.
“He doesn’t reject my call (for the debate) but he says I will fall sick, or talks about londeh (slipping down the pants)…I don’t want to entertain these personal issues, I want to talk about the economy.
“But if he insists, I am ready, even the sodomy case. I can answer and I want to bring up the issue of graft, murder, stealing someone else’s wife, Port Dickson, all that can be brought up too.”
He said 
personal attacks seem to be the modus operandi of BN, as evident in the attacks on PAS’ Tenang by-election candidate Normala Sudirman (right) for choosing not to shake hands with males for religious reasons.
personal attacks seem to be the modus operandi of BN, as evident in the attacks on PAS’ Tenang by-election candidate Normala Sudirman (right) for choosing not to shake hands with males for religious reasons.“This is not the issue, the issues are good governance, graft, rising cost of living, Pakatan and BN policies and the ability and values of the candidates.
“For (MCA president Dr) Chua Soi Lek to lead the personal attacks is absolutely odd. It’s pathetic… that’s too strong a term, but for Chua to make personal attacks? What has happened to discourse in this country? Confine it to policy. But that seems to be the pattern.”
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‘Don’t pass the buck’
Anwar renewed his call for the government and agencies including Bank Negara, the Securities Commission, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and the police force to probe why Malaysia was recorded to have about RM900 billion in funds illicitly flowing out of the country from 2000-2008.
Malaysia has been ranked the world’s no 5 by Washington-based Global Financial Integrity in illicit outflows.
“Do a detailed study, don’t just brush it aside. This is something for the finance minister to answer, not something to just pass on to Bank Negara.
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“RM10 billion to RM20 billion in leaks is huge but RM200 billion leaking out (in 2008)… to defend it would be atrocious.”
Last Friday, Najib had refused to comment on the matter asking reporters to check instead with Bank Negara.
The central bank has informed that it will release an official response soon.
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Anwar was in Shah Alam after the first of the monthly luncheon talks organised in his capacity as the Selangor government financial advisor.
Today, Malaysian Institute of Economic Research chief Zakariah Abdul Rashid spoke on the issue of subsidies, saying that the rolling back of subsidies on essential goods would hit low-income households the hardest
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.
.He added that the present lot of subsidies are not targeted and need to be rationalised, but this also means pouring the savings into building a social safety net, improving public transportation and public healthcare services.
Any Menteri Besar who fails to gain the support of the majority in the State Assembly sitting should step down, said Deputy Prime Minister
He said the failure to gain the majority support showed the poor credibility of the Menteri Besar concerned.
Most politicians are self serving. Power comes with it immense wealth. That is why there are wars and cruelty. People will only act on politicians when they are hungry like what you see in Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Sudan and more soon!
Sooooo…. to prevent politicians from dominating the country economy we need multi party system. Not that it is perfect, take an example from US, Greece and Ireland or any other country with multi party syatem, at least the abuse and corruption will hopefully be reduced.
BN with UMNO as the big brother is so experienced with corruption and abuse, being in power after Britain lost their “gold mine” here, have ruled ever since! We need a change badly.
Sooooo…. to prevent politicians from dominating the country economy we need multi party system. Not that it is perfect, take an example from US, Greece and Ireland or any other country with multi party syatem, at least the abuse and corruption will hopefully be reduced.
BN with UMNO as the big brother is so experienced with corruption and abuse, being in power after Britain lost their “gold mine” here, have ruled ever since! We need a change badly.
Tan Sri Khalid – Malaysians admire your style of Government and leadership – calm – cool and collected. PR has gained the confidence of the Rakyat. Make sure that PR field
young graduates who are dynamic in the coming l3th.General Electiion. We are aware that at the moment you do have many multi-racial young graduates in PR.
We need more of them. Be also careful in their choice as there may be some in wolves in sheeps clothing. Do not let this sort of wolves into the PR Government.
Tan Sri Khalid – You did a Great Job – We admire. Keep up your good work for all Malaysians.
young graduates who are dynamic in the coming l3th.General Electiion. We are aware that at the moment you do have many multi-racial young graduates in PR.
We need more of them. Be also careful in their choice as there may be some in wolves in sheeps clothing. Do not let this sort of wolves into the PR Government.
Tan Sri Khalid – You did a Great Job – We admire. Keep up your good work for all Malaysians.
WINNERS
Pakatan Rakyat
Despite not being able to obtain power of appointment for Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, it will be able to turn the tables on Umno and accuse them of being “derhaka” (treasonous) for not supporting a bill it said would grant the Sultan a constitutional role in the appointment of top state officers.
No more frogs Tan Sri Khalid has the solid backing of the PR’s 34 assemblymen
“But they will definitely make immediate political gains by exposing Umno’s hypocrisy as champions of the Malay rulers,” he added.
Look for PR, especially PKR, to make full use of the issue in the Tenang by-election campaign that concludes on January 30.
The Sultan
His Royal Highness became “inordinately exposed and … the subject of political scrutiny,” said opinion research expert Ibrahim Suffian from the Merdeka Center.
Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah had to become involved in the political row several times but made it very clear that the ruler is above politics and always neutral.
But analysts agree that with both PR and BN looking to position themselves as defenders of the Malay royalty, the Selangor palace has become more influential.
“By right, he (the Menteri Besar) should resign for failing to get the majority support of the State Assembly,” he said at a dialogue session during a dinner at the Main Hall of the Malaysian High Commission, here Tuesday night.
Responding to another question that there was too much ‘politicking’ in Malaysia to the extent that the interests of the people were neglected, Muhyiddin said this was brought about by the action of the opposition.
“We (the government) have to respond, otherwise people will say we are not doing anything,” he said.
Selangor, which held a special sitting of the State Legislative Assembly on Monday, failed to get the two-third majority to amend Article 52 (1) of the State Constitution 1959.
The motion to amend the state constitution, tabled by Selangor Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim, aimed to return the power to appoint the three Selangor top executive officers, namely the State Secretary, State Legal Advisor and the State Financial Officer to the Sultan of Selangor and the Menteri Besar.
– BERNAMA
A key resolution on the Israel-Palestine conflict is now before the UN Security Council. Largely echoing stated US policy, the resolution embraces negotiations, endorses the creation of a Palestinian state, and demands an immediate halt to Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But even though the resolution echoes US policy, President Obama is under pressure to veto the UN resolution from forces in Washington who want to protect the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
Can President Obama say no to this pressure? Yes, he can! Urge him to do so.
Prominent former US government officials, including Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Ambassador James Dobbins, have written to President Obama, urging him to instruct our Ambassador to the United Nations to vote yes on this initiative, noting that it echoes US policy.
It’s not an immutable law of the universe that the U.S. has to veto U.N. resolutions critical of Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Indeed, last year, the U.S. promised the Palestinians to “consider allowing UN Security Council condemnation of any significant new Israeli settlement activity,” the Guardian reported.
Some DC conventional wisdom suggests that there is no way politically that President Obama can fail to comply with any demand from the “Israel lobby” to veto the UN resolution.
But there are reasons in this case to doubt whether this conventional wisdom must necessarily be right.
The “Israel lobby” isn’t as internally unified on the question of Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank as it is on say, U.S. aid to Israel. A lot of folks who “support Israel” do not support the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, because it is obvious that there is a fundamental contradiction between Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and a peaceful resolution of the conflict. There is a choice to be made: settlement expansion or peace. We cannot have both.
There would be a real cost to a U.S. veto that would be higher today than in the past. There isn’t any credible excuse for a U.S. veto in the Security Council of the U.S.’ own position that can be sold internationally, and particularly in the Middle East, at a time when the U.S. is facing unprecedented challenges on a number of fronts. The arguments that have been used so far in Washington to try to justify a U.S. veto won’t wash internationally. The UN Security Council isn’t an “anti-Israel” venue – a venue where the U.S. has a veto won’t ever be “anti-Israel” in any meaningful sense of the term. Indeed, the key players in the Security Council look a lot like the key players in the “Quartet” that is supposedly overseeing the “peace process” – the U.S., the EU, Russia, and the U.N. And the purpose of the resolution isn’t to dodge negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians; it explicitly embraces them. The purpose is to try to make those negotiations meaningful by effectively imposing a parameter on them that all sides have already agreed to, but that the U.S. has failed to effectively enforce: a freeze on Israeli settlement expansion.
As Time Magazine noted last week, after Tunisia, Arab governments feel under greater pressure from “the Arab street.” This is not a time when the U.S. can rely on Arab governments to protect the U.S. government from contradictions in the U.S. position.
The leak of documents yesterday by Al Jazeera and the Guardian on the U.S.-led “peace process” expose that “process” as currently being a charade which is not leading towards a resolution of the conflict (in case there was anyone who still had any doubts about that.)
Here’s Tzipi Livni, then Israel’s foreign minister, in 2007:
At a west Jerusalem meeting in November 2007, [Livni] told [Ahmed Qureia, then senior Palestinian negotiator] that she believed Palestinians saw settlement building as meaning “Israel takes more land [so] that the Palestinian state will be impossible”; that “the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that is impossible, we already have the land and we cannot create the state”. She conceded that it had been “the policy of the government for a really long time”.At the end of 2007, though, “it is still the policy of some of the parties but not the government”.
Of course, the parties to which Livni then referred now are the Israeli government. And for the forseeable future, in the absence of effective outside pressure, “take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that is impossible, we already have the land and we cannot create the state” will continue to be the policy of the Israeli government.
All this is going to put more pressure on the pro-U.S. wing of the Palestinian leadership and the pro-U.S. Arab governments to demonstrate that they have something else going on besides the failed U.S.-led “peace process.” If the door to the UN Security Council is closed to them, that energy is going to go somewhere. It’s likely that alternative venues and channels for that energy are going to be much more disliked by the U.S. than the UN Security Council, where the U.S. holds a veto.
If the U.S. wants to keep governments in the region onside against Iran’s nuclear program, a U.S. veto in the Security Council of the U.S.’ own position on Israeli settlements is not going to help with that. On the contrary: a U.S. veto of its own position on Israeli settlement expansion is going to force U.S. allies in the region to put more distance between themselves and the U.S.
This is not a time when the U.S. can easily afford to take more hits politically in the region. The current U.S. gambit in Lebanon does not seem to be going well at the moment. It may well turn out that, as in the recent past, current efforts by the U.S. to reduce the influence of Hizbullah over the government in Lebanon will backfire by producing a government in Lebanon in which Hizbullah has even more influence than before. If this happens, it will make governments in the region even warier of being perceived as close to the U.S.
If the U.S. vetoes the U.N. resolution, it will signal to the region that the U.S. is incapable of meaningfully supporting international efforts for a just resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. A U.S. veto will embolden the most reactionary forces in Israel, which have been escalating their efforts to silence Israeli dissent against the occupation.
But if the U.S. supports the resolution, it will signal to the region that the U.S. is no longer determined to stand in the way of international efforts to promote a just resolution.
We have been in a situation like this before. In 2008, the right wing of the “Israel lobby” pushed the U.S. House to pass a resolution that essentially called for a U.S. naval blockade of Iran, which of course would be an act of war, although the resolution did not use those exact words. The DC conventional wisdom said that resolution would go through the House “like a hot knife through butter.” But it did not turn out to be so. When peace groups got activated, and it became an issue outside of the usual circles, many House Democrats took a second look, and decided that a resolution pushing the U.S. towards war with Iran was not just another resolution written by the “Israel lobby” for Congress to sign.
This could be like that. Because the draft UN Security Council resolution echoes stated U.S. policy, because the U.S.-led “peace process” is in a state of total collapse, because U.S. leadership in the region is facing unprecedented challenge, it’s not a no-brainer politically for the U.S. to veto. The international political price of a veto will be high, and the domestic political price for failing to veto is likely to be minimal – if this becomes an issue on which a broader public gets engaged.
This is a historic opportunity for President Obama to show leadership and back up the words of his speech in Cairo with deeds. Urge President Obama to support the UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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