Posted in Politics & government on May 6th, 2013 1 Comment »
It was a Pyrrhic victory for Barisan Nasional and Najib Razak’s post-election speech called for national reconciliation. That is perhaps admittance that his 1Malaysia policy has not been as successful as he had hoped. It is all a nice, humble speech but his call for national reconciliation suffers from credibility crisis. Soon after, various UMNO [...]
Posted in Books & printed materials, Politics & government on March 24th, 2012 1 Comment »
I suppose there are times when there is a piece of news that the mainstream media rather not report, but it has to because it is still a news organization and the readers do want to know. If the news organization wants to keep its readers loyal, the readers have to be served lest they [...]
Posted in Politics & government on December 20th, 2011 No Comments »
I have been using the word farce all too often these days. I find this is really bad because it suggests that my vocabulary is limited. I admit, it is limited to simple words but to demonstrate it in the public so openly, especially for a person who regularly pretends to write columns in both [...]
Posted in Politics & government on June 16th, 2011 1 Comment »
If one had opined that PAS was more of a centrist than UMNO 10 years ago, nobody would have believed it. It would have been an outrageous opinion. Yet today, it is no longer so foreign a prospect. The recently concluded PAS internal election is the latest evidence of the party’s march to the centre. [...]
Posted in Politics & government on February 2nd, 2011 4 Comments »
There is speculation that there will be a general election in the near future. Political parties across the board are shifting gears, as if they needed to after all the by-elections. I had a conversation with a friend several months back about the general election. Being away from Malaysia, I caught up with him, among [...]
Posted in Liberty, Politics & government, Society on August 29th, 2010 2 Comments »
Opinions abound and they are bound to hit some sensitive nerve. When it hits, there goes another police report. There goes another demand for an ISA arrest. The right-wing group Perkasa has been at it for some time now, calling for the arrest of various individuals for challenging what the group considers as Malay rights. [...]
Posted in Politics & government, Society on January 17th, 2010 No Comments »
How many times have we heard the statement that if so and so did not exist, certain problems would go away? Specifically, one side would blame UMNO and Barisan Nasional for racial and religious problems in Malaysia, while the other would blame PKR and its allies for the instability in the country. The truth is [...]
Posted in Politics & government, Sci-fi on October 14th, 2009 2 Comments »
I am unsure if I am recalling this accurately but at back in my mind, amid cobwebs of vague memories, I somehow remember reading an Asimov’s short story in a stuffy old library at the Malay College in Kuala Kangsar. You will forgive me if it is not even Asimov’s writing. It may well be [...]
Posted in Politics & government on October 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
Much has been said about the candidacy of Isa Abdul Samad for the Bagan Pinang by-election in Negeri Sembilan. I wonder how much marginal originality I can write after all that. Yet, I am writing about it. This piece is not so much to attack Isa Abdul Samad. Others have done so and I will [...]
Posted in Politics & government on August 26th, 2009 No Comments »
A contest between PAS and UMNO within conservative Malay settings is more likely than not a race to the bottom. It inevitably degenerates into a deplorable inquiry regarding which between the two political parties is more Islamic than the other. While doing so, PAS effectively resorts to exclusive politics that is clearly inconsistent to its assertion [...]
The name is Hafiz Noor Shams.
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