Tag: Utusan Malaysia

Categories
Politics & government

[1098] Mengenai melatah tentang pembubaran Parlimen

Jika semalam Utusan Malaysia, meminjam frasa The Sensintrovert, cuba menyemarakkan nafsu politikus-politikus di seluruh negara, Timbalan Perdana Menteri Najib Razak melalui Utusan dan juga saluran-saluran Media Prima memadamkan keghairahan tersebut. Bak kata Mat Salleh, TPM “poured cold water” ke atas perkara yang secara langsung menyentuh kemungkinan pilihanraya di dalam tahun 2007.

Di muka hadapan Mingguan Malaysia hari ini:

Scanned by Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Copyrights by Utusan Malaysia. Fair use.

Lebih lanjut lagi:

KUALA LUMPUR 17 Feb. — Banyak pihak menganggap masih terlalu awal untuk kerajaan membubarkan Parlimen bagi memberi laluan kepada pilihan raya umum walaupun petunjuk ekonomi pada masa ini berada pada kedudukan memberangsangkan.

Mereka berpendapat kerajaan tidak perlu tergesa-gesa kerana negara baru sahaja selesai mengadakan pilihan raya umum pada tahun 2004 dan mandat itu hanya berakhir pada April 2009.

Adalah rugi bagi kerajaan membubarkan Parlimen dalam tempoh singkat selepas hanya separuh penggal memegang amanah rakyat selain menurut mereka, Barisan Nasional (BN) tidak berada dalam keadaan terdesak untuk mengadakan pilihan raya.

Saya berpendapat bahawa Utusan lebih merupakan suara orang-orang Melayu daripada orang-orang UMNO. Mungkin ramai akan menyangkal pendapat itu tetapi kegagalan pengambungan di antara Utusan dan New Straits Times akibat penentangan hebat orang-orang Utusan dan ahli-ahli politik Melayu (yang juga ahli-ahli UMNO) terhadap kehendak Perdana Menteri menyakinkan saya tentang kedudukan Utusan.

Oleh itu, mengambil kira kedua-dua laporan mengenai pilihanraya yang cuba membawa maksud yang berbeza, mungkin sedang berlaku satu perdebatan hebat di dalam UMNO tentang pilihanraya. Atau, mungkin sekali, orang-orang Melayu sudah mula bosan dengan UMNO.

Atau mungkin Utusan hanya mengulangi apa yang Reuters telah sampaikan.

Walau bagaimanapun, saya teringat slogan pasukan yang berkempen untuk William Jefferson Clinton untuk pilihanraya Amerika Syarikat 1992. Slogan itu berbunyi, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Clinton kemudiannya dipilih oleh rakyat Amerika untuk menjadi Presiden yang ke-42 negara tersebut.

Tiada siapa patut lupa akan kata-kata itu.

Categories
Environment Science & technology

[1059] Of global warming on the front page of The Star

Last December, Utusan Malaysia had global warming as the subject of its front page. Today, it is The Star:

Copyrights by The Star. Scanned by Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Fair use.

More:

BANGI: The warming of the Indian Ocean in the past 20 to 30 years — brought about by global warming — could have played a part in the unusual weather which caused flooding in Johor and other parts of Malaysia.

Climate expert Associate Prof Dr Fredolin Tangang said the rising temperature of the Indian Ocean, brought about by a series of events starting with the melting of ice in Greenland, could have caused the unusual and adverse weather conditions in South-East Asia.

An oceanographer based at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, Dr Fredolin said the Indian Ocean was cooled by a natural phenomenon which oceanographers labelled the “Great Ocean Conveyor Belt.”

The conveyor belt or thermohaline circulation is featured in The Day After Tomorrow and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. The Day After Tomorrow is fiction of course. A great fiction, that is.

While we talk about flood, El Niño might have finally shown its head:

SHAH ALAM: There may be dry months ahead for Selangor.

Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir Toyo said weather reports indicated that the state might face a drought caused by the El Nino phenomenon from February to August.

El Niño was declared official as early as September last year. Despite the massive flood-causing torrential rain, El Niño is supposed to bring in drier season to Southeast Asia. I am not a climatologist but I do try to keep up with any event that has the slightest link to global warming and climate change at large. It is because of the contradiction — heavy rain in spite of the effect of El Niño — that I posed this question: is the record rainfall in Johor part of a larger trend?

I hope the question will be answered by a report commissioned a few weeks ago by the government.

And then of course, on February 2, the publication of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which will discuss global warming from a global perspective.

Categories
Environment

[1017] Of global warming on the front page of Utusan

Today is the first time in my life I see a mainstream Malaysian newspaper highlights global warming on its front page:

Screenshots of Utusan Malaysia. Fair use. Scanned by Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams.

“Kesan pemanasan global” means “the effect of global warming”. I’d prefer the headline to be retitled “Kesan pemanasan sedunia” but that’s another issue altogether. For the article, it’s accessible through Utusan.com.my:

KUALA LUMPUR 22 Dis. — Saintis tempatan percaya perubahan cuaca sekarang disebabkan oleh fenomena pemanasan global, sekali gus memberi kesan ketara termasuk kejadian banjir di negara ini.

Pengarah Pusat Perubahan Cuaca Universiti Malaya (UMCCA), Profesor Khairul Maini Osman Salleh berkata, fenomena itu telah mempergiatkan proses-proses cuaca sehingga menyebabkan berlaku pelbagai perubahan yang mendadak dalam tempoh masa yang tidak menentu.

Very rough translation:

KUALA LUMPUR Dec. 22 – A local scientist believes that global warming is the cause behind the changing of the climate which is producing profound effects such as the current flooding in this country.

Professor Khairul Maini Osman Salleh, the direction of University of Malaya Climate Change Agency (?) (UMCCA) said the phenomena is catalyzing climatology processes to cause unpredictable drastic changes.

Of note, the article also cites on article on global warming at Wikipedia. And a few days, I wondered the connection between climate change and the magnitude of disaster hitting Malaysia nowadays. For your information too, the IPCC is expected to make a formal connection between climate change and stronger storms.

What unfortunate however is the tendency of the article to make the United States of a scapegoat:

Menurut Khairul Maini lagi, berbanding negara-negara maju yang lain terutamanya Amerika Syarikat (AS), negara ini mengambil berat mengenai fenomena pemanasan global dengan menyokong Konvensyen Kyoto mengenai Kesan Rumah Hijau.

Translation:

According to Khairul Maini, compared to other developed countries especially the United States, this country (Malaysia) places great concern for the global warming by supporting the Kyoto Procotol.

This is a disgusting statement. Not that I’m defending the United States but the statement on how Malaysia cares more about global warming, or climate change in general, than developed countries is untrue on general. Europe, the EU in particular, is the leading supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Among the developed countries, only the US and Australia that have refused to rectify the Protocol.

If it’s true Malaysia cares more about global warming than other developed countries, then Malaysia should commit itself to the responsibilities of parties to Annex 1 of the Kyoto Protocol, even if Malaysia is not required to be a party, just like a few other developing nations. Furthermore, what has Malaysia done to reduce its emission? What is the emissions standard of Malaysian vehicles? Fuel efficiency? Suffice to say, it does not come close to the efficiency level developed countries are accustomed to. So, it’s outrageous to claim Malaysia cares more about global warming than other developed countries.

According to Wikipedia, in 2003, Malaysia produced 6.4 metric tons of carbon per capita; more than 150,000 metric tons in total. Observe how Malaysia fares in carbon emissions per capita in 2003 among countries of the world, keeping in mind the ridiculous “Malaysia cares more about global warming than developed countries” statement:

Public domain. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CO2_per_capita_per_country.png

Nevertheless, this article is important because Utusan Malaysia is a major Malay mainstream paper. The policymakers of this country read it and it does affect the politics of this country, whatever the magnitude might be.

People, make way for green politics. It’s one of those politics that will cut through narrow and outdated communal politics, be its by ethnicity or religion.