TR EMERITUS

The momentum that Malaysia's new Premier Najib Razak had hoped to create came to an abrupt halt last night, after the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) suffered two heavy defeats in three by-elections. At both Bukit Gantang in Perak and Bukit Selambau in Kedah, the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) increased its majorities over the BN. The only silver lining for a dismal night for the BN was the fact that it easily retained control of its stronghold of Batang Ai in Sarawak, in effect meaning that the opposition had failed to live up to its boast to make inroads into East Malaysia. The results, which some have painted as a referendum on Datuk Seri Najib's rule, came just four days after he was sworn in as the country's sixth premier. They indicated that the BN has not been able to woo back voters in the peninsula after its huge losses in the 2008 general election. Mr Najib's charm offensive in the run-up to the polls also appeared to have had little effect on voters. He had talked about reforms and multi-racialism, released 13 people detained under the Internal Security Act, and also lifted the ban on two opposition papers. Mr Najib denied that these were election ploys. In any case, voters did not buy them. BN's most significant defeat was in Bukit Gantang. In the general election in March 2008, the opposition won with a majority of 1,566. Yesterday, it almost doubled its winning margin to 2,789, sweeping former Perak menteri besar Nizar Jamaluddin into parliament. It was a moral victory for the man who used to lead the PR state government, until four of its assemblymen defected and the BN capitalised on it by seizing power - a move that triggered much unhappiness among Malaysians. PR had lobbied for the state assembly to be dissolved and fresh polls held in the wake of the saga, but this was rejected by the Perak sultan. With fireworks lighting up the sky after his victory, Mr Nizar said that he plans to return to the sultan to request a dissolution again, to 'stabilise the political situation in Perak'. BN's Perak Menteri Besar Zambry Kadir, in his response to the poll result, however told Agence France-Presse that the ruling coalition had to 'work harder'. He claimed that Malay votes in Bukit Gantang had increased for his coalition but that support from the Chinese, comprising 27 per cent of the federal parliamentary constituency, 'fell sharply'. In Bukit Selambau, in Kedah, PR's S. Manikumar garnered 12,632 votes, beating BN's S. Ganesan who polled 10,229 votes. The majority of 2,403 was slightly higher than the 2,362 polled by the opposition in March last year. The presence of a record 13 independents, who garnered 1,326 votes between them, did not figure much in the final outcome. The loss for BN's candidate from the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) dealt another blow to the constituent party, whose candidates were heavily defeated at last year's national polls. BN's only victory yesterday came in Sarawak, where its candidate Malcolm Mussen won comfortably by a majority of 1,854 votes, polling 3,907 votes against Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) candidate Jawah Gerang's 2,053 votes. The figure was more than double the 806-vote majority BN got in the last state elections, and appeared to quash opposition Anwar Ibrahim's claims that the opposition had made inroads into the BN-dominated regions of East Malaysia. Dr P. Sivamurugan, senior lecturer of the Social Science Studies Centre at Universiti Sains Malaysia, said the results suggest a long hard road ahead for Mr Najib to win back voters. 'It is a clear signal that BN has to overhaul itself. They are saying they will change and help the people. But it has not been translated into action,' he said. Source: Straits Times  Read More →

We’ve all heard it before, haven’t we? – “We are living in a politically apathetic society.” Do we even care if a clone of Adolf Hitler happens to run for the PM's post in Singapore? Why should we even show the slightest interest in politics given the risk? Name me five cabinet ministers? There you see!  We are just plain apathetic aren’t we?  Or are we? Check this out article in TODAY an interview in ST with botak head Siew,  it says something about speaking out, but you should just work it through and see whether it makes sense - you see, I am not so sure, that it may be worth it - sounds like a great idea, like abstain from sex to promote longevity, but with trolls running around amok these days trying to sell the idea of backdoor online registration - just to promote the upcoming YP blog it goes some way to illustrate the gap between a good idea and the difficulties of how to past from the realm of theory to reality. Infact, all of us even shared with Darkness, we may want to throw it all in. Tell me, is this a local thing? Or is apathy like the bubonic plague spreading insidiously across every major city in the world, jading whole masses of people turning them into indifferent, ambivalent and door knob zombies? What does it really mean for us to live in the age of bochapness? Do you really want to know? According to a survey conducted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, apathy is on the rise.  Its not only restricted to Singapore. People  all over the world, it seems are tuning off en masse.  The facts speak for themselves. In the Harvard study involving 5.1 million respondents, 87% said information was lacking accounting for why they feel disenchanted about politics, so there you have it, it’s a fact, the youths these days are increasingly more jaded and disinterested about politics than previous generations. But let’s take a closer look – what’s really behind this wave of apathy? – are we all just skeptical of the current political process? Have we lost faith in our leaders and traditional role models? Has the spin machine that’s supposed to change the world run its course? What’s the real reason behind the morass? Or maybe it’s got something to do with the trends of our modern times? We all know technology is always fingered as the convenient scapegoat for everything from school shootings to why kids can’t even string a sentence without mangling it, after all to get to the seventh stage of Warcraft, the online virtual game, one needs to waste 29,934 aliens and a gun totting penguin, it’s a easy to draw analogies and even easier to believe technology is predation, permeating, coloring and defining our lives all to the greater detriment of scouring us and pushing out the good currency. Even sharpening and heightening our sense of apathy. Are blogs to blame for apathy? Is the incessant anti establishment heightening our sense of estrangement? Is it responsible for much of our apathy? Well, to be honest, It looks like it, online migration is nothing short of a mass exodus these days. In the past, the audience reading this on their computers would have been dismissed as nerds – these days if you’re not wired you’re a dodo bird. Yes folks, I am sure technology is the culprit, we all know that sucker whirled its way into every facet of our lives don’t we – that sly son of a bitch that hides in every mobile phone, blackberry and even in our seemingly innocent credit cards has been eroding away our collective consciousness of what’s really important and pertinent, no wonder we are all apathetic! Don’t believe me? Just look around. No I mean stop and look, don’t think about what’s going to happen in the future or the past, just focus on the present and in a while you will see what I mean. Do you see it? Apathy. Bingo! It’s starting to look like the Sci-Fi flick isn’t it? The invasion of the body snatchers – technology is starting to resemble mass hearing impairment as the vast majority of us these days sit in seclusion of our imperial cocoons comforted by our earpieces, you ignore me, I ignore you and the broader world can all go to hell. So why should we really care about the happenings in some dusty parliament where a bunch of old foggies in foot warmers are debating how many soldiers can fit on a pin head? An alien watching the going on of our age would probably agree with me, there’s something terribly wrong with our society – are we deep pan apathetic to the point of being comatose? What happened? Are politicians to blame? Didn’t they bracket this and that, to such a point whereby, none of us can talk about anything else except the weather? They stopped us from thinking didn’t they? They crossed the line, telling us all how to live our lives: go left, right, reverse, forward, up, down and can they really blame us now. If we are so terminally apathetic we even need to put our hands when we want to urinate? They are to blame aren’t they? And of course –we are blameless. As Melville said, “What do you expect when you pull a string, the puppet moves! You can hardly blame a puppet anymore than you can blame a sweep for sitting quietly without someone wielding it!” What’s the cost when we shut our eyes, ears and minds? The cost of living in an apathetic society has to be high even under the most forgiving considerations -  As it's conceivable for there to be such a thing as real three dimensional politics that embodies the content and not only the form - the social political discourse  needs to go through a power shift; from parliament to perhaps spilling out into the streets - it's this decoupling of our traditional sense of power that makes possible the whole idea of a broader political discourse that can be nourished, renewed and fertilized with differing viewpoints. Without that essential quality of diversity; the field of possibilities just dries up and we may even end up with more of the same. And here it would do well for government to appreciate the strategic value that blogging offers in shaping and forming our social political awareness - as not only is blogging just a means of speaking about our various objects of interest - but it's also the clearest example of how a medium can be an idiom of our times; as blogging offers tremendous insight into what, how and why society thinks about its various objects of interest - and this should prompt govt to work with the medium rather than  fight it; it should instead try to revivify it in the way industries create competition so as to benefit the consumers - rather than playing a zero sum all or nothing game, where the winner might take all -  that's why drawing straight line comparisons by promoting the myth most people aren't interested in politics does little to seed the good currency and drive out the bad - for one they offer no way of  pinning down the real problems why people dont see the need to stay engaged - could well be the climate of fear; lack of incentives or even their morass that comes from a perceived sense of powerlessness to change events. It matters little - one thing is clear; to make progress in this area; what's required is not just buying into Botak head Siew's game plan - his plan sounds good, but without a road map, its a good as worthless -  what's requires instead is a comprehensive debate on how we should do this; could well involve - driving out fear - destroying the policeman in everyone's head - dismantling the corrosive you are either with us; or against us mentality - or just buying into the idea of fair play. Unless  government perceives the value of a citizenry that is gainfully engaged and how it can add value to the social political discourse - then what we are likely to see is even more tiny slices of death to the whole idea of a politically engaged society ; these "death zones"  may come in the form of bracketing a subject or just corsetting it to a very narrow unproductive field - but the problem with cutting off debate is it shows up in the practice it inspires i.e it only exacerbates  the already acute sense of political estrangement thus fueling more disenchantment - as when  political discourse lack the depth and breadth, then it can never resonant to even engage fully - and is it such a wonder when this deficit is left to fester instead of  forstering deep spirited understanding and engagement - all it does it create the ideal breeding grounds for  fundamentalist, hoaxters, charlatans rush in to fill the missing blanks where angels fear to thread? (This has been brought to you by Aurora your friendly brotherhood controller – Scholarboy & Kadjal : The Perils of Living in an Apathetic Society / Socio –Political  / Executive Summary 990399  of Extended Piece (EP 990399 – The Brotherhood Press) You are reading the brotherhood press Hey did you miss out on this BP article? This is an essay generated by our new auto bot crawler - check it out The Incredible Koreans  Read More →

From The China Bureau: China is now the second largest economy in the world after the United States with a GDP of $7.8 trillion(2008) when measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. In 2009 China’s GDP was more than half of the US, and its auto sales and shipbuilding industry also surpassed the US. China has been the fastest-growing major nation for the past quarter of a century with an average annual GDP growth rate above 10%. What does a fast rising China mean to Singapore? Though China is not a foreign place to Singapore, we discover that many Singaporeans have little knowledge or understanding of Chinese culture, values and mindset. Some still look down on the mainland Chinese as uncouth, mercenary and dishonest people. Is China's rise an unexpected phenomenon? If we look at history, China has the longest known civilization in the world as well as the largest economy till the mid 1800s when the industrial revolution enabled the West to leap-frog over China. China's ancient capital Chang An during the Tang dynasty was the most populous city in the world in the sixth and seventh centuries with a population of over a million people. During the Ming dynasty, the largest fleet the world ever known set sailed to Africa a couple of years earlier than Christopher Columbus' landmark voyage to the America. Is it a surprise that China is now reclaiming its rightful place as a world power to be reckoned with? With one-fifth of the world's population which is eager to make up for lost time, China's rapid ascent will soon change dynamics of the monopolar world order with the United States as is nucleus. In our new China section, we shall endeavor to present China to you from an economic, social, political and most importantly historical perspective which you can’t find elsewhere.  Read More →