Bersih’s objective is political, says Dr M

Bersih 2.0's objective is not to call for electoral reforms but to help the Opposition win in the next general election, says Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The former prime minister said it was only secondary for the coalition as to whether the elections were clean or not.

“Its objective is to tarnish the Government's name and the police, so that the Opposition will win.

“Their purpose is political in nature, particularly for Pakatan Rakyat,” Dr Mahathir said.

“They want to paint the Government black and, although you are grey, you look more white,” he said.

He added that Bersih wanted a repeat of the 2008 political tsunami that saw the Opposition take over five states.

After studying the coalition's demands, Dr Mahathir concluded that Bersih was only using the rally to attack the Government.

He said the country's elections were clean and fair as Opposition leaders were also able to win.

He warned all parties of possible clashes during July 9 rally, which could disrupt the peace in Malaysia.

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BERSIH - NUISANCE

July 9 Bersih 2.0 rally is really a Pakatan Rakyat effort to win back the political momentum it once enjoyed after the March 2008 tsunami but has since lost to Barisan Nasional in a series of by-elections – except Sibu.

Even the Sibu by-election was won by the DAP with a slim 300-vote majority.

Although the party went on to win 15 urban seats in the Sarawak state election, the state Barisan Nasional managed to win a two-thirds majority, clinching most of the rural seats and losing only the urban seats to the DAP.

To recapture the political momentum is the unstated goal of the Bersih 2.0 rally going into the 13th general election, which is near, going by the latest hint dropped by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak at a closed door meeting of the Sabah Barisan Nasional on Wednesday.

PKR leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the man behind it, senses that a major public rally, which would galvanise the public mood, shake the Barisan Nasional and prepare Pakatan Rakyat for seizing Putrajaya, is the best chance of getting the political momentum back.

In tandem with that goal, Bersih 2.0 has lost its public face as an independent NGO and increasingly showing its Pakatan Rakyat face, even as police step up their action to stop the rally, which they have termed illegal and a nuisance.

It’s not so ‘Bersih’ after all COMMENT By WONG CHUN WAI

INTERNET polls are really just a way to engage the reader with the aim of taking a quick temperature reading of your audience, in the words of American political analyst John Harwood.

It’s the cyber equivalent of asking the room for a show of hands on a certain question, but it can also be manipulated.

Most ordinary netizens do not take such polls seriously but the political stake players certainly do, and they are often the ones who would hack and organise such manipulations to get the numbers they want.

Harwood, a New York Times journalist, said the CNBC once organised a debate.

After the debate, the television station put up a website poll asking readers who had won the debate.

Soon, supporters of Ron Paul, the Republican Congressman, who had served notice he was running in the US presidential race, were leading the polls at 75% within hours.

It soon dawned on CNBC that the poll was the target of a campaign. So, the station pulled it down.

The purpose of the poll was ruined and as Harwood wrote, “it was no longer an honest show of hands”.

“That certainly wasn’t our intention and certainly didn’t serve our readers,’’ he wrote, adding that a well-organised “few” could throw the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of “the many”.

That was what happened to The Star Online poll survey on Monday.

Obviously, print journalists adopt a more cautious approach against those in the new media who see politics differently.

An online poll on the proposed Bersih 2.0 rally on July 9 asked respondents for their opinion on whether the illegal rally should be cancelled or be allowed to go on.

In less than a day, it drew more than a million responses, which caused the online team to suspect that the results were being manipulated.

Typically, the online polls attract an average of about 30,000 responses over several days.

The Star Online’s unique visitors number about 400,000 a day.

The initial examination showed that the The Star Online site logs recorded up to a million votes to the poll page from just one IP address.

Acting on the belief that the poll results were tainted, the online editor took it down just before noon on Tuesday.

In short, the supporters of the Opposition-initiated rally, Bersih 2.0, were not so clean after all. Even desperate.

Ironic BERSIH 2.0

His Sept 16 gambit failed miserably and he was chastised.

The Barisan, now under a new Prime Minister in Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak sought to return the favour to Anwar and induced three of the state assemblymen in Perak to defect and forced the Pakatan state government to fall.

But all that is in the past.

The same political strategy is being used again. This time Bersih has become Bersih 2.0.

Former Bar Council president Da-tuk Ambiga Sreenivasan is plan- ning to organise a repeat of the massive Bersih rally of November 2007.

The reasons given are the same: failure of the EC to reform the system, fraud and cheating, and the recent Sarawak election is used as a reminder of what can easily go wrong in Malaysia.

The reality is that Anwar is having a second go at it.

He is trying to revive the mass appeal he had before it started to dissipate after Sept 16, 2008.

This time around, he has tried to put a neutral person in Ambiga as chairman to gauge the public mood and prepare the ground for another general election.

But Ambiga is hardly the neutral person.

She spoke at a PKR rally in Brickfields with Anwar and his daughter Nurul Izzah on Sunday.

Besides, newly-minted PAS deputy president and Anwar's old adversary Mohamed Sabu has asked the party's rank and file to take part at the Bersih 2.0 rally on July 9.

In fact, PAS central committee member Dr Hatta Ramli is on record as saying that PAS would send 100,000 supporters to the rally.

The glaring difference between now and November 2007 is that they then wanted to protest with Bersih and Hindraf rallies that to-gether persuaded the public mood to turn against the Government.

This time they are the rulers in four states.

They want to flex their muscles and boost their waning strength, sensing that an early election is on the cards.

The irony is that the electoral system, which they claimed is “unfair”, is the same one that won them the four state!

Boikot Perhimpunan Haram!

Baru-baru ini, Perhimpunan BERSIH hangat digegarkan dan ada berpendapat Perhimpunan BERSIH yang dirancang merupakan jalan singkat pembangkang untuk ke Putrajaya. Penghormatan tidak diberi kepada prinsip demokrasi dan demonstrasi jalanan ini hanya mencetuskan suasana huru- hara yang mempunyai agenda terselindung.

Sekiranya perhimpunan ini mendakwa PRU (Pilihanraya Umum) yang tidak telus dan bersih, mengapa BN masih kalah di 4 negeri.. cuba fikir-fikirkan, adakah terdapat perkara yang tersembunyi mengenai apa yang ingin dicapai pembangkang di sebalik rancangan mengadakan perhimpunan haram itu?

Sistem demokrasi dan sistem sosial di negara-negara luar (Egypt dan Tunsia) amat jauh bezanya dan seharusnya kita di Malaysia bersyukur dapat menjalani hidup dalam suasana baik dan aman

Kita sebagai rakyat boleh mempersoalkan apakah niat sebenar demontrasi haram Bersih 2.0 ini diadakan. Adakah mereka ingin jadikan tarikh 9 Julai ini sebagai “hari rusuhan dan kekacauan” sebagaimana berjayanya teori domino di Asia Barat? Amalan demonstrasi haram Bersih 2.0 sewajarnya ditolak dan wajib diboikot oleh seluruh rakyat !

It's a wake up call..Claimed Datuk Chua

The voting pattern among the Chinese in the Hulu Selangor by-election is a wake-up call for MCA leaders that the community is no longer just concerned with basic needs but also national issues, MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek said.

Dr Chua said the party needed to relook its approach as just providing allocations for Chinese schools, halls and better drainage systems was no longer enough.

“Apart from basic amenities, the Chinese are now more concerned about national issues,” he told reporters here after Barisan Nasional claimed victory in the Hulu Selangor by-election last night.

Results from polling stations showed that there was strong support for PKR from areas where the community formed the majority.

Dr Chua said the MCA would also be more vocal from now on.

He said the party would also send more leaders to Chinese villages to interact with the people to make them feel that they were part of the national agenda.

“We need to listen to them and get their feedback as well as update them on national issues,” he said.

Dr Chua also reckoned that the internal problems in the Kuala Kubu Baru division had contributed to the weak support from Chinese voters.

“Infighting exists in all parties but we will have to talk to the people concerned,” he said.

He said the 1½-year party crisis had also affected the Chinese support in the constituency.

“This is a wake-up call for all leaders to put aside their personal differences and work for the good of the rakyat.

“Otherwise, we will be consumed by the political dustbin and be called a political dinosaur,” he said.

On Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s comment that the by-election was an acid test for MCA, he said Najib had made the reference not just to MCA but also himself and Pakatan Rakyat.

“If it was just a reference to MCA, there would not be so many big guns coming here to campaign,” he said.

Party secretary-general Datuk Seri Kong Cho Ha said the party would conduct a post-mortem to find out the reason behind the voting trend of the Chinese in the constituency.

Ask whether the poor response from the Chinese voters would make it more difficult for MCA to deal with Umno, Kong said Malaysia was a multiracial country and all component parties must work together.

Source-The Star

Hello GTP...

The nation will usher in a new era of 1 Malaysia with the implementation of a New Economic Model and the delivery of results of the unprecedented Government Transformation Programme (GTP).

This will lead to a thriving modern economy, united society and competent government to address issues such as brain drain, capital flight and positive participation from all races, according to the GTP Roadmap launched by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak today.

“Our mission of unity is not merely for the sake of harmony and good relations, but is critical to building a productive and competitive Malaysia and achieving Vision 2020.

“While our path to Vision 2020 may be difficult, we trust that the benefits will be greater, given the richer resultant cultural diversity and competitive advantage this approach engenders,” it said.

The Roadmap stressed that it was imperative to promote integration through inclusiveness in managing the polarity between assimilation and segregation in Malaysia’s multi-ethnic society.

“Many of the issues that we grapple with as a nation — and which the rakyat have identified as important — are in fact polarities, such as between rich and poor, between young and old and across religions, races and regions.”

Delivering the six National Key Result Areas (NKRAs) outlined in the GTP would reduce disparities and mitigate the sense of deprivation and discontent that were sometimes expressed in racial terms, it said.

The six NKRAs are crime reduction, combating corruption, improving education, raising the living standards of low-income households, upgrading rural basic infrastructure and improving urban public transport.

The Roadmap noted that the implementation of the National Economic Policy (NEP) had led to “certain unintended results”, among them a sense of deprivation and discrimination felt by non-Bumiputeras due to the over-zealous approach of officers of certain agencies.

There has also been a widening of the income gap within the Bumiputera community, causing rising discontent among certain segments of the community. These factors had pushed many Malaysians, especially professionals, to migrate and the brain drain had become increasingly serious.

Adding to the establishment of Ekuinas, the private equity fund to promote Bumiputera economic participation, and the liberalisation of the financial sector and 27 sub-sectors, more initiatives are expected to be announced in the first quarter of this year.

The government will upgrade the quality of national schools to be the schools of choice for all students with the provision of pupils’ own language and a more multi-inclusive atmosphere as among the steps to address education and national unity under 1 Malaysia.

Other initiatives include having 1 Malaysia boarding schools with multiracial students and awarding national scholarships to study at international universities based on merit.

In fostering a 1 Malaysia government, it has been proposed that the mention of race on government forms be eliminated except for the purpose of census and statistics.

It is also suggested that more Chinese and Indians be encouraged to join the civil service while officers of Bumiputera origin from Sabah and Sarawak will be upgraded. — Bernama