Dari Mstar

PETALING JAYA: Selepas bertemu selama hampir tiga jam di ibu negara malam tadi, pemimpin-pemimpin Pakatan Rakyat meneruskan perbincangan mereka pagi ini.

Pertemuan hari ini bermula sebentar tadi juga dilihat memfokus soal pembentukan kerajaan persekutuan.

Ketika hanya tinggal seminggu sahaja untuk membuktikan sama ada sasaran 16 September akan menjadi kenyataan ataupun sebaliknya, Pakatan Rakyat telah mengadakan pertemuan informal malam tadi bagi membincangkan kemajuan siri perundingan yang telah diadakan setakat ini.

mStar Online difahamkan pertemuan itu yang dipengerusikan oleh Ketua Umum Pakatan Rakyat, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (gambar), yang pulang dari Jakarta petang tadi, hanya memfokus terhadap pelan pembentukan kerajaan persekutuan 16 September dengan membawa masuk ahli-ahli Parlimen Barisan Nasional (BN).

“Perbincangan pertemuan informal ini hanya memfokus satu topik iaitu menerangkan hasil perbincangan dan perundingan yang telah diadakan sejak dua minggu yang lalu. Kita telah berkongsi hasil perundingan dengan ahli-ahli Parlimen BN setakat ini.

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By JAMES CHIN* | The Canberra Times

Former deputy prime minister of Malaysia Anwar Ibrahim won a crucial by-election for the parliamentary seat of Pemantang Pauh on Tuesday. That Anwar was going to win was never in doubt. He was first elected to the seat in the early 1980s and his wife became MP when he was jailed in 1988. Last month, she resigned from the seat so Anwar could get back into Parliament.
What was unexpected was the huge margin of victory. Anwar’s wife won the seat in the March general elections with slightly more than 13,000-vote majority. Many had expected Anwar to win by about 10,000 votes rather than the nearly 16,000 votes he took on Tuesday.

The ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition poured everything it had into the campaign. Led by the Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, the BN promised nearly 60million ringgit (about $A20million) worth of development.

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8 September 2008

Pakatan Rakyat Menjunjung Prinsip Perlembagaan Persekutuan

Majlis Pimpinan Pakatan Rakyat yang bersidang pada hari ini, 8 September 2008 dengan ini menegaskan penolakan kami terhadap usaha-usaha menyemarakkan politik perkauman yang sedang dilakukan oleh UMNO akhir-akhir ini. Kami amat bimbang isu ini sekarang digunakan untuk mengelabui pandangan rakyat yang sebenarnya merupakan usaha terdesak untuk menyelamatkan kepentingan segelintir golongan elit politik dan kroni mereka.

Kami sekali lagi mengulangi pendirian menjunjung prinsip-prinsip dasar yang termaktub di bawah Perlembagaan Persekutuan. Ini termasuk soal-soal dasar seperti kedudukan Islam sebagai Agama Persekutuan dan menjamin kebebasan mengamalkan agama-agama lain, kedaulatan Bahasa Melayu sebagai Bahasa Kebangsaan dan mempertahankan hak bahasa ibunda, kedudukan dan kedaulatan Institusi Raja-Raja Melayu serta kedudukan hak-hak istimewa orang Melayu dan Bumiputera serta hak-hak semua kaum yang telah dijamin oleh Perlembagaan.

Berdasarkan prinsip-prinsip Perlembagaan ini kami menolak sekeras-kerasnya pendekatan politik perkauman sempit yang menjadi dasar UMNO-BN. Pendekatan inilah yang sengaja digunakan untuk memecahbelahkan perpaduan dan keharmonian masyarakat majmuk negara ini.

Sehubungan ini kami membantah ucapan yang dibuat oleh Dato Ahmad Ismail yang disokong oleh semua pemimpin UMNO Pulau Pinang. Isi ucapan itu mencerminkan dasar perkauman UMNO yang sebenarnya bertujuan hanya untuk mempertahankan kepentingan segelintir golongan orang kaya Melayu serta suku sakat mereka yang menggunakan kuasa politik untuk mengambil kesempatan mengaut kekayaan negara dengan berselindung di sebalik membela kepentingan Bumiputera dan orang Melayu.

Sekian, terima kasih.

YB Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim
Ketua Umum Parti Keadilan Rakyat

YB Dato’ Husam Musa
Naib Presiden PAS

YB Lim Kit Siang
Ketua Ahli Parlimen DAP

From My Sinchew

Opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim’s return to parliament spells leadership change in Malaysia.

Despite a nasty campaign against him, opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim has won spectacularly in a landmark by-election in the family stronghold of Permatang Pauh, confirming his stature as possible prime minister with truly national appeal, cutting across race and religion.

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From www.bakrimusa.com

The result of the recent Permatang Pauh by-election was a surprise only to those who depended on the mainstream media and the government’s massive propaganda machinery for their source of news and information.

A measure of how far detached from reality those who sit in the editorial suites of our mainstream papers can be gauged by the pre-election editorial of The New Straits Times where its Editor-in-Chief Syed Nadzri boldly predicted that Anwar would be defeated. Obviously Syed Nadzri was beginning to believe his own spin.

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By Raja Petra Kamarudin

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s landslide victory in the Permatang Pauh by-election on August 26 strongly suggests that Malaysians remain in a mood for change five months after a political tsunami swept the country. The writer examines five key questions that may determine the country’s future.

IS ANWAR IBRAHIM UNSTOPPABLE?

By Ooi Kee Beng*

With the big margin he attained in the by-election, it does look as if Barisan Nasional (BN) will have a hard time stopping him. But then, as Anwar himself said, a week is a long time in politics, meaning that nothing is definite.

He is stoppable as a person, but I think what has happened to him is that he has become the focus of a lot of hope for Malaysians disillusioned with the BN system. Because he is a wily politician — or a chameleon, as critics like to say — he has been able to remake himself in the image of the reform movement that his arrest 10 years ago inspired and that developed more intensely than he could have expected. That movement has aligned itself with other oppositional forces and that new combined force now places him as its front man. In turn, he has become indispensable to that force.

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