Tan Sri Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir told a press conference that Umno must “stop and abolish the despicable and disgusting acts of bribery and corruption.”

“This includes the political corruption whereby one has to pay money to his own fellow party members to be elected to various posts in Umno, including the top posts.

“If you give, it’s wrong. If you don’t, you lose. So it becomes widely accepted culture, so even leaders in top positions have to do it if not you lose,” the former Umno supreme council member said.

He cited as an example influential former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who was unable to be elected as a delegate to the party general assembly after ending his 22 years as Umno president.

“Dr Mahathir has shed tears in his opening address at the general assembly, begging leaders not to buy votes. Can you imagine later he could not even win as a delegate?” Abdul Kadir said, adding he has never used money to win positions in the party.

The former information minister made headlines last month when he accused the ruling coalition of handing out RM200 to RM1,000 to win previous elections but said he personally did not use the strategy known as “bomb”.

He also repeated today that BN should “stop the ugly and primitive practice of bribing the rakyat… whether directly or indirectly, in order to win elections.”

Abdul Kadir, who was also a former culture, arts and tourism minister, told reporters today that he has been told that Umno’s disciplinary committee has been asked to investigate his comments although he has not received any formal notice.

“There is no need to investigate me because I will be sending them the full texts of the said interviews which are not edited in any way,” he said.

He said in his defence that Umno president Datuk Seri Najib Razak and other leaders “have gone around the country shouting we must change, otherwise we will be changed.”

“The question is what are those bad habits that need to be change of which the rakyat is so angry about?”

Abdul Kadir is now treasurer of Kulim Bandar Baharu Umno and deputy president of non-partisan pro-unity NGO Angkatan Amanah Merdeka (Amanah).

Merujuk kepada komen Fuad Zakarshi (UM & BH 8 Februari 2012) yang mencadangkan agar saya ditarbiyah semula atas sebab enggan memberi komen terhadap Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim atas isu negara Israel. Ia sesuatu yang jelas tersesat.

Saya amat kesal atas pemikiran sekular seorang timbalan menteri juga bekas seorang guru Yayasan Anda di bawah bumbung ABIM yang dikatakan pernah menyokong kepimpinan Anwar Ibrahim kelihatan begitu dungu dalam menilai mana satu yang benar dan mana pula yang salah.

Sepatutnya sebagai seorang yang pernah mengagumi Anwar Ibrahim dan pernah duduk sebumbung Yayasan Anda/Markaz ABIM sepatutnya sudah tahu permainan kotor media tajaan Barat (WSJ) itu yang kerjanya untuk menjatuh kredibliti seorang yang tidak sebulu dengan Israel.

Begitu juga akhbar Barat dan pro-Barat juga yang acapkali mengulang-ulang kes liwat (menuduh Anwar) atas sebab untuk memalukan hamba Allah ini.

Apakah hak Fuad Zakarshi mencadang saya ditarbiyah semula? Sedang beliau sendiri sudah dilihat gagal memahami prinsip tarbiyah. Kalau benar dia memahami tarbiyah, masakan boleh membuat respon atas fakta yang diputar oleh WSJ, hantu media Barat yang sentiasa bertindak untuk memecah belah umat Islam. Logikkah saya mengulas atas fakta yang belum pasti benar kerana ia bukan dari sumber pertama.

Sebaiknya Fuad dapat berjumpa sendiri Anwar jika benar ingin mencari pencerahan. Kerana Anwar pernah jadi ketuanya.

Justeru adalah sesuai kalau dia ingin mencari kebenaran, baik sahaja pergi beribadat di masjid. Tapi bagi seorang yang mendokong ideologi kebangsaan sekular, sudah tentu tidak sesuai mencari kebenaran di masjid.

Saya cadangkan lebih baik mencari kebenaran di bilik tandas. Kerana dalam tandas sudah tentu sesuai––banyak syaitan dan iblis yang boleh merangsang fikirannya––menjadi waras selari dengan otak sekular.

Maka, tak payahlah asak dan menyibuk untuk mentarbiyah semula orang lain. Kerana asas tarbiyah itu hendaklah dipaksikan dengan keredahaan Allah.

Mana ada hak bagi manusia seumpama Fuad Zakarshi untuk mentarbiyah orang lain, sedangkan dia sendiri sedang menganut ideologi yang bercanggah dengan keredhaan Allah SWT.

Pakatan Rakyat mendakwa langkah kerajaan untuk menggunakan dana Kumpulan Wang Simpanan Pekerja (KWSP) sebanyak RM1.5 juta untuk menampung pinjaman rumah kos rendah sebagai usaha untuk menyembunyikan hutang negara.

Naib Presiden PKR Nurul Izzah Anwar (kanan) dan Setiausaha Publisiti DAP Tony Pua berkata, berbanding langkah yang jarang diambil itu, ia biasanya dibuat melalui hasil cukai atau pengeluaran bon.

“Kami hanya boleh simpulkan kerajaan tidak mahu meminjam langsung dari KWSP, dan lepaskan tanggungjawab itu kepada KWSP untuk memberi pinjaman terus kepada pembeli rumah kos rendah kerana kerajaan tidak mahu terus menerima kritikan menggunung terhadap hutang yang sudah sedia tinggi,” katanya.

Dalam kenyataan bersama hari ini, mereka berkata, hutang negara sudah mencecah RM456 bilion pada penghujung 2011, peningkatan 88.4 berbanding hanya RM242 pada 2006.

PKR hari ini menyelar tindakan kerajaan untuk menggunakan RM1.5 bilion daripada dana Kumpulan Wang Simpanan Pekerja (KWSP) bagi membantu mereka yang gagal mendapatkan pinjaman bank bagi membiayai pembelian rumah awam kos rendah.

“Malah bank-bank juga tidak bersedia memberi pinjaman. Apakah yang dilakukan oleh panel pelaburan KWSP?

“Mengapa wang KWSP yang digunakan sebagai wang saku BN?” soal naib presiden PKR Nurul Izzah Anwar (kanan) pada sidang media hari ini.

Sekurang-kurangnya empat bank telah diminta membantu menggubal draf perjanjian pembiayaan, kata Nurul Izzah sambil menyoal mengapa dana KWSP digunakan jika bank komersial sendiri tidak menganggap skim itu sebagai berdaya maju.

“Kita tidak mahu situasi seperti krisis pajak gadai subprima di Amerika Syarikat, di mana peminjam tidak dapat membayar ansuran mereka, jadi KWSP bukan bank (dalam kesusahan),” katanya, sambil mengingatkan bahawa dana KWSP juga telah digunakan untuk membiayai projek transit aliran ringan (LRT).

“Kerajaan tidak boleh membeli undi sesuka hati semata-mata kerana pilihan raya semakin dekat.

“Awak (kerajaan) boleh membantu Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR), tetapi jangan gunakan dana KWSP bagi maksud itu,” kata Nurul Izzah yang juga ahli parlimen Lembah Pantai.

Isnin lalu, Menteri Wilayah Persekutuan dan Kesejahteraan Bandar, Datuk Seri Raja Nong Chik Zainal Abidin dilapor mengumumkan “skim pembiayaan mudah” untuk 20,000 penyewa PPR yang layak dan bakal pembeli yang tidak layak mendapatkan pinjaman bank.

Ketua Penerangan DAP Tony Pua juga menyelar tindakan itu dengan mengatakan bahawa peranan KWSP adalah memastikan pencarum mempunyai simpanan yang mencukupi apabila mereka bersara kelak.

Kedua-dua mereka, Pua dan Nurul Izzah mencadangkan Bank Rakyat dan Malaysia Building Society Bhd mengambil-alih tanggungjawab itu.

Sokong Pelaksanaan Qazaf Sebagai Mekanisme Syariah Untuk Halang Fitnah dan Politik Lucah

Hari ini, 30 Januari 2012, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim melalui barisan peguamnya akan mengemukakan hujah di Mahkamah Rayuan Syariah Kuala Lumpur. Ini bertujuan agar Mahkamah meneliti semula keputusan yang dibuat oleh Hakim Mahkamah Tinggi Syariah Kuala Lumpur yang telah menolak permohonan untuk mahkamah memerintahkan supaya Ketua Pendakwa Syarie mendakwa Saiful Bukhari berhubung dengan kes qazaf.

Kelab Anwar Ibrahim (AIC) melihat pelaksanaan qazaf ini seharus dipermudahkan oleh Mahkamah, khususnya di dalam kes melibatkan Datuk Seri Anwar ini. Mahkamah Syariah mempunyai kapasiti yang jelas untuk membenarkan Saiful Bukhari dibicarakan melalui prosiding Mahkamah Syariah dan didakwa di atas tuduhan palsu yang beliau kemukakan pada tahun 2008.

Keputusan Mahkamah Tinggi Kuala Lumpur pada 9 Januari 2012 jelas membuktikan bahawa tuduhan tersebut adalah tidak berasas, malah berniat jahat.

Pelaksanaan qazaf ini, secara jelas berpotensi menutup ruang fitnah daripada dilakukan secara berleluasa, malah ia juga dapat mengekang budaya menggunakan pertuduhan palsu melibatkan jenayah seksual sebagai satu alat politik untuk memusnahkan kredibiliti mana-mana pihak.

AIC melihat pembunuhan karakter ke atas Datuk Seri Anwar sudah menjadi semakin parah. Sekiranya pelaksanaan qazaf ini diperlekeh dan ditolak oleh Mahkamah Rayuan Syariah, ianya bukan sekadar satu ketidakadilan kepada Datuk Seri Anwar, malah secara tidak langsung menafikan prospek perundangan syariah yang jelas menjulang pembelaan hak-hak dan maruah mana-mana individu daripada difitnah sewenang-wenangnya.

Adalah sangat mendukacitakan, di saat Malaysia disebut-sebut sebagai Negara Islam Contoh oleh pemimpin negara, budaya fitnah dan penggunaan politik lucah semakin berleluasa di Malaysia sehingga ke satu tahap yang membimbangkan. Lebih memburukkan keadaan apabila ianya dijadikan satu senjata politik dan seolah tidak terhalang dan kebal daripada undang-undang.

Justeru harapan besar rakyat Malaysia amnya dan umat Islam yang prihatin khususnya, agar pelaksanaan qazaf ini dapat direalisasikan. Ayuh bersama tolak budaya fitnah dan politik lucah demi kemaslahatan rakyat dan negara, demi menjulang politik baru yang lebih matang dan segar.

Saifuddin Shafi Muhamad
Setiausaha
Kelab Anwar Ibrahim (AIC)

Saya difahamkan tema “Berjuang Melalui Kartun”dipilih oleh penganjur kerana kartun-kartun politik Sdr Zunar ternyata mendapat kekangan dan tekanan dari pemerintah Malaysia. Pada Julai 2010, kerajaan mengharamkan tujuh buah  naskah komik kartun beliau dengan alasan kandungannya menjejas ketenteraman awam. Selain tu, pejabat Sdr Zunar di Brickfeilds, Kuala Lumpur sering diserbu pihak berkuasa dan komik-komik tersebut turut dirampas. Manakala itu kilang pencetak diugut agar tidak mencetak komik beliau atau menghadapi risiko kehilangan lesen. Kedai-kedai di seluruh negara juga diberi amaran agar tidak menjual komik-komik beliau. Pada September 2010, beliau ditangkap dan dimasukkan ke dalam lokap di bawah Akta Hasutan namun dibebaskan atas arahan mahkamah. Buat Sdr Zunar dan seluruh seniman, teruskan perjuangan anda semua, teruskan berkarya dan jangan sesekali tunduk menyerah kepada penguasa yang zalim serta rakus.

ANWAR IBRAHIM

27 Januari 2012 (Jumaat)

9.00 – 12.00 malam

Lokasi: Dewan Orang Ramai Kampong Ahmad Razali, Dengkil

Penceramah:
1) YB Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim
2) YB Azmin Ali
3) YB Zuraida Kamaruddin
4) YB Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad
5) YB Dr Rani Osman

Why the latest news from Malaysia helps to undermine authoritarianism throughout the region.

BY CHRISTIAN CARYL

Something remarkable is happening in Malaysia, and the rest of the world should take note.

Malaysia, you ask? Really? It’s only 28 million people, and it’s just one part of Southeast Asia, a region fragmented into a variety of cultures and systems — and largely off the radar  of people in the West, except when it comes to planning honeymoons on the beach. So why should non-Malaysians care?

Last week, a Malaysian court acquitted Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the country’s main opposition movement, of sodomy charges. (Sodomy is a crime in Malaysia.) Anwar’s supporters have long maintained that the case against him was actually political, cooked up by the government to prevent him from mounting a credible challenge to the system that has ruled the country for decades. Anwar was arrested on similar charges back in 1998 and spent six years in jail before a court finally overturned his conviction. Many understandably expected the same thing to happen again this time around.

But it didn’t. To general astonishment, the court dismissed the accusations, saying that the DNA evidence cited by prosecutors didn’t hold up to scrutiny. The judges, it seemed, had actually assessed the case on its own value. And with that ruling, Anwar can now continue his campaign against the government, one that is likely to culminate in a general election within the next year or so.

So why should we regard this story as worth our attention? Well, it’s certainly true that the verdict could help Anwar lead the opposition to victory, thus overturning decades of control by the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO). But this is by no means a given. Just because Anwar has been pronounced innocent doesn’t mean that he’ll win. Ernest Bower, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, notes that the opposition movement headed by Anwar is a fairlyvolatile coalition of different groups pulled apart by sometimes competing interests: “Anwar has a real challenge ahead,” Bower noted in a recent email to me. “As he and his supporters anticipated a guilty verdict, they had planned to rally around political martyrdom. Now they need to go back to basics and compete in an election based on an economic and policy platform and ensure their very diverse coalition gets unified around those ideas.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has been pledging to clean up corruption and reform the system from within, can now argue that efforts are bearing fruit. The verdict works in his favor as well.

And even if Anwar does win the next election, there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to deliver on his own promises of reform. Malaysia’s complicated political mix — in which ethnic Malays have long enjoyed the benefits of affirmative action programs designed to improve their chances against the country’s sizable Chinese and Indian minorities — will throw considerable obstacles in the way of any effort at fundamental change. It’s likely, of course, that imposing accountability on the ruling party is a good thing in itself. It’s hard to dispute the need for a thorough housecleaning of the entrenched Malaysian political elite.

But these are issues that matter primarily to Malaysians. What about the rest of us?

Here’s the thing. For decades now, Malaysian leaders — above all, the country’s crusty ex-prime minister, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad – have been arguing that the country owes its remarkable record of economic progress to something called “Asian values.” In this reading, Asians are inherently predisposed to discipline and thrift, traits often attributed to Confucianism or its influence. In line with this theory, the region’s authoritarian leaders have dismissed democratic institutions and “Anglo-Saxon” free-market capitalism as alien assaults on local mores. Of course, this was an argument that just happened to have the handy side effect of shoring up the legitimacy of said authoritarian leaders. As long as they could reasonably claim to be delivering the goods of rapid growth and social stability, many voters were content to take the claim at face value.

Of late, however, the “Asian values” model has been taking some dents. Indonesians threw their dictator overboard at the turn of the century and now enjoy one of the region’s strongest economic growth rates. Last year, voters inSingapore, long controlled by the ruthlessly efficient People’s Action Party (PAP), handed surprising victories to opposition candidates. (To be sure, the PAP is still in power – but its share of the popular vote declined to just over 60 percent, its worst result since 1965, when Singapore became a country.) Meanwhile, Myanmar’s military rulers have announced that they want to free up the country’s political system, and the leaders of its long-abused opposition are preparing to participate in a parliamentary by-election in the spring. And now the story in Malaysia is getting interesting too.

Some of the other societies in the region aren’t quite there yet. But while Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos all maintain authoritarian forms of government, they have opened up considerably in economic terms. So what’s to stop them from one day following in the footsteps of Singapore or Malaysia?

Around the region, people are increasingly expressing a desire for official accountability. Economic growth on its own is not enough to satiate the desires of a rising middle class that is tired of being patronized by the powers-that-be. These citizens are insisting on participation, transparency, and an end to corruption.

Indeed, it would seem that these are the real Asian values now coming to the fore. Last month, writing in a Malaysian newspaper, journalist Karim Raslannoted that, under the old rules of the game, were willing to concede certain civil liberties in return for implicit government guarantees of “prosperity and social peace.” But that compact no longer holds: “This worked well enough when the economy was growing and internal checks and balances prevented undue injustice,” wrote Raslan. “Unfortunately, a stalling economy has brought out our inherent weaknesses, including corruption and mismanagement. Moreover, there’s a mounting sense –whether true or not — that elite groups are securing enormous personal benefit by manipulating the system.” As a result, he suggested, Malaysians are now starting to think seriously about throwing the bums out.

None of this, of course, means that the people in these countries are necessarily striving to embrace the Washington Consensus or the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy. The push for greater openness is coming from the region’s peoples themselves, not being imposed from without. And it is precisely for that reason that the rulers’ self-aggrandizing claims of legitimacy are sounding hollower by the day. So, once again, why is this important to Westerners or Americans?

Because it’s not just Malaysians or Singaporeans who will feel the effects. The Chinese Communist Party has long legitimized its rule in terms strikingly similar to those employed by Mahathir or Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew. But suddenly those arguments about wise rulers lording it over happy and quiescent populations are looking, well, very 1999. “These values will continue to force change in Asia,” Bower notes. “In fact, it is likely that political evolution in Southeast Asia may influence China more in the next five years than Chinese economic dynamism influences Southeast Asia.” And there’s the real take-away from this story.