Video Ihsan Tv PAS
From Canadian Press
Malaysia’s Appeals Court rejected Monday a bid by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to have a sodomy charge against him dropped, amid allegations of an affair between a government prosecution lawyer and the key witness.
Anwar faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of sodomizing Saiful Bukhari Azlan. Anwar insists the government concocted the charge in 2008 to sideline him after his opposition alliance made unprecedented electoral gains. Government authorities deny conspiring against Anwar.
Anwar has insisted the sodomy charge be dropped after allegations surfaced that a young female prosecution attorney involved in the trial had an affair with Anwar’s accuser, the 25-year-old male former aide Saiful.
Neither the female attorney, nor Saiful responded to the affair allegations.
Anwar’s defence team has argued that attorney Farah Azlina Latif might have leaked confidential information to Saiful, tainting the case against Anwar. The prosecution has dropped Farah Azlina from its team, and said she was a junior member who played a minor role in the case.
The High Court last month ruled the alleged affair may be true because the prosecution did not directly confirm or deny the accusation, but it said it didn’t compromise the prosecution’s integrity.
The Appeals Court upheld that ruling Monday, said defence lawyer Sankara Nair.
“Justice was not served … the right to be heard was not there. It was an absurd judgment,” Anwar said.
The defence team will now take its argument to the country’s top court, the Federal Court, Nair said. That move will further delay Anwar’s sodomy trial, which has been deferred since Aug. 16.
It is the second time Anwar has been accused of sodomy, a crime in this Muslim-majority country. He was imprisoned for six years starting in 1998 for sodomy and corruption. The sodomy conviction was later overturned.
Dari tv Selangor
Keghairahan Umno-BN menghabiskan wang rakyat pada kempen berslogan dan projek tidak bermanfaat, dan meminggirkan soal melaksanakan dasar-dasar yang efektif punca Malaysia corot dalam indeks daya saing dan rasuah.
Tahun demi tahun, Malaysia gagal mendapat tempat di kumpulan teratas indeks antarabangsa. Yang terbaru, Forum Ekonomi Dunia melaporkan Malaysia terus jatuh dari tahun ke tahun, dari tempat ke 21 ke 26, dalam Indeks Daya Saing sedunia.
Ketua Pembangkang Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim berkata Umno-BN perlu mengorbankan kroni-kroni bagi memulihkan imej dan ekonomi negara di persada antarabangsa.
Beliau menggesa Kerajaan Pusat supaya meneliti saranan Forum Ekonomi Dunia yang menggesa Malaysia mengambil langkah drastik untuk memulihkan kebebasan badan kehakiman dan institusi awam bagi menghentikan kecorotan prestasi negara dari tahun ke tahun.
Anwar menjelaskan ekonomi Malaysia akan terus tempang, dan rakyat akan terus tertekan, jika Perdana Menteri Najib Abdul Razak terus melindungi kroni-kroni Umno-BN yang selama ini mendorong pemerintah untuk mencabul sistem politik, ekonomi dan undang-undang.
Sistem kehakiman yang benar-benar bebas dan tidak memihak kepada kekuasaan adalah ciri-ciri utama yang meletakkan negara seperti Switzerland mengungguli carta 10 ekonomi terbaik di dunia.
Najib digesa merenung keresahan rakyat dan pelabur apabila rasuah dan penyelewengan kuasa semakin membudaya lalu membawa kerosakan yang bukan kepalang.
“Perdana Menteri silih berganti, janji demi janji tapi tidak diperkota. Lihat sahaja isu pembubaran dan pembatalan ISA sampai sekarang tidak terjadi, rasuah masih lagi meluas, digunakan penswastaan 1 Malaysia termasuk kes Sungai Besi diberikan kepada kroni yang melibatkan projek berbilion ringgit yang tidak diberikan secara telus” jelas Anwar
Laporan Daya Saing 2010-2011 Forum Ekonomi Dunia yang dikeluarkan baru-baru ini membuktikan gagasan Dato Seri Najib dalam membangunkan Negara tidak membuahkan hasil malah membebankan rakyat.
Beliau berkata, kerajaan persekutuan hanya mengejar slogan dan pencapaian astetik 1 Malaysia, tanpa perlaksanaan dasar-dasar wajar.
Berhadapan dengan kedudukan ekonomi sebegini, ternyata generasi akan datang terpaksa jua menanggung permasalahan yang diakibatkan oleh ketirisan seperti rasuah, kelemahan pengurusan serta tamak membolot khazanah negara.
“Bila ditanya, mereka kaitkan pula dengan soal Melayu dan Bumiputera. Melayu mana dan Bumiputera mana yang dapat keuntungan? Hanya Melayu keluarga dan Bumiputera kroni. Kita pertahan majoriti yang miskin dan kelompok india, Cina, Kadazan, iban dan Dayak yang terpinggir. Ini mesti juga diberi perhatian. Ini negera kita dan kita berhak pertahankan hak kita,” tambah Anwar
Inna lillah wa inna ilaihi raji’un.
From God we all come and to Him we return
It is with great sadness and sorrow that we announce and mourn the passing of our beloved elder ,teacher , mentor and Professor Dr. Fathi Osman ,May God accept him with mercy and house him amongst the righteous in paradise. Dr. Osman died on Saturday September 11 , 2010 in Los Angeles , California.
The Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation and the Dakhil family extends its deepest condolences and sympathies to his widow Dr. Aida and daughter Dr. Ghada Osman , to the Muslim community and to all those who whose hearts and minds he touched and influenced.
Dr. Osman was recognized ,throughout the world, as a pioneer contemporary Islamic thinker amongst scholars of his era. He wrote and published extensively on Shari’a in contemporary society , human rights, women in Islam, pluralism,the “other” ,the permanent and transitional in the sacred sources , Shura and democracy and on other contemporary issues of the time. His “Concepts of the Quran :A Topical Reading ” was a milestone in enabling English speakers to understand the Quran .
Even in retirement Dr. Osman continued to write .”Contemporary Issues : An Islamic Perspective” and the “Other” are his latest major publications.
In the 1980′s Dr. Osman coined the term “fiqh alaqaliyat” (jurist prudence for Muslims as minorities) that opened the door for him and others scholars to discuss how Muslim minorities, especially in the West , can be practicing Muslims complying with Islamic law and full citizens active in all aspects of life in the land were they lived.
Dr. Osman’s death is a major loss to the Muslim community nowhere more so than at the Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation were he was Resident Scholar and founder of the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World and at the University of Southern California’s Center of Muslim Jewish Center where he was the Senior Muslim Scholar and authority.
Dr. Osman’s legacy will live on through those whom he taught & influenced ,the books and papers he published and through his recorded lectures and spoken works. Some of which can be read at http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/issues/ or viewed at http://www.youtube.com/user/CMJEUSC#p/u
From The Globe And Mail
By Mark MacKinnon
There is an uncomfortable pattern to life for Anwar Ibrahim, the charismatic leader of Malaysia’s opposition. In 1998, shortly after he quit the authoritarian government of Mahathir bin Mohamad, he was convicted and jailed on trumped-up sodomy charges.
Six years after that conviction was quashed and he was released from prison – and just as it looked like he and his multi-ethnic coalition might finally oust the long-ruling United National Malays Organization from office – Mr. Anwar finds himself trapped in the most awkward of reruns, once more accused of “consensual intercourse against the order of nature.”
The charges again look to be a thinly veiled attempt to ruin Mr. Anwar’s reputation and sabotage his political career in this Muslim-majority country. The trial to date – dubbed “Sodomy II” in Malaysia’s unsubtle government-controlled press – has produced a succession of lurid headlines about lubricant tubes and stained underwear, while Mr. Anwar and his lawyers have been denied the right even to see the medical records of the man with which he is alleged to have had anal sex.
But instead of letting the scandalous court proceedings force him to the sidelines, the eternally optimistic Mr. Anwar has been using good humour and his ever-present BlackBerry to turn even the most awkward of headlines to his advantage, holding up the charges against him as proof of the absurdity of the system he’s trying to change.
As a lone judge contemplates whether there is evidence to convict Mr. Anwar and sentence him to up to 20 years in prison, as well as a flogging, Mr. Anwar has continued his ferocious assault on a government he derides as repressive and corrupt, blogging from the courtroom and sending cheeky and upbeat 140-character updates to his followers via Twitter.
“Sodomy circus turns into sex opera!” reads one of Mr. Anwar’s mid-trial posts, which linked to a video of a lawyer discussing the lurid details of the case. “Courage of conviction. Que sera sera,” was his response to a fellow Twitter user who worried the energetic 63-year-old was headed back to jail.
The odds do seem stacked against Mr. Anwar, a former deputy prime minister who was once considered the rising star of Malaysian politics. But to hear him tell it, his déjà-vu legal ordeal is evidence that Prime Minister Najib Razak and his party are losing their grip on power, and they know it well.
“They can’t deal with me politically – either my economic programs or policies. They can’t debate me. So they resort to this ludicrous exercise to demonize me,” he said in an interview at the offices of his People’s Justice Party in western Kuala Lumpur, a confident grin fixed on his narrow, goateed face. “We will win the next election and we will change the courts.”
It seems unlikely things will go quite that smoothly. Mr. Anwar’s political career has seen his fortunes change as often and as quickly as the weather in this peninsula thrust between the Indian and Pacific oceans. The leader of a Muslim youth organization during his student days, he shocked his followers by joining UNMO in the early 1980s and taking a succession of cabinet posts in the authoritarian government of Mr. Mahathir, eventually rising to become his powerful finance minister and deputy prime minister. (more…)
From Time Magazine
By Michael Schuman / Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia is that rare country with an unequivocal national narrative. It goes something like this: Malaysia’s 28 million people, comprising mainly Malays, Chinese and Indians, make up a moderate and modern emerging democracy. Unlike members of other multiethnic countries, they respect one another’s beliefs and values and share a commitment to achieving prosperity. The official religion is Islam, but other faiths are freely allowed and celebrated. This is one harmonious place.
Much of that narrative is true — but not all of it. Malaysia’s economic miracle has stalled, and while the nation is, indeed, somewhat pluralistic, it is no melting pot. Indeed, it is a society where people define themselves first and foremost by race.
(See pictures of Islam in Asia.)
The country’s political leadership has in some respects reinforced those ethnic identities. For the past 40 years, policymakers have doled out special privileges — in education and business — to one community: the majority Malays. The program is one of modern history’s greatest experiments in social engineering and possibly the world’s most extensive attempt at affirmative action. But the policies have also bred resentment among minorities, distorted the economy and undermined the concept of a single Malaysian identity.
Now a movement is gaining strength to finally change the system — and it’s coming from the very top. Prime Minister Najib Razak, 57, has surprised the country by advocating a fundamental reform of the pro-Malay program first introduced, ironically, by his father, who was Malaysia’s Prime Minister in the 1970s. Though the specifics of the new policies remain hazy, Najib’s intent is not. “I want Malaysia to be globally competitive,” he told TIME in an exclusive interview. “For that, we need to get every single Malaysian to be together.”
Najib’s proposals have simultaneously raised hopes, ire and fear. The mere idea of changing the affirmative-action system has reopened old wounds in Malaysian society and reactivated the long-running debate on how best to fuse Malays, Chinese and Indians into one nation. The direction Malaysia takes, moreover, has repercussions beyond its shores. The issues raised by Najib’s proposals are relevant to any upwardly mobile developing economy, especially a multicultural one: how to increase wealth and do so equitably.
(Read “Why the Honeymoon is Over for Malaysia’s New PM.”)
In confronting these sensitive challenges, Najib is taking enormous political risks. The primary base of electoral support for Najib’s political party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), is the Malay community, and altering decades-old perquisites could cause voters to defect to the opposition. But Najib believes he has little choice. If Malaysia’s economy is to compete with China, India and other rapidly emerging neighbors, Najib sees no other route but reform. “The competition is much greater and some would describe it even as cutthroat,” Najib says. “There is a realization that what has worked in the past may not necessarily work in the future.”
The Malay Card
Najib is facing the same dilemma his predecessors have since the earliest days of Malaysian independence: balancing the perceived needs of the Malays, both political and economic, with those of the country as a whole. At the heart of the problem is the reverse-pyramid shape of the Malaysian economy. Though the Malays and other indigenous peoples, together known as bumiputra in Malay, make up about 60% of the population, they have traditionally been poorer than the Chinese and Indian immigrants, who have long dominated the nation’s business and trade. After Kuala Lumpur was struck by race riots in 1969, a shaken leadership determined that communal peace was impossible without economic balance. The result was the New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in 1971, which aimed to raise the Malays’ share of the economic pie. Malays were given preferential access to public contracts and university scholarships. Any company listing on the stock market had to sell 30% of its shares to bumiputra investors. Though some measures have been softened or eliminated over the past two decades, many pro-Malay privileges remain. Certain government contracts are available only to bumiputra-controlled firms, for example. Malays even receive special discounts on home purchases. The affirmative-action program has become so ingrained in the Malaysian psyche that it is akin to a national ideology.
It is also controversial. Critics contend that the pro-Malay program too often benefits the connected few over its intended targets: the poor and struggling. All car-import permits, for example, are awarded to bumiputra-controlled firms, a policy intended to foster entrepreneurs in the community. But government audits have revealed that Malay businessmen with access to the permits sometimes sell them to minority traders who don’t — at an instant profit. (The Ministry of Trade and Industry, recognizing the problem, says it will phase out the permit system by 2020.) “Unfortunately, as [the NEP] was implemented over time, some of the zealots, politicians and bureaucrats included, tended to become more racial and emphasized more on the people who have relationships with them,” says Razaleigh Hamzah, an UMNO dignitary and former Finance Minister. “That’s where it went wrong.”
Despite four decades of special aid, 3 in 4 of the poorest people in Malaysia are still bumiputra. Adli Ahmad Ghazi, the Malay co-owner of Malaysian Defensive Driving & Riding, a 70-employee driving school in Kuala Lumpur, complains that the pro-Malay policies do little to help a small businessman like himself. In 2008, Adli tried to get financing from three agencies tasked with supporting Malay businessmen or small enterprises, but got rejected. When he has to deal with the bureaucracy, Adli says, he faces the same red tape as any other businessman. It took him two years to buy a parcel of land for his company from the local government. “The [NEP] rules don’t really apply to people on the ground,” Adli says. “They say the NEP would help the Malays, but it only helps a small percentage of the Malays.” (more…)
Dari malaysiakini
Oleh S Pathmawathy
Jawatankuasa hak dan kebebasan, Parlimen memulakan mesyuaratnya bagi menentukan sama ada Ketua Pembangkang, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim dikenakan tindakan kerana kenyataannya yang mengaitkan 1Malaysia dengan konsep One Israel.
Anwar tiba pada jam 12.35 tengah hari, sejam selepas jawatankuasa itu bermesyuarat tetapi diarahkan meninggalkan bilik itu.
Ini kerana jawatankuasa yang bersidang belum membuat keputusan berhubung permintaannya supaya perbicaraan diadakan secara terbuka dan dia dibenarkan diwakili oleh peguam.
Beberapa ahli parlimen – Nurul Izzah Anwar (PKR-Lembah Pantai), Gobind Singh Deo (DAP-Puchong), Azmin Ali (PKR-Gombak) dan Loh Gwo-Burne (PKR-Kelana Jaya) cuba memasuki bilik mesyaurat sebagai pemerhati tetapi juga diarahkan keluar.
“Ia adalah jelas. Menurut peraturan, hanya ahli parlimen dibenarkan masuk, tetapi apabila kita membuat bantahan, mereka sedang mempertimbangkannya,” kata Gobind. (more…)
From Malaysia Kini
The call for a royal commission to investigate claims that two former prime ministers had squandered hundreds of billions of ringgit during their tenure has received the backing of an anti-corruption watchdog.
Both Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, should be subjected to the investigations to restore credibility to the government, said Gerak chairperson Mohd Nazree Mohd Yunus.
“If these claims are not investigated, Gerak is concerned that the incidence of irregularities and corruption will be common practice in the future among national leaders, said Nazree in a statement issued today.
While integrity in the management of the country’s resources was crucial to the stability of the economy, the trust that foreign investors have towards the economy would also erode if political figures were allowed to get away with corruption and mismanagement, he added. (more…)
From Malaysia kini
The first statutory declaration signed by controversial private eye P Balasubramaniam consists of two parts – one on what was told to him and the other involves what he personally saw himself.
According to Balasubramaniam’s lawyer, Americk Singh Sidhu (left), the first part involves statements that the private investigator was in a position to ascertain their truth.
“He was therefore alluding to the fact that these statements were made to him, but was not alluding to the truth of those statements.”
This include where Balasubramaniam said he was told about the fact that Najib and murdered Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu had a relationship.
“The second part of Bala’s first SD reflects what he experienced himself. This would be not be regarded as hearsay evidence.” (more…)
Dari Blog Chegu Bard
‘Food Security’ ialah terma yang digunakan untuk menggambarkan jaminan keselamatan untuk semua mendapat jaminan akses terhadap bahan makanan utama. Jaminan ini selalunya merupakan tanggungjawab ‘penguasa’ yang kalau merujuk kepada negara Malaysia ia merupakan peranan Kerajaan Malaysia dan makanan utama kita beras.
Isu mengenai ‘food security’ ini telah menjadi perbincangan dunia sejak 80an lagi. Sejak itu bukan sedikit seminar dan resolusi diluluskan seluruh dunia berkenaan perkara tersebut. Kerajaan di seluruh dunia pula semakin sedar kerana desakan untuk memainkan peranan lebih besar dan penting dalam memberikan jaminan ‘food security’ kepada rakyatnya.
