Category: Idiot Overlords

8 Bags of Sugar and Flour

Image0288Eight bags of sugar and eight bags of flour were given out to each person. That’s how I ended up having a photo of these commodities. These were all stuff into large blue carrier bags bearing the handsome portrait of our current Prime Minister and the logo of Barisan Nasional.

The timing of these gifts is opportune, as Chinese New Year is just around the corner and the bags of flour and sugar will go a long way to making a ton of cookies and biscuits, just add eggs and butter. I wonder whose hair-brained scheme this is.

My family remarked that this election is really special. In past elections, we were not treated to so many gifts. Maybe in the villages and long-houses, gratuitous gifts were given to the people. But this time around, practically everyone gets something (I will use my RM250 book voucher to buy MP Jain’s Administrative Law).

Our cleaner commented that this is how elections are like in Indonesia – handouts after handouts. I wondered to myself if that was true, then our democracy is gradually regressing to that of known corrupt regimes in the past.

I feel sad for the BN because they have lost touch with the people. They do not realise that these handouts are not going to win them any votes but will only serve to insult those they wish to attract. Indians do not need bags of rice and the Chinese do not want flour and sugar.

What we need is good governance. With that, we would all be able to afford to buy bags of rice, flour and sugar. But more importantly, we would all have kept our personal dignity in not having to stoop to taking gifts of commodities. No one wants to live off handouts.

I do wish the BN the best though, for the coming GE13. I know that they’ll need it.

Amok Man Dead

There are stories about yet another Malaysian who died under police custody. One report claimed that he was beaten to death by by-standers while another report claimed that he randomly died of a heart-attack, with the police innocent of any battery.

Both accounts agree that the police gave chase to the amok man, subdued him and cuffed him. They also agreed that he died. Where the accounts differed was what happened to him after he was in cuffs. Both of these stories cannot be true.

However, the quote from the Kajang OCPD ACP gives the lie away: “But upon return, the Indian man was unconscious.”

The OCPD would have us believe that, after his police officers had the guy cuffed, they left him alone to go get the Land Rover and upon return, he was magically unconscious. Needless to say, I do not believe the story that all the police officers left the cuffed guy, who had run amok, alone on the street. I’m pretty sure that only one officer went to get the vehicle while the others stayed with the amok man.

But even if the police told the truth and that all the police officers had left the cuffed man alone to go fetch the vehicle and returned to find him already unconscious, the man still died under police custody and they are at least guilty of negligence. While I’m not a cop, I’m sure that it’s not SOP to leave a cuffed and dangerous man on his own.

Therefore, I wonder at the reasons why the OCPD ACP would give such a wonderful account of what happened. The only one that I can think of is that he realises how bad this thing looks. Whether the officers beat him up or left him on his own, the officers are guilty of something. So, the only thing he can claim is ignorance.

Now, if the angry crowd had beaten up the man who damaged their property, the fault is also on the officers who were there. They should have whisked the amok man away from the crowd immediately, or failing which, they should have taken control of the crowd and not let them turn into a mob.

I’m sick and tired of this ‘blameless’ culture that our men in blue have. They are to blame regardless of how he died as the amok man was already cuffed and under police custody. The cops have to learn to do their jobs responsibly. Otherwise, they must be made to pay a price.

PDRM has got a lot to answer for.

Regulating Busking

Busking for CHANGE
Busking for CHANGE (Photo credit: Ian Muttoo)

Today, it’s walking through the streets of KL in support of a cause. Tomorrow, it’s singing on the streets of KL about a cause.

According to a news report, our KL buskers are being asked by DBKL to get permits to perform.

I get the sense that DBKL is running out of things to do, what with protest rallies being allowed at Stadium Merdeka and the police protecting the sacred grass at Dataran Merdeka. Therefore, they need to do this to justify their existence.

While there is probably nothing illegal about what they are doing, but there is a very dangerous thing about their request to license street busking.

Personally, I am all for a smaller government, not big brother. Therefore, I do not like the idea of the government getting involved in determining whether someone is allowed to sing on the streets for money or otherwise.

It is one thing to consider them as petty traders, but it is quite another to say that:

We do not want just about anybody to perform and foreign nationals are not allowed to do so. And, the buskers must be above 18 years old,

I guess that DBKL wants to assert some form of quality control. What with Visit Malaysia Year 2014 coming up, we would surely want to put our best foot forward and ensure that only the best buskers are allowed to sing on the streets of KL.

In the same vein, DBKL must not want foreigners to sing because we want to showcase local talent only during VMY2014. We must not sully our dearest Manglish with foreign influences. Namewee would be proud.

And we must never waste young talent but must keep them in school to prevent them from engaging in any sort of creative pursuit, lest their young impressionable minds get filled with thoughts of rebellion.

Woe.

I can understand it if the buskers were singing on private property but if they are singing on public roads, I would put it as freedom of speech (singing in this case). DBKL should not curtail things by regulating busking. Our democratic space for expression is limited as it is.

Oh, I think that I know what this is about. DBKL must have noticed the amount of singing going on during protest rallies and thought that it would be a great idea to regulate it. The next time we have a rally at Stadium Merdeka, we would probably be barred from singing on the streets of KL.

Frak it. Just bring back local government elections and we’ll see how the rakyat feel about busking.

Traitorous Elections

If what is being reported on the Sabah RCI is true, then there is a real serious question about the integrity of our electoral roll. If they can magically create voters out of thin air, then the voting results are a farce.

What makes the revelations believable is that people do not seem to be denying the allegations but are busy trying to justify their actions and to clarify the legality of granting instant citizenship to deserving foreigners.

The right thing to do would be to clean up the electoral roll to purge it of all sorts of problems. It is going to be a mammoth task to do so but it is something that has to be done to restore any semblance of confidence to our elections.

Unfortunately, this is not an easy problem to solve – made worse by the fact that the next elections are so near.

If we are to go into the coming general elections knowing full well that our electoral roll is tainted, it is easy to lose heart and be thoroughly dejected. However, there are always alternative actions that can be taken to beat the odds.

However, my fear is what happens after the results are out. Will the rakyat be willing to accept the results of such tainted elections, whatever the results may be?

If the rakyat are unwilling to accept the results, I think that there will be a democracy crisis in our country. I shudder to think of the lengths that the rakyat would need to go to just to preserve what little democracy we have left.

I honestly don’t know what to think.

However, one thing is definite. Whatever the result, the moment the elections are over, the clean-up begins. We cannot wait for any political will to clean up the electoral roll. The rakyat must work to fix this shit.

The members of the EC must be replaced. The entire electoral roll must be struck off. A massive voter registration exercise must be performed to flush out all the undead and bipolars. Registration must be made compulsory by law.

Traitorous bastards!

Rights of the Dead

DAP Election Fiasco

Reading about what happened in the DAP CEC elections, I can only laugh at what happened. I like to take what people say, at face value, and so I don’t think that there are any conspiracies involved. But it still beggars belief that they could screw up so royally.

Incidents like this just make me feel sad. It makes me think that our country is being run by a bunch of untrained monkeys – untrained, because a trained monkey would not make the kind of mistakes that they did.

Due to an unfortunate administrative tabulation error, the results which were announced on the evening of the 15th were not accurate. As a result of an error in the Excel spreadsheet, the votes for Candidates number 31 to 38 were exactly the same as those of Candidates number 61 to 68. The obvious error shown above was, however, not discovered before the official results were announced by the Speaker of the Congress.

As they themselves put it, it was an obvious error. The way that the DAP ran their CEC elections, was pretty well done from initial reports. But they obviously failed to double check the election results before announcing it.

The fact that they got an amateur to prepare the Excel worksheet is bad enough. The fact that they kept silent about it while they conducted an internal audit was worse. And the fact that they’re not annulling the results is even worst.

The error should not have happened in the first place. Everything should have been double checked. The Excel sheet should have been double checked, tested with random data, debugged etc. The results of the Excel sheet should have been checked with manual results.

The error was discovered after the Congress and I then notified the DAP Secretary General, Lim Guan Eng. Sdr Lim immediately instructed that the correct results must be made public subject to an internal audit to be carried out by Dr Ong Kian Ming and verification by an external auditor. The internal audit team re-tabulated the election tally sheet results to arrive at the correct figures.

Once the error was discovered, the first thing that they should have done was to announce that the error was discovered – and to announce an immediate audit by both internal and external auditors. This would’ve been the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, they didn’t do the right thing. Of course, they didn’t do the wrong thing either. They did what political parties do best – walk the grey.

Amateurs. Kids. Babies.

On Indecency Laws

A PAS leader has come out to clarify that, the recent bouts of fines on non-Muslims for various indecent acts were not under the jurisdiction of Syariah Law but are local by-laws that encompass all including non-Muslims. He is trying to clarify things as they are under attack by the MCA for trying to enforce Islamic Law on non-Muslims.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t serve to quell fires but rather serves to confuse the matter further. People need to understand that these indecency laws are not just found in PAS-run states but also in the Federal Territory. However, the justification of such laws is flawed as it raises the question of what is indecent under whose values.

Rule 3 of the Parks (Federal Territory) By-Laws actually makes it an offence to do a whole bunch of things in public parks including, climbing trees (R.3(g)), riding bikes (R.3(h)), tossing frisbees (R.3(l)), kite-flying (R.3(q)), and any acts may bring public discomfort or that may lead to sexual activity (R.3(w)) god forbid!

So you see, the by-laws don’t just exist in Kelantan but also exist right here in KL. In fact, if we were to climb trees or ride bikes in any park in KL, we’re actually committing an offence punishable by up to a year in jail or RM2,000 fine.

Sounds downright silly, does it not? Well, that’s the Law for you.

The trouble is, nobody has bothered to challenge these By-Laws. We must realise that By-Laws are the lowest form of life in our legal system. It can and should be challenged by the people. If someone gets a summon for flying a kite in a park, they should rightfully seek clarification at the High Court on whether kite-flying is unlawful.

Now, then the issue becomes whether or not holding hands, kissing, hugging, or piggy-back riding is unlawful either.

Personally, I feel that such morality Laws are just down-right wrong. If the purpose of which is to prevent public indecency, then the problem becomes, what is indecent and by whose judgement. While I can understand that things in Kelantan may be different from things in KL, but if you tried to fine every kissing couple in KL, you’d get into a whole load of trouble.

This is where PAS has some problems with it’s Islamic image. It is really difficult for the party to ride on a religious ticket while trying to maintain that it’s not trying to impose Islamic Laws on non-Muslims. It cannot be helped that the value system adopted by PAS would be based on Islam and that by enacting Laws that rely on those values, they are indirectly imposing Islamic values on non-Muslims, even if they are not explicitly Syariah Laws.

I would argue that this is an attack on my fundamental right to freedom of religion and also my right to life. One cannot argue that it is public indecency because while it is indecent to one group, may not be to another group. Sneaking such morality laws in through the back-door of local by-laws is cheating.

Personally, I would encourage everyone to kiss in public, more often. Let’s shower the world in Love, not hate.

If you attack my value system, I will attack back.

Quid-pro-quo.