Apa itu Perlembagaan ?

The fall of UMNO/BN - by Dean Johns

by Dean Johns Nov 11, 09 10:31am, Malaysiakini

As optimistic as I usually am that Malaysia will someday be free of the burden and blight of the Umno/BN regime, I sometimes get discouraged. But then something happens to rekindle my faith that freedom can prevail in the face of seemingly impossible odds.

Today, for example, my spirits are lifted by BBC TV coverage of celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Who'd have dreamed, just the day before Nov 9, 1989, that such a key sector of the iron curtain would ever crumble, let alone so suddenly?
Or that it would pressage the collapse just a few years later of the entire structure of that Stalinist totalitarian monstrosity, the USSR? This anniversary of the fall of the Wall (below) also recalls the sudden destruction of some other obscene regimes that seemed destined to prevail indefinitely.
The stunning People Power revolution that put an end to domination of the Philippines by Ferdinand Marcos. The unstoppable student-led riots that freed Indonesia of the scourge of Suharto and his Golkar-party goons.
Then, of course, there were the military defeats of the forces of Serbian mass-murderer Milosevic and the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein. Admittedly, and regrettably, lots of other candidates for collapse are still standing.
The Generals are still holding the Burmese people at gunpoint as they have for four or five decades, and keeping Aung Sang Suu Kuy under house arrest almost 20 years after the she and her party were voted into office.
The terminally-nasty Kim dynasty still keeps the North Korean people in a state of slavery and starvation and its North-Asian neighbours nervous with its nuclear programme and missile tests. Iran's terror-exporting theocrats continue to cling to power and crush critics of their country's rigged presidential elections.
And in Zimbabwe, despite the instigation of a "power-sharing" arrangement with the opposition MDC, Mugabe and his army-backed ZANU-PF thugs still arrogantly rule the roost. Meanwhile the big daddy of all surviving dictatorships, the so-called "People's" Republic of China, is apparently going from bad to worse.
Orchestrated violence
Most of 14 human rights activists featured as Asiaweek magazine's "People of the Year" cover in 2005 have since disappeared or been jailed or exiled. And President Hu Jintao (below) revised the rule of law backwards from its already-dubious aim of "professionalism" to the "three supremes", which put the interests of the Communist party first, those of society second, and the letter and spirit of the law dead last.
Of course there are dozens more depressing situations around the world that I could mention. In fact I could go on citing cases of criminal governments that haven't yet had their come-uppance until I completely talked myself out of the optimistic state of mind that the anniversary of the fall of the Wall has put me in.
But instead, let me switch back to the positive and talk about some hopeful signs I've seen lately, like the move by the International Criminal Court against fat-cat politicians in Kenya. Following a 2007 election in which incumbent President Mwai Kibaki declared himself the winner despite his challenger Ralla Odinga's having a million-vote lead, over 1,000 people died in a wave of allegedly orchestrated violence.
Now, as the Sydney Morning Herald reported recently, "After months of stone-walling by politicians in Kenya - where top leaders have long escaped prosecution for corruption and other crimes - the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, announced that crimes against humanity had been committed in the post-election period and that he would seek a formal investigation into them".
With former President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, already on trial for war crimes, power-brokers and other suspects in Kenya would do well to take the ICC's threats seriously. As would politicans in many other countries where, to hark back to the Sydney Morning Herald quote, "top leaders have long escaped prosecution for corruption and other crimes".
Malaysia's leaders, or, more accurately, misleaders, have been getting away with corruption and other crimes against the nation's citizens, civil institutions and constitution for as long as I can remember.
Kenya's post-election riots of 2007 inevitably recall the bloodbath in Malaysia in May 1969 allegedly fomented by Tun Abdul Razak in a successful bid to replace Tunku Abdul Rahman as prime minister.
Ops Lalang
And Umno has used the threat of a repeat performance ever since as a big stick to keep the opposition in line. Then there were Mahathir's mass arrests of opponents in his notorious Ops Lalang, his sacking of elements in the judiary who refused to bend to his will, and his framing and jailing of Anwar Ibrahim so as to crush the reformasi movement.
With precedents like those to encourage them, Mahathir's successors, despite their repeated promises of reform, have done nothing whatever to improve the situation. In fact in many ways it's worse.
The financial scandals are getting bigger and more frequent, suspicious deaths in police and MACC custody continue to soar and the perpetrators to go unpunished, while the findings of cosmetic royal commissions are routinely and completely ignored.
Opposition politicians and supporters keep talking about voting these Umno/BN crooks out of office, but the Najib Razak (left) government has taken to buying opposition members and overturning elected state governments. First to fall, with the consent of the courts and its sultan, was Perak, and now the process appears underway in Selangor.
The electoral system is a travesty too. Thanks to a totally compromised Electoral Commission, elections are so stacked in Umno/BN's favour by a combination of gerrymandering, roll-rigging, postal-vote stacking and blatant bribery that the next general election so many good, honest Malaysians are avidly anticipating looks set to be a joke.
What will it take, I wonder, for the international community to start taking as avid and active an interest in Malaysian affairs as it is in Kenya's? The political murder of a foreign citizen from a country with more clout than Mongolia? Another show-trial of Anwar on another trumped-up sodomy charge? An investigation in France or elsewhere of corrupt submarine or other arms deals with repressive regimes?
Whatever it is can't come too soon. Because like Marcos, Suharto, Milosevic, the USSR and the hated Berlin Wall, it's way past time for Umno/BN to fall.

'BN will win elections if held today'

Well, 99% of Malaysian voters can vote for BN, I will still vote for Pakatan. Most people who choose to vote for BN are ignorant. Without a free media, there is no healthy competition between the two coalition. Most people especially those in the rural areas, are still rely very much on mainstream media to judge BN and Pakatan, and their assessment on Pakatan's performance is lopsided. And not to mention, ever since Pakatan took over last March, they have not really have the opportunity to govern effectively. Sabotaging at the states level and zero assistance/cooperation from Federal level to name a few, are all working towards crippling Pakatan state Government.

Pakatan are not even given the opportunity to govern effectively, so what is there to talk about performance? 50 years of misrule and corruption by BN and you want Pakatan to correct it in 3 years and without Federal power how are they going to correct it in the first place?

So Malaysian, don't be the ordinary Germans during the Nazi period where they willingly became the executioners of Hitler. Because if you do so, disaster awaits all of us. Just like Hitler and Germany, they were destroyed completely, totally annihilated because of their sin in supporting a crook regime. So as I said earlier, I don't know who are these Malaysians in the survey who said they will vote for BN, my advise is that open your eyes and ears to see and to listen clearly, the consequences of supporting BN are all yours to bear, me and my family are not part of this sinful adventure. I will never vote for BN unless of course when they become opposition, then I will consider to vote them back to power if they change totally.

by Athi Shankar Nov 15, 09 7:44pm, Malaysiakini
Barisan Nasional would fare better than the last general election if the 13th general election is held today, according to Merdeka Centre director Ibrahim Suffian.He said BN may also regain its two-thirds in the 222-seat lower house of Parliament, with rival block Pakatan Rakyat winning about 50 to 60 seats."This is my personal assessment based surveys done by the centre this year."It may not be prefect but would not be far off the mark," he told the weekly Sembang Sembang Forum in Caring Society Complex in Penang today.

The 1 Sekolah Debacle

I commented on 1 Sekolah issue on Dr Rafick's blog:-

Dr
I respect and admire your writting. On this issue, I am actually for and support single school system, but I need to clarify a few things:

If I am not mistaken the single stream school system has already in place since merdeka ( of course in between we change from BE to BM) and Chinese/Tamil stream school are only available at the primary level. Furthermore, this vernacular system is funded 99.9% by the Chinese and Indian community respectively. Unless ones work for these vernacular schools, you would not understand the teachers’ condition, the welfare/salary, etc. are not compatible to what the national schools’ teachers are getting. The new building, equipment and all are antirely funded by the community themselves. So if this is not enough, I dont know what else the government can do or wants to do to kill off the vernacular system. Establishing 1 Sekolah is good, but unless the Government chass away all the Chinese and Indian, there will always be a need for this vernacular schools. The need for this vernacular school I think is really only about learning the basic spoken Mandarin/Tamil, because as I observe, majority of the parents would send their kids to National Secondary Schools and later university. The goverment must also understand it’s the race-based political system that give birth to everything race based from education to applying for an IC. I may be wrong, but dont make the vernacular system the scapegoat for government’s failure in forging a united Malaysia.

Dr Rafick 's reply:

Yeap Cheng Liang

Thank you for the admiration. The feeling is mutual when I read your level headed comments which presented in a very professional manner. We need more people like you.
I am not sure about the history portion you mentioned. As indicated there is a lot of misconception here. There is no where we suggest that all other schools is to be close down.
In the single stream, all types of schools are allowed to exist but the government funding applies ony for the national school.
In other words, religious school, chinese school, Tamil school and other similar school must come under the private school category and they have to operate on the basis of charity and business.
Trust this clarifies