FRUSTRATIONS MY FORCE ZAID OUT

I HAVE written here before about what I thought of Pakatan Rakyat and the three parties that make up the grouping. Plus also my thoughts on some of their leaders and the promises made while trying to woo voters over to their side in March 2008.

In the latter they were successful, as the results of the 12th general elections show but I'm sure by now a lot of people who voted for the parties concerned must be feeling frustrated in the realisation that they have been had. Absolutely no way many of the promises, especially the ones involving money, will be honoured. But we also know that the die-hards will provide a 1,001 reasons to defend this failure to honour their words.

There have been hiccups along the way since Pakatan managed to deny the Barisan Nasional a two-third majority in Parliament but almost all were successfully dealt with. Often the mainstream press was blamed for exaggerating the problems or even accused of concocting a story.

But the latest spat between some PKR people in Penang and the Dap leadership under the state's Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng looks real and shows no sign of quickly going away. In fact what was started by former Penang PKR chairman and Bayan Baru MP Zahrain Hashim appears to be gaining momentum. One significant difference this time is that some of the voices speaking out against Lim have also come from the Chinese community.

Not unexpectedly Zahrain and a few other outspoken PKR politicians have been asked to explain their positions before the party's disciplinary board. Included in the group is lawyer Zaid Ibrahim, who was also vocal when he was in Umno and a minister. Frustrated, he quit Umno and eventually joined PKR a few months later.

My reckoning is that Zaid will not last long even in PKR and for the same reason too -- frustrations. Maybe he is looking for his own ideal world but he's never going to find it, not here, not anywhere else for that matter. Politics, just like life, is also about compromises.

Maybe one day Zaid will be left with no choice but to form his own party but that too may not be enough to fulfil his every wish. I will be very surprised if he stays on in PKR in the next year or two.

EARLY DAYS YET.... AND THE F WORD.

NOT surprisingly one of the items during the news on Aljazeera on Wednesday was the Anwar Ibrahim trial for alleged sodomy committed on a former aide of his. It wasn't just about the trial per so though.

Included in the afternoon segment was an opinion of one Michael Danby, an Australian Labour Party MP for Melbourne Ports. If I'm not mistaken Danby plans to take up issue about the case before his Parliament, disagreeing with the suggestion by the newscaster that doing so may be viewed as interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign sovereign country.

Danby spoke about how Anwar led the opposition to its best ever electoral performance in March 2008 and predictably went on to say that the trial is all about politics. "Anwar is a good man, a good friend of Australia........ Malaysia should leave the trial and charges out." Which means that to Danby his good friend Anwar should never be charged -- even if our investigators and Attorney-General's Chambers are convinced they have a case against him. More fundamentally all of us must never forget the rights of Mohd. Saiful, if indeed something improper happened to him.

So far there's nothing substantive to suggest that there is a political conspiracy behind the trial, save for the meeting between Saiful and an aide to the PM when the young man was a university student leader and his meeting with the PM before he lodged the police report.

Those meetings and including others Saiful may have had with other people are not a good enough reason to argue that indeed there was complicity to fix Anwar. The court's only concern will be to determine if an offence had been committed. Evidence that pass the tightest of scrutinies will have to be offered by the prosecution. There must be DNA samples and everything else. It is for the prosecution to convince the court of its case. I don't think trying to create a case out of nothing against Anwar or anyone else for that matter is a stroll in the park. Why would anyone in authority in this country want to do that? And there are other (easier) ways to try and fix a person without having every word uttered scrutinised by the world.

Let the trial proceed, let the prosecution present its case and let's see if the defence can counter.

How many of you readers of mana-mana think that the F word is such a crude one that is unthinkable for someone of Anwar's stature to use in private? I would like to know because there are blokes who think this is beyond imagination.

NOTHING TO HIDE; IT'S ALL IN OPEN COURT

FINALLY, after more than 18 months, we will get to hear more about the allegations by one Mohd. Saiful against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. The trial is scheduled to open this Tuesday, unless Anwar's counsels can think of something else to convince the court that it must be postponed again for the umpteenth time.

It has been one hell of a long wait for Saiful who had talked about his frustrations and what he deemed to be attempts to delay the trial by the man he briefly worked for in the run-up to the general elections in March 2008. The same frustration was also stated by Saiful's father. What seemed unfair too to Saiful was how he ended up being the target of some nasty name-callings, as if what he reported to the police against Anwar was all part of a grandiose scheme intended only to bring down Anwar politically.

Anwar's camp recently also held a briefing for some foreign diplomats. Amongst the issues talked about was the impending trial. Thereafter followed a statement by R. Sivarasa, one of his lawyers, which partly sounded thus: "..... and the falsification of evidence all arising from a political conspiracy to stop Anwar's political career. He was put through two trials which were condemned around the world as manifestly flawed and politically motivated."

The truth of the matter is that Anwar was cleared of the charges under the second trial by the country's highest court which freed him of the sodomy but did touch on the homosexual bit. There were instances when the trial proper appeared flawed but the fact that the Federal Court freed Anwar is proof enough of the independence of our Judiciary. Granted too that not everyone agreed that the trials were perfect but to say that it was condemned the world over? Politically motivated? Was anything ever unearthed by the defence in court to prove this? Not that I can remember.

Why the need to brief the diplomats when the trial is before an open court? Every little detail, except maybe the most obscenely explicit, will be heard loud and clear by everyone present in the court room and duly reported by both the local and international press. Whatever you may not find in the MSM you are sure to find in the alternative media. Nothing will be a secret.

But there is one significant difference in the allegations then compared to the one brought by Saiful.

In the first the prosecution relied on evidence over something that was alleged to have happened many years before the police decided to open a case against Anwar but where the latter is concerned, the investigation went into full gear merely days after the alleged sodomy had happened. Which means that whatever evidence the investigators would have found to incriminate Anwar would have been fresh.

The onus though is on Saiful, the investigators and prosecutors to provide the burden of proof. It is for them alone to prove the case against Anwar who only needs to sit quietly in court, maybe even giggle once in a while as he is bound to do, unless there is something incriminating against him.

I am just as curious as everyone else to find out if indeed Saiful has been telling the truth since mid-2008.

BTW I was "offline" for several days due to my cake-making. As mentioned previously this is where the money is for me and a friend happened to make a big order for Chinese New Year. Every time you don't read a post from me for a few days on end you can safely assume that it's all because of the lapis legit or layered cake, which is time-consuming work. Imagine being close to the electric oven running at a temperature of 170 or 180 degrees C for something like three hours??

TAKING A PEE IN KHALID'S BACKYARD

PKR'S Selangor Mentri Besar Khalid Ibrahim must still be feeling the effects and impact of that (very) tight "slap" on the face by his own division in Kuala Selangor. I mean how often have we seen such a situation before, in any party for that matter, with people who in all intent and purposes should be your close allies taking a pee in your backyard?

Look at it from the proper perspective and you'll realise the magnitude of the problem Khalid is having on his plate. It's not just about him being the divisional leader; it's more about him as MB as well.

Instead of telling us that he's trying to resolve the issue all that Khalid could say was "most of those who resigned were Umno members. The move was expected.... it did not come as a surprise. Now they have been invited back to Umno so there must be some incentives."

What has their past links with Umno got anything to do with it? The fact is the resignations do not do the image of PKR and Khalid any good. We also haven't heard of any official offers from Umno for some of these people to rejoin.

The other significant question is the validity of the division itself now that it's left with only three elected members. This is something PKR must explain not only to its members but also the public.

This also puts the spotlight on the issue of leadership, specifically Khalid's, and the organisation of PKR. By my reckoning the party hasn't shown much by way of something that is so much better than Umno. But what it has aplenty is rhetoric but at the end of the day this is not something that puts the rice on the plate.

But back to Khalid's sarcasm about Umno. Wasn't he also with Umno, as was de facto PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim and other party strongmen like Azmin Ali and Zaid Ibrahim plus several others in the states? It can't be that bad a party, mate?

CAN'T RENT TO THEM BUTTERFLIES?

JUST when I thought I had seen enough for a while.......

Read a news item a couple of days ago with the heading "Vice den thrives despite 20 raids", (Sun, January 20). In it were remarks by an assistant CID director of the federal police Kamarulzaman Mamat, referring to a popular steamy place adjacent to the Pudu market.

Kamarulzaman wants landlords to be aware of whom they are renting out their properties to. "We want landlords to check their tenants and not rent out to women involved in the flesh trade." And yes, police are also working out the best course of action to clean up the area, says he.

Noble intentions but if there's one thing which is almost impossible to clean up it is the flesh trade and it's the same the world over. There have been many statements from the police and immigration, with numbers often included in press statements to tell us all about the thousands of foreign skirts rounded up each year. But the fact of the matter is you can count on your fingers the number of these skirts who are actually hauled to court to be charged with prostitution or soliciting, found guilty and booted out, never to be allowed to return maybe for the next five years!!

If you have been reading these statements regularly enough you will realise that the part about the number found guilty and deported is left blank.

But honestly how can we expect a landlord to know exactly what his tenant does? He can't be checking on them 24/7 and he can't be asking them what they do on their own time.

Just as in all the other cases where foreign skirts were hauled up by our enforcement teams for "prostitution" I would love to hear it from Kamarulzaman about what will eventually happen to those his team found to be with men in their rented apartments on and around Jalan Pasar Baru. I am just wondering what offence these women and men have committed......
I think we will all be much happier if our enforcement agencies concentrate on making our streets and neighbourhoods safer.

"WE KNOW WHERE THEY ARE"

SOME civil servants sometimes tickle me pink with some of their statements. They really do, regardless of which department or agency they are with.

You must have read this before over the years: "We know who they are/where they are. It's a matter of time before the long arm of the law catches up with them."

Almost similar in its meaning was a recent statement by Immigration director-general Abdul Rahman Othman a day after the PM spoke about the almost 40,000 Indian nationals who had gone missing from the department's radar after their visas expired.

Amongst other things this part of Rahman's statement caught my eyes: "Most of them end up in Indian restaurants, make jewellery or become barbers. Traffickers will not put them in plantations."

Well, if you know where most of them could be found what has Immigration done about it?

But sometimes the problem with our enforcement agencies is that an offender can smell them from a mile away! Often they put a luminous vest on them and are accompanied by a few trucks ready to transport the offenders to the holding points. Of course the word Imigresen is prominently displayed on the side of the trucks.

I remember some years ago how a team from the KL Islamic Religious Affairs Department came to check on Muslim patrons at a popular disco. Most of the female staff wore the tudung, which was an obvious giveaway. The best part, and fortunately for those who were drinking, was that the raiding party seemed to know only about beer and stout. The patrons who were on whisky or margarita got away -- right under the noses of the officers.

The people who know how best to "seal" every possible exit are the police. I have seen them doing this and not many can claim to be able to escape their dragnet.

But really, now that Rahman has said he knew where most of the Indians preferred to work as illegals I think we all expect him to do something about this, albeit in a truly effective manner that doesn't allow many to escape into the alleys and out into the streets and blend with the locals.

BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION....... AND DENIALS

THE issue attracts my interest a bit because of the names that have been linked to it, a couple of whom I know. Initially the name of a former senior mainstream editor was mentioned as the owner of the apartment in which fugitive blogger Raja Petra is said to be staying in in London's Bayswater.

But someone who has lived in London for a long time recently told his friends that it belonged to another former former journalist, Kalimullah Hassan, who has denied allowing anyone else from using his apartment except he and his family. His statement however did not deny the apartment in question was his so we'll never know I guess.

Also contained in Kali's statement were denials that he had ever met up with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim late last year, also in London, and that he had nothing to do with online portals Malaysia Kini or Malaysian Insider. The people who did fund the former we knew sometime back. In this case of the latter the name of one other person close to Kali has also been mentioned by people in the press. And yes Kali's too.

Nevertheless it is also not going to be easy for anyone to prove any links between someone like Kali in even whatever little way to the portal primarily because it is a private company. I may be partly funding it but you will never know so long as my name doesn't appear anywhere, unless of course I tell you and you know me well enough to not have any reason not to believe me.

But my point really is this: Why the need to issue a statement to deny? Let the blogs who link you to all the issues prove their case. It is not for the person named to prove anything.

However this is how it always turns out in Malaysia, with the person implicated scrambling to come out in the open to deny, deny and deny.