After a week’s silence, Tun is back swinging and delivering today yet another stinger. He says in Che Det, “Democracy is dead”.
“Democracy is dead” were identically Tun Dr Ismail’s famous words with regard to the aftermath of the May 13 riots. It’s hardly a good omen for Tun Mahathir to resurrect such an evocative phrase that’s so intertwined with our bloody past. Continue reading “Tun has returned, and he exaggerates”
By the late 1500s, the province of Nagasaki, Japan had been successfully Christianized by the foreign missionaries. This development destablized the country. Continue reading “Tokugawa shogunate completely banned Christianity in Japan”
Continue reading “Tun Dr Ismail: Sedition Act is also to protect the MCA”
The following article was originally published in the New Straits Times on 23 Aug 2014, ref.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-228315347.html
A precursor and a template for the Merdeka Constitution
1. Independence and Tunku Abdul Rahman are inseparable — so much so that each time a Malaysian hears the word “merdeka’, an image of our first Premier reading the Proclamation of Independence will invariably come to mind.
Indeed for many Malaysians, the Independence Movement started with the birth of the Alliance coalition he led — which was initiated by an Umno-MCA pact in the Kuala Lumpur Municipal Elections in 1952, extended in 1955 when the MIC joined and cemented in the same year when they won a landslide victory in the first peninsula-wide elections for the Federal Legislative Council.
2. Invigorated by such a mandate, the Tunku demanded that the date for Merdeka be brought forward. And as everyone knows within two years the Tunku got what he wanted. The Tunku after all is not immortalised as Bapa Kemerdekaan for nothing.
3. But what is less well known was the nature of the constitutional landscape in which the Alliance negotiated Merdeka: its ethos was geared towards decolonization. Highlighting this fact is not to stress the importance of historical context, but more to point out that the ‘logic of decolonization’ was ingrained in the 1948 Federation of Malaya Agreement (FMA). Indeed its preamble read:
“And whereas it is the desire of His Majesty and Their Highnesses that progress should be made towards eventual self-government and…….as soon as circumstances….permit, legislation should be introduced for the election of members to the several legislatures to be established pursuant to this Agreement.”
4. What this means is that though winning those elections was purely the achievement of the Alliance, yet the very fact that elections existed in the first place was not. As can be read in the Preamble, elections and other trappings of self-government was very much expected (if not demanded) by the then highest law of the land: the FMA.
5. Unfortunately, the importance of the 1948 FMA in preparing the ground for Merdeka is often overlooked. Continue reading “The 1948 Federation of Malaya agreement”
Petang tadi Perdana Menteri telah merasmikan ibu pejabat baru Utusan yang setinggi tujuh tingkat serta serba canggih.
Seni binanya menarik selain menggamit mata memandang — begitulah bentuk bunyi pujian Najib Razak terhadap mercu tanda Utusan itu Continue reading “Utusan lawan The J-Star”
Kira-kira 50 anggota Perkasa daerah Petaling Perdana membakar bendera ‘Sang Saka Malaya’.
Bersambung daripada perbincangan sebelum ini tentang kerjaya politik Dr Burhanuddin Al-Helmy yang pernah mendokong fahaman ‘Malaya untuk Malayans’. Continue reading “Releven Onn Jaafar kepada zaman kita”
Dr Mahathir Mohamad kelmarin memblog tajuk ‘The race factor’ — “We really don’t want to say we are just Malaysians and nothing else.”
Continue reading “Dr M: Rakyat sendiri yang pilih parti perkauman”
(1) Finas’ decision to delay the general release of Tanda Putera will help defuse the racial tensions that are already rising.
Rupa-rupanya dari awal-awal lagi sudah ada JV (joint venture) Melayu-Cina …
Pemimpin komunis Rashid Maidin beristerikan Selamah Abdullah, yang nama asalnya Chau Chi Chu.
Seorang lagi komunis Melayu Abdullah CD — nama penuhnya Cik Dat bin Anjang Abdullah — berkahwin dengan Suriani Abdullah (Eng Ming Ching), seorang pejuang komunis terkenal juga. Continue reading “Komunis Melayu beristerikan Cina”
Union Jack — bendera kebangsaan British — dinaikkan di sebuah pulau kecil di bumi Kedah, yang kemudiannya dikenali sebagai ‘pulau mutiara’ empayar Inggeris di Timur.
Helen Ang 