When sweeteners are not an election offence

There is no legal provision to prosecute political parties or organisations for giving out money or gifts during an election campaign, according to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

Deputy chief commissioner (III) Sutinah Sutan said, however, that candidates, agents and supporters can be charged with corruption for similar activities if this is done in the candidate's interests.

RCI: Lebih baik lambat daripada tiada

Oleh Newmond Tibin

Ketua Menteri, NGO dan individu di Sabah
menyambut baik penubuhan suruhanjaya ini.

KOTA KINABALU: Walaupun kerajaan Barisan Nasional (BN) pimpinan Perdana Menteri Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak mempunyai kedudukan selesa kepentingan seluruh rakyat negeri ini berhubung masalah pendatang asing tanpa izin (Pati) yang berlarutan sejak sekian lama, dengan penuh ikhlas, ia menubuhkan sebuah Suruhanjaya Siasatan Diraja (RCI) untuk menangani perkara itu.

Kebanyakan pemimpin negeri, termasuk Ketua Menteri Datuk Seri Musa Aman, pertubuhan bukan kerajaan (NGO) dan individu di Sabah menyambut baik penubuhan suruhanjaya ini, walaupun ada yang berpendapat kerajaan persekutuan sepatutnya berbuat demikian sejak lama dulu.

Mengundi untuk masa hadapan

Oleh Tommy Thomas

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.”            

 - William Shakespeare (“Julius Ceasar”, Act IV iii 215)

Bayangkan Britain ditadbir oleh parti politik yang sama, contohnya, Parti Buruh, selama 55 tahun berturut-turut dari tahun 1957. Ataupun Amerika Syarikat ditadbir oleh Parti Republikan untuk tempoh sama yang berterusan, tanpa henti.

Itulah takdir Malaysia semenjak Merdeka. Pilihan raya umum ke-13, yang mesti diadakan sebelum 28 Jun tahun ini, memberi rakyat Malaysia satu peluang untuk bebas dari monopoli kuasa politik yang dipelopori UMNO, pada asalnya, berlindung di sebalik Perikatan dan setelah itu, sebagai Barisan Nasional.

The same threat of Phillippines swallowing Sabah if...

Joe Fernandez' note

KOTA KINABALU : There's a comment in Malaysia Today that if Sabah opts for freedom, the Philippines is waiting (meaning to swallow Sabah).

This is the same bogeyman story that we were told in 1963 by the Malayan Government and the British: that the Philippines and Indonesia are the big crocodiles in the region, waiting to swallow Sabah and Sarawak after the British leave.

Bishops expose ploy to convert under-aged students to Islam (Part 1)

Written by  Bob Teoh

Islamisation at matriculation college
In Part 1, the Catholic Church in Sabah has exposed a covert ploy to convert under-aged students to Islam in Labuan and complained that non-Muslim students at the Labuan Matriculation College between 17 and 18 years old, “are constantly subjected to various forms of harassment, ridicule and pressure to change their religion.”

What the bishops found out shocked them. Some teachers there were proselytising Christian students resulting in some converting to Islam. The called for full probe after which a strongly worded letter jointly signed by the four Catholic bishops of Sabah together with a report prepared by the Sabah Catholic Diocesan Centre was despatched to the highest levels with copies to Education Minister Muyhiddin Yasin, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister as well as two Sabahan Christian ministers, Bernard Dompok and Dr Maximus Ongkili, as well as to Murphy Pakiam, President of the Bishops’ Conference of Malaysia.