Malaysia’s elections
Banyan Asia
by R.C. | KUALA LUMPUR
The Economist
Dec 19th 2012
ALL year, it seems, Malaysia has been on a war footing. For elections, that is—and thankfully, rather than anything more martial. The country operates on a Westminster-style parliamentary system, so the prime ministers’ five-year term does not officially end until early next summer. Nonetheless, Najib Razak and his people have been talking up the chances of going to the polls before then pretty well continuously over the past 18 months or so, which keeps everyone guessing.
Now, with the end of the year in sight and no further announcements, it seems that Mr Najib will take this down to the wire. Given that he can only go to the country after Chinese New Year next February, most people expect him to plump for the latest date he can in the electoral calendar, which would be about late March or early April.
His supporters say, why rush? With a generally favourable economic outlook, tame state media and all the advantages of incumbency, there is no reason why Mr Najib can’t enjoy the rest of his term of office without worrying about the 13th general election. After all, he has a bit of history on his side, to put it mildly—the ruling political alliance, Barisan Nasional (BN), has never lost a general election since independence in 1957.
His critics, however, detect signs of nervousness about the outcome—mainly, the endless indecision about when to go to the polls. Indeed, all the evidence suggests that this will be the closest race in Malaysia’s history, even more so than the last general election in 2008. On that occasion, the BN lost its two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time, thus losing its powers to make changes to the constitution. Just as bad, five of the 12 contested state legislatures were won by the opposition, compared with only one in the previous election. Mr Najib knows that to placate his hardline critics within the BN he has to not only win, but win big. They want the BN to claw back most of what the party lost last time. It’s a tall order.
With so much at stake, every vote counts…but only if every vote is counted. Democracy activists and other election-watchers are concerned that many of the criteria for a free and fair election have not been met by the government and the government-appointed Election Commission.
Over the past few years the campaign for open and fair elections has been led by Bersih (meaning “clean” in Malay), a loose coalition of civil-rights and human-rights NGOs and others.
The head of Bersih, Ambiga Sreenevasan, sounded gloomy last week about the prospects for this election. “It will be the dirtiest election we have seen for a long time”, she warned. She points to the more overt signs of this, such as “increasing political violence” (at political rallies, for example) and more subtle signs such as “constant reports of discrepancies on the electoral roll in west Malaysia.”
Having campaigned for very specific improvements to the conduct of elections, Ms Ambiga says that the authorities have take action only with respect to the proposal that voters be marked with indelible ink (and even then not entirely to her satisfaction). On everything else, such as the neglected right of all sides to enjoy equal access to the media, Ms Ambiga says that the electoral authorities “give me and Bersih no reason at all to believe that anything will change before the election”.
With official overseas election observers (apart from ASEAN) apparently considered unnecessary by the government, Bersih is setting up its own “citizens-observers’ campaign”. Mr Ambiga says that they need 30,000 observers, but expect to get only 10,000. Bersih will train them. They might soon be busy people
Friday 21 December 2012
Malaysia’s Education Disaster: The power to change the system is in our hands
by Koon Yew Yin
As election day comes closer, we will be asked for reasons as to why we should want to change the Barisan Nasional Government (BN). When the question is put to me, I tell people that there is no need to enumerate three, four or five reasons. One reason alone is sufficient for Malaysians to elect a new government.
The reason is that the BN has ruined our educational system and put us back at least one generation in our educational standards and standing.
When the country became independent in 1957 our educational system was acknowledged to be amongst the best in the region. Today, after the introduction of NEP policies in education, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel in our standards of educational achievement at all levels.
BN’s Record
Whether it is in primary, secondary or tertiary education, the rot is clear. Half literate primary school products that cannot write or speak properly in either English or Bahasa and drop out early; secondary students with abysmal standards in Mathematics, Science and other core subjects; tertiary students who are provided with university degrees but in fact are unemployable except in the civil service.
This is the disastrous outcome of BN rule. This is the result of the politicization of the educational system and UMNO’s cynical use of it as a political and racial football.
Whether it is with regard to mission schools or vernacular or SRJK schools; teaching of science and mathematics; teaching of English; appointment of administrators and heads of schools; the curriculum; examinations; vocational education; funding and allocations – UMNO has inserted its racial and political agenda to debase and corrupt the system.
If readers think that I am over critical of the BN, let me provide two pieces of evidence on the disaster in our education.
The first is from the Government itself. According to the national education blueprint (Preliminary report, Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025, pp, E4-E5)
• Malaysia was ranked in the bottom third of 74 participating countries of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009+.
• 60% of the 15-year-old Malaysian students who participated in PISA failed to meet the minimum proficiency level in Mathematics, while 44% and 43% did not meet the minimum proficiency levels in Reading and Science respectively
• A comparison of scores shows that 15-year-olds in Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Shanghai are performing as though they have had three or more years of schooling than 15-year-olds in Malaysia
• Low achievement standards in TIMSS (Maths and Science): far behind first tier; now comparable to countries such as Indonesia
• By 2007 (last published cycle) 18% and 20% of our students failed to meet the minimum proficiency standards in Maths and Science.
The conclusion of the Blueprint is shocking. Not only are the gaps between Malaysia and other countries in our region growing, international assessments also revealed that Malaysian student performance is declining in absolute terms.
This damning conclusion – that we are going backwards in our education standards and achievement – shows that the problem is not a new one. It is a long standing crisis which the BN has successfully concealed from Malaysians thanks to media manipulation and its diversionary focus on language and Chinese school issues.
But it is no longer easy to fool Malaysians thanks to the internet media and the availability of international assessment results.
Hence the latest educational scandal in which the Ministry of Education is accused of lowering the maths and science standards for the PMR and SPM examinations to artificially increase the pass rate does not shock me in the least.
Such efforts have been taking place for the past thirty years, especially in the public universities. How else then to account for the hundreds of thousands of graduates who are unemployable?
My Personal Experience
The second piece of evidence is one derived from personal experience. For several years now, I have been providing scholarships to poor young Malaysians so that they will be able to go to the university to improve their life and career opportunities. Below are examples of letters I have received from two applicants requesting for financial assistance (details of my scholarship program are available from http://english.cpiasia.net/).
What is important to note is that although these are written by pre-university students, the level of English language competency attained is lower than that of a primary student during my time.
Sadly, they are not isolated cases – in fact they are typical of students who have been through our educational system and whose decline in standards has been due to BN rule.
As election day comes closer, we will be asked for reasons as to why we should want to change the Barisan Nasional Government (BN). When the question is put to me, I tell people that there is no need to enumerate three, four or five reasons. One reason alone is sufficient for Malaysians to elect a new government.
The reason is that the BN has ruined our educational system and put us back at least one generation in our educational standards and standing.
When the country became independent in 1957 our educational system was acknowledged to be amongst the best in the region. Today, after the introduction of NEP policies in education, we are scraping the bottom of the barrel in our standards of educational achievement at all levels.
BN’s Record
Whether it is in primary, secondary or tertiary education, the rot is clear. Half literate primary school products that cannot write or speak properly in either English or Bahasa and drop out early; secondary students with abysmal standards in Mathematics, Science and other core subjects; tertiary students who are provided with university degrees but in fact are unemployable except in the civil service.
This is the disastrous outcome of BN rule. This is the result of the politicization of the educational system and UMNO’s cynical use of it as a political and racial football.
Whether it is with regard to mission schools or vernacular or SRJK schools; teaching of science and mathematics; teaching of English; appointment of administrators and heads of schools; the curriculum; examinations; vocational education; funding and allocations – UMNO has inserted its racial and political agenda to debase and corrupt the system.
If readers think that I am over critical of the BN, let me provide two pieces of evidence on the disaster in our education.
The first is from the Government itself. According to the national education blueprint (Preliminary report, Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025, pp, E4-E5)
• Malaysia was ranked in the bottom third of 74 participating countries of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009+.
• 60% of the 15-year-old Malaysian students who participated in PISA failed to meet the minimum proficiency level in Mathematics, while 44% and 43% did not meet the minimum proficiency levels in Reading and Science respectively
• A comparison of scores shows that 15-year-olds in Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Shanghai are performing as though they have had three or more years of schooling than 15-year-olds in Malaysia
• Low achievement standards in TIMSS (Maths and Science): far behind first tier; now comparable to countries such as Indonesia
• By 2007 (last published cycle) 18% and 20% of our students failed to meet the minimum proficiency standards in Maths and Science.
The conclusion of the Blueprint is shocking. Not only are the gaps between Malaysia and other countries in our region growing, international assessments also revealed that Malaysian student performance is declining in absolute terms.
This damning conclusion – that we are going backwards in our education standards and achievement – shows that the problem is not a new one. It is a long standing crisis which the BN has successfully concealed from Malaysians thanks to media manipulation and its diversionary focus on language and Chinese school issues.
But it is no longer easy to fool Malaysians thanks to the internet media and the availability of international assessment results.
Hence the latest educational scandal in which the Ministry of Education is accused of lowering the maths and science standards for the PMR and SPM examinations to artificially increase the pass rate does not shock me in the least.
Such efforts have been taking place for the past thirty years, especially in the public universities. How else then to account for the hundreds of thousands of graduates who are unemployable?
My Personal Experience
The second piece of evidence is one derived from personal experience. For several years now, I have been providing scholarships to poor young Malaysians so that they will be able to go to the university to improve their life and career opportunities. Below are examples of letters I have received from two applicants requesting for financial assistance (details of my scholarship program are available from http://english.cpiasia.net/).
What is important to note is that although these are written by pre-university students, the level of English language competency attained is lower than that of a primary student during my time.
Sadly, they are not isolated cases – in fact they are typical of students who have been through our educational system and whose decline in standards has been due to BN rule.
Thursday 20 December 2012
Ambiga: Bersih’s ‘citizen observers’ will be non-partisan
By Clara Chooi
Assistant News Editor
December 20, 2012
Ambiga said Bersih’s ‘citizen observers’ will comply with global standards for domestic election monitoring.
KUALA LUMPUR,
Dec 20 — Bersih 2.0 has chided the Election Commission (EC) for labelling it
“partisan”, insisting to the agency that its “citizen observers” will comply
with global standards on election monitoring, which list non-partisanship as a
requirement.
“We understand what they are saying that we should be well-organised and not interfere with the polls process. Certainly, that is not our intention,” the renowned lawyer told The Malaysian Insider.
“We are providing training for our observers and we will comply with global standards for domestic election monitoring,” she said when contacted yesterday.
The standards referred to by Ambiga are enshrined in the “Declaration of Global Principles for Non-Partisan Election Observation and Monitoring by Citizen Organisations and its Code of Conduct”.
The declaration was commemorated at the United Nations on April 3 this year by the Global Network of Domestic Election Monitors, an international network that connects some 150 organisations worldwide. In Malaysia, Bersih 2.0, the Malaysian Voters Union and the National Institute for Democracy and Electoral Integrity (NIEI) signed on to the declaration.
Ambiga said the purpose behind calling for citizen observers was not to manipulate the results of the polls but to offer Malaysians an active role in protecting their own vote.
She pointed out that any member of the public could sign up as a citizen observer, irrespective of their political leaning.
“We made the call publicly... everyone can sign up for training,” she said.
 |
| Wan Ahmad raised the possibility that Bersih may have a certain agenda to protect its partisan interests. |
Agreeing, Maria Chin Abdullah, a Bersih 2.0 steering committee member, said there was nothing partisan
about urging Malaysians to come
forward and participate in the polls process of their own country.
“We are merely asking citizens to take
a stand on the fraud that has been happening. It’s their right, after all, to see that their votes are protected… we are not telling them who to vote,” she said.
Ambiga also said the very reason behind the initiative, also known
as the “Jom Pantau” campaign, had stemmed from Bersih 2.0’s lack of confidence in the EC’s commitment to reforms.
“Rather than attacking us, they should actually be focusing on cleaning up their act for the elections.
“Why do they seem to be so nervous about our independent observers?” she asked.
“Frankly, I would really like to make this call to all members of the EC who have chosen to remain silent — we will hold each and every one of them responsible for how the coming elections are run.
“I urge the commissioners to search their conscience and ask themselves if this is an acceptable state of affairs for Malaysia and if they are fulfilling their constitutional duties to the people,” she said.
The EC questioned yesterday the ability of Ambiga to ensure all “citizen observers” in her Bersih 2.0 electoral watchdog group obey the law and steer clear of fouling up the polls regulator’s work.
EC deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar was reported by a Malay news portal as saying Bersih 2.0 was formed along partisan lines and that it was possible the group may have a certain agenda to protect its partisan interests.
He told Sinar Harian Online that while the prominent legal expert, who is co-chairman of the electoral reform group, is seen to be familiar with the law, he asked: “But is she capable of taking care of members involved in the Jom Pantau PRU13?”
Wan Ahmad said the EC acknowledged the right of citizens to monitor the election process for any possible fraud that may arise, but said they must not disturb the work of the authorities and EC.
“We want to give a reminder so that Bersih 2.0 that launched this campaign will not disturb this election’s affairs,” he told the news portal.
Bersih 2.0 has already launched its “Jom Pantau” and “Jom 100” but Ambiga said on Monday that these campaigns will be expanded next month to keep the pressure on the authorities.
Wednesday 19 December 2012
Monday 10 December 2012
RM100 CPO price drop to lead to RM1.8b fall in annual trade surplus
Source by, The Edge Malaysia
Business & Market 2012
Written by Kamarul Anwar of theedgemalaysia.com
Monday, 10 December 2012 16:20
KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 10): A RM100 drop per tonne in palm oil prices would lead to a RM1.8 billion reduction in Malaysia's trade surplus on an annual basis, according to a report by Barclays Capital (BarCap). Read more ......
http://www.theedgemalaysia.com/business-news/226827-rm100-cpo-price-drop-to-lead-to-rm18b-fall
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