The Mexican Standoff

From Chedet.com:

Malaysia has been drawn into this game. We have bought two submarines costing over RM3 billion. When are we going to use them? Are we contemplating going to war with our neighbours? I can think of other ways of spending RM3 billion in Malaysia.

Hor hor, tak tahu, Mahathir marah Najib. How la, to become PM liddat? Satu kawan pun tarak.

Remember to clean up your Facebook profile before being elected to Dewan Undangan Negeri…

… to avoid things like this:

ROFL

Crazy for Democracy

Just a quickie…

I’m all for decentralization. The Fed is too strong, states need to have more power. On top of that, the judiciary needs to be strengthened, as does Parliament. Frankly I think the Sultanate could do with less power, but on the whole, yes the Federal executive needs to back off a bit.

But let’s not get crazy now. Some people are deriving inspiration from India’s version of democracy. Undoubtedly, India’s democracy is worthy of admiration, but emulation? Maybe not. India is a Federation in the true sense of the word. The character of the people in the different states is really different. In Malaysia the overall differences are often less apparent across state lines as they are between neighbourhoods within individual constituencies.

Furthermore, India gives so much power to the judiciary that some people feel their judiciary is too strong/activist. The state governments are also very powerful, to the extent that some time back a chief minister of some state in India declared a ceasefire with the Naxalite movement as part of an election promise. This gave the Naxalites the perfect chance to regroup and consolidate, and now they are a major security threat for the whole of India, not just any individual state. This example is perhaps a bit far-fetched because Malaysia is not at all in a similar situation, but it underscores where decentralization of power can go wrong. How on earth a chief minister could declare a ceasefire with a nation-wide armed rebellion is something I don’t quite understand…

And then of course there was the case in some remote village in India, where the authorities (which may have been the Pancayat, as described in this Malaysiakini article) caught a Muslim man having sex with a goat and decided that the “punishment” is that the man should marry the goat. So yeeeeaaaa… maybe we should think this through a bit.

Party-hopping: Reading along, under, over, within, and between the (party?) lines

This is a little round up on where major politicians stand on the party hopping issue. If anyone knows of anything major that I’ve missed, please do mention it in the comments.

[updated; 19th May 2008]

Guan Eng opposes toppling of federal government?

Lim Guan Eng had made the following statement in Parliament:

“In the spirit of democracy, we accept the central government as the government chosen by the people.”

To me that seems like a clear signal that Lim Guan Eng is, on principle, against the idea of changing the Federal Government at this point in time through party-hopping. He joins a woefully lonely list of Pakatan Rakyat politicians who have publicly signaled opposition to the idea. The only other chaps joining him on the list are Karpal Singh and Nik Aziz. A short list… but surely a high-impact list!

My Agenda (is not regime change)

I saw something today that stirred me out of my blogging slumber. The thing I saw raised my eyebrow ever so gradually as I came to realize that things like this have been happening quite a lot of late. And in fact, this is as good as it gets.

The thing I saw was an UMNO MP coming in for a second-hit against a BN minister, after the initial blow was dealt by a DAP MP. The issue was surprisingly germane and important: it was on the veracity of the state’s mechanisms for measuring household income, surely an important metric by anyone’s standards, moreso with dangerous inflation trends.