Thinking Allowed Pure, Clean and Sincere Local Councils
Please support our work by buying a copy of our print publication, Aliran Monthly, from your nearest news-stand. Better still take out a subscription now. Of late that persistent scourge, corruption, has hit the headlines again. Towards the end of May the then deputy minister of housing and local government M. Kayveas did Malaysians a big favour by exposing an egregious corruption case in the Ampang Jaya Town Council (MPAJ). Assuming the unlikely role of a Daredevil of sorts in pursuit of corrupt local officials Kayveas hounded one Abdul Kudus Ahmad Kudus until the wretched man was suspended by MPAJ president Ahmad Kabit, who himself is to be relocated because of the incident. Kayveas for all his troubles has been kicked sideways to the PM’s department in the recent cabinet reshuffle. Here his corruption-fighting days may be numbered. Let’s recall a few facts of the episode for the reader (courtesy of the mainstream press):
The imagination flounders when it considers what upper-level officials can get! And to think that the abolition of elected local councils in the late 1960s was for mere inefficiency and misallocation of funds — we citizens do get a raw deal! Non-elected and non-accountable local authorities have turned out far worse by any account as the MPAJ affair shows with another eight council heads in Selangor on the chopping board. It’s time we put back elected members into local councils; they will be at least accountable for their actions every four years through the ballot box. By the way, “kudus” in Malay means “pure, clean and sincere”. In honour of Kayveas, let’s recommend a new motto for all local councils in this country, “Kudus is gone but long live kudus!” Hang this slogan up on every local council office wall. Better than hanging up faded and overly youngish pictures of MBs and the PM, which serves no purpose. The Incorruptible Ezam
Speaking to a crowd of about 500 supporters at the home of party president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, Ezam said, first they separated him from the rest of the Reformasi Six so that they could get him alone. Once he was isolated from the rest, they worked on him to try to woo him over.Let the reader judge the veracity of the testimony above of a man who has been incarcerated as a political prisoner since 1998 and still awaits his fate on an OSA sentence appeal to be heard on July 31. One would reason: why would Ezam make such a statement were it not true since it could well get him into more hot soup. One cannot but salute the courage and stoutheartedness of this young man whatever one’s political stripes. Puteri Reformasi for the Hustings? 
Still on the subject of KeADILan, those who had occasion to attend the wedding of the year – that of Nurul Izzah and Raja Shahrir at Cherok Tok Kun – may think that the party and its platform of reformasi is far from dead. According to some estimates some 25,000 guests turned up for the event! The food prepared for 20,000 ran out by early afternoon for an event scheduled to end at dusk.
One event doesn’t make a revolution but I have a strong suspicion that despite all the hype, Puteri UMNO (and certainly UMNO Youth) remain in the shadow of KeADILan youth, who continue to win the hearts and minds of the young Malays. It’s not simply a matter of the unresolved issue of Anwar Ibrahim, who because of his daughter’s marriage, has made a public appearance and resuscitated interest and sympathy. It’s rather that UMNO ultimately doesn’t strike a cord with young people. It still has a chronologically advanced leadership – Mahathir at 77 and Pak Lah pushing 70 – and this cuts no ice with the youth, while Puteri UMNO’s head honcho Azalina is herself due to wander beyond youthhood very soon. Furthermore, UMNO’s outmoded modus operandi of having old men head the youth wing and elderly women head the women’s wing is a fatal flaw. The buzz, although denied by Wan Azizah is that Nurul Izzah may be slotted for a contest against women’s minister Sharizat Abdul Jalil in the coming elections. Beauty and beast would not be the right metaphor but would age triumph over beauty in this case? I wonder. The fact is Nurul Izzah (or Puteri reformasi as she is known) alone can brace a challenge from the whole Puteri UMNO. And there’s Ezam. Whichever way you call it, the young would still prefer KeADILan to UMNO. In the forthcoming elections the BA would do well to capitalise on both the Ezam and the Nurul factor even if the two young stalwarts of KeADILan don’t or can’t contest. Unfriendliest Capital of Crime? With the Canny Ong brutal rape and killing hot on everyone’s lips, Kuala Lumpur and its vicinity has emerged in the public eye as the ‘capital of crime’. Almost every day, one reads or hears of gang rape, murder, robbery, you name it, you have it in the capital city! The police have released the latest stats on crime and KL ranks among the regions with the highest number of crimes in 2002 and 2003 (January to May). It chalked up 29 cases of rape and 37 cases of murder in the first five months of the year. Last year it had 52 murders and 120 rape cases (New Straits Times, July 1). KL falls behind Johor, Sabah and Selangor, which heads the list, with 61 murders and 123 rape cases, but lest you forget, the Kelang Valley (which is most of Selangor) is really KL’s hinterland. There’s virtually a seamless integration of the Kelang Valley and its seediest areas with that of the capital, which itself is fast becoming Selangor’s “ghetto”. Am I being too harsh? I doubt it. Sociologially speaking, it’s inevitable that a city like KL would be also the capital of crime. Flushed as it is with federally endowed funds and by virtue of being the commercial hub and the mecca for most job-seekers, including hundreds of thousands of foreign migrant labour, it is destined to play that role. With a bouyant economy in good times, a thriving underworld will be a natural outcome and the alternate deliverer of ‘the good life’. But when an economic downturn occurs (and we’ve had one long spell), it would also be natural that casual workers and the unemployed will spill into the informal sectors and the underworld of crime. A recent survey by a University of California team found KL to be the unfriendliest city among 23 selected large cities across the globe! On three ‘friendly’ indicators — picking up a dropped pen for others, helping an injured person and helping a blind person cross the road — KL came out the worst. It’s to be expected, Mr. Lee Lam Thye, no use humming and hawing that the indicators are inappropriate! (See NST, July 1). A big city like KL with its rapid and money-seeking denizens will invariably become unfriendly or unsociable. Even Singapore scored better than KL, standing one rung above New York, which stood one rung above KL. By the way, KL should forget about using those tacky “truly Asian” commercials to attract tourists. Nobody will be attracted to a place where few people are inclined to help others, including injured persons or even assist blind people cross the street. Graveyard-By-The-Sea Now, to Georgetown, Penang, so no one can accuse me of not being even-handed. The problem with Georgetown is not crime but obtuseness! I refer to the latest flap (at the point of writing) over something called a “columbarium”. I guessed from the reports that it must be a neologism for “graveyard”. Now this “graveyard” was to be built by a developer using the stylish name “Stamford Raffles-by the-Sea Sdn Bhd” for a cool 42 million bucks. It was to consist of a humungous nine-storey structure built around a heritage building (a former hotel and also school) and was to house some 300,000 urns of ashes. The building would have dwarfed other heritage buildings in the vicinity of millionaires’ row (Northam Road) in Georgetown. Many also objected beyond aesthetic grounds of the traffic congestion that the columbarium would cause in the vicinity during the Buddhists All Souls Day (Cheng Beng). However, the clincher came when the Malay-sian Buddhist Association put its foot down. No one, said the religious authority, should use Buddhism for commercial gains. That sealed it. Pak Lah called for the project to be restudied and CM Koh finally decided to suspend the project even though it had already been previously approved. The point has been put across that near the stillborn columbarium is the graveyard housing the remains of Francis Light, the British “founder” of Penang, so what was the harm of the revered Briton sharing the environs with another 300,000 souls? Frankly, I don’t have a problem with that but what most people object to is that it’s downright distasteful that anyone should think of making big bucks from the dead. D.L. Daun Now e-mail us and tell us what you think. | ||||||||||||||||
