KUALA LUMPUR: MPs from across the divide have welcomed the tabling of two Bills to repeal two of the oldest security laws in Malaysia the Banishment Act and Restricted Residence Act.

This is one of the rare occasions where both sides are together in agreement.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak tabled the two-page Restricted Residence (Repeal) Bill, which dates back to 1933, and the Banishment (Repeal) Bill (from 1959) for first reading in the Dewan Rakyat.

Backbencher Sibuti MP Ahmad Lai Bujang said the Bills to repeal both these laws were in line with the people's wishes.

“The feeling among the rakyat is that these laws are not fair as there is no court process involved in the decision to impose these Acts. This is what they wanted,” he said.

Balik Pulau MP Yusmadi Yusoff of PKR urged the Government to also consider repealing other laws such as the Sedition Act and the Printing Presses and Publications Act, which were considered archaic.

“I welcome the move to repeal both the Banishment and the Restricted Residence Acts because they are irrelevant. However, there are so many laws of the same category which can also be easily repealed.

“The world is moving very fast and the people are looking for parties that can offer an attractive political environment. Even countries like Turkey are movoing towards liberalisation. We should not be left behind,” he said.

PAS' Kota Raja MP Siti Mariah Mahmud said she agreed that the Bills should not be made retrospective as these were initially enacted in good faith.

If the Bills are passed, all detainees under the two Acts will be freed but none of those currently or previously detained can seek legal redress over their detention.

“Making the Bills retrospective would have given rise to lots of legal implications. It would make things very difficult unless there is a clear case of victimisation.

“We welcome the repeal but whatever alternative effective mechanism put into place should be fair. I think we already have sufficient laws to deal with every area in crime,” she said, adding that there was no point in restricting a criminal's residence in the age of Internet and mobile phones.

Deputy Information, Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Joseph Salang Gandum said as the country became more liberalised, Malaysia should align itself with standard legal practices.

BALIK PULAU: PKR has urged the Election Commission (EC) to omit race statistics from all the electoral seats.

This would show Malaysia’s strength as a unified and progressive nation instead of categorising each other by race or religion, PKR supreme council member Yusmadi Yusoff said.

Yusmadi, who is the Balik Pulau MP, said the omission of race in the demographic statistics of each seat, either state or parliament, would also effectively eradicate the politics of using race or religion in this country.

He said he would lobby for Pakatan Rakyat – of which PKR is a partner – to take up the campaign to remove race figures in the electoral seats.

Currently, the EC inserts race demographics in each seat.

Although they are not openly distributed, such figures are readily available to all political parties, which naturally planned their strategies and field their candidates along ethnic lines.

Yusmadi said once the definition of race and religion is removed, voters can witness the birth of more competent candidates, whose abilities are defined by their track record, qualifications and capabilities.

“One day, we want to see a Chinese leader elected in a predominantly Malay constituency or vice-versa. That leader is elected based on his or her capabilities and not, on his or her race.”

Perhaps one day DAP leaders Karpal Singh, Lim Kit Siang and Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng can contest in Malay seats unlike now where in their entire careers as politicians, they had only contested in Chinese seats, he said.

Shoring up support

Yusmadi said it would be too late for the EC to initiate any changes now but his proposal can be adopted as a Pakatan centrepiece in future elections.

“If the United States took centuries to elect a black man (Barack Obama) as its president, I can see that one day, Malaysia would be a nation governed on socio-economic needs of the people and not on the needs of races or religions.”

Yusmadi said this when responding to a call by a NGO – Penang Malay Congress – for DAP to field at least five Malay candidates in the next election because it fears that the Malay political voice would be diluted if both PKR and Umno leaders are defeated in the next polls in Penang.

Yusmadi said Penang – a highly diversified state in terms of race, culture and historical significance – should do away with race politics and focus on the capabilities of its leaders.

Meanwhile, the state would witness a hectic weekend with PKR, DAP and PAS holding major events to shore up support ahead of a perceived snap election.

PKR is hosting a development seminar for the Malay community in Balik Pulau, where its supremo Anwar Ibrahim would attend.

DAP is holding a fundraising dinner at the Straits Quay where Anwar’s daughter Nurul Izzah, Karpal’s son Gobind Singh and many others will speak.

All of PAS top leaders would gather at Kepala Batas to mark the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Islamist party.

Issues such as hudud and Guan Eng’s apology to the Sultan of Johor are expected to take centre stage.

 

 

 

Saturday, 30 July 2011 09:08

By Himanshu Bhatt. IT IS said that people living on an island tend to possess a distinct and highly parochial identity of their own, shaped by a subtle sense of how they are geo-graphically removed from the rest of the world. One may notice this trait, which can be forgiven for veering towards the vain, when interacting with native islanders in the region such as those from Penang, Bali, Phuket and even Langkawi. In this regard, the inhabitants of Balik Pulau, a secluded district on the south-western side of Penang island, have reason to be even more cloistered and smug about their identity. Separated from the rest of civilisation by a huge range of green hills, the sprawling area opens up to the visitor a very different side of Penang – rural, lush, idyllic and dotted by villages, fruit farms, forests and agricultural estates, where durians, clove and nutmeg are said to grow as nowhere else on the planet. There are no malls here, no hotels, no high-rise buildings and certainly no pubs or discos. For some two hundred years now, folk in Balik Pulau, which literally means the “other side of the island”, have lived with the notion that this pastoral peace, this sanctuary is theirs forever. Not anymore. A series of modern development projects have suddenly sprung up over vast tracts of Balik Pulau where orchards and plantations existed just a few years ago. With the more well-known north-eastern part of Penang becoming increasingly congested and overflowing with buildings and people, there has been a sudden trend for populations to spill over to this emptier part of the island. The situation has become so dire that the MP for Balik Pulau, Yusmadi Yusoff, has called for a blanket halt on all development projects in his once rustic constituency. Many traditional residents – Malays, Chinese and some Indians – are being uprooted in their own homeland, he insists, as plots they have lived on for generations are bought over by unfamiliar, “foreign” developers. The prospect of a second Penang Bridge, which connects to the mainland, to open by 2014, does not help, for it is expected to jack up land prices and intensify demand for new construction in Balik Pulau as well as other southern areas of the island. On a recent tour, Yusmadi showed journalists scabs of projects – bungalows, terraces and semi-detached houses – that appear to have been so rudely thrust into the district, seeming alien to the local landscape and sensibility. The most stinging part of this scenario may well be that these new properties are being bought and resided in mainly by outsiders. “Currently, the new housing projects carried out in Balik Pulau are not affordable to residents here,” Yusmadi lamented. “So in what direction are these development projects headed? Are they supposed to benefit local people or just outsiders?” He has even asked the state authorities to approve projects only after consultation with local village committees in order to safeguard the aspirations and interests of the more original communities here. The stance is very much reflective of the simmering anger among the grassroots here. For Balik Pulau folk are extremely guarded about their communities. Adding to this whole affair is an inevitable political layer, where Yusmadi who is from PKR, is expected to face a dogged challenge from Umno as it works to wrest back the parliamentary seat in the next general election. One may remember the hue and cry Umno made earlier this year over some oversights in historical detail in a children’s educational publication on Balik Pulau. This leaves the state government in a bind. In a laissez-faire economy, it cannot arbitrarily stop projects that have been approved unless they are found to violate set technical conditions. In fact, the state itself is behind several land acquisition efforts here as it tries to implement its new plan for an education hub, to be filled by private universities and schools, in Balik Pulau. The government’s assurance that it would ensure developers provide adequate new low-cost and low-medium cost houses does not assuage the genuine fears of marginalisation and erosion of indigenous socio-cultural identity. The Balik Pulau scenario offers a remarkable case study of how a government is called upon to manage the urban sprawl phenomenon. For the dilemma here highlights a crucial question of whether development should fester on its own selfish accord, motivated by profit and the conven-ience of outsiders who have hardly lived in a locale before, or if it must reckon with the deeper interests of original settlers who have cared for the land which they call home, from long before. ** Republished with permission. This article first appeared in the July 29, 2011 issue of theSun. Himanshu is theSun’s Penang bureau chief.