Karpal tells Hadi to state PAS stand on Kelantan gender rules

Is PAS and DAP the parties politically incorrect that makes the mutual cooperation appear foolish?

DAP chairman Karpal Singh calls upon PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang to publicly make the party’s stand on the by-law on gender segregation issue, and not to leave the matter to the Kelantan state executive council.

Karpal, said the silence by the Kelantan exco to review the by-law on gender segregation that forbidding non-Muslim women to cut the hair or non-Muslim men, and vice versa in salons in Kota Baru did not speak well of a responsible government.

“PAS leaders should realise that silence is not the way out and it only aggravates the position. The by-law should be outlawed without further ado,” he said in a statement here today.

Karpal said the justification on enforcement of the gender segregation made by the Kota Baru Municipal Council was publicly announced by the State Local Government, Cultural and Tourism Committee chairman Datuk Takiyuddin Hassan on November 24.

“To him (Datuk Takiyuddin Hassan) the ruling was a non-issue and he said the by-law was introduced in 1991 in line with the PAS state government’s slogan ‘Growing with Islam’ that applied to both Muslims and non-Muslim, and in 1999 stricter conditions were imposed by the council,” he added.

However, Karpal said the justification certainly evoked fear on the part of non-Muslims that attempts were being made to apply Islamic law to non-Muslims, which would ultimately mean the introduction of hudud to non-Muslims.

He said the vehement public justification by Takiyuddin of the by-law was obviously the cause of the silence on the part of Kelantan state exco to review the by-law.

Karpal said “the last that the DAP would want to do would be not to scuttle efforts by the opposition pact in its quest to capture Putrajaya in the coming election.

“However, that the objective cannot, and must not, mean sacrificing principle at the altar of political expediency. The DAP is committed to opposition to any attempts to extend Islamic law to non-Muslims, whether directly or indirectly,” he added.

He said PAS must respond quickly on this issue, in view of the fast approaching elections. 

Anwar will be PM if Pakatan wins polls says DAP But PAS otherwise

What will happen if two radical and extremist political ideologies meet?

The DAP maintained that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim will be the prime minister if Pakatan Rakyat (PR) wins the next general election.

                                             Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim

The PAS Ulama wing pushed for the party to be the major power in PR so Abdul Hadi can be elected as Cabinet leader.

                                            Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang

Following a push by PAS delegates at the PR party’s assembly last week for Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang to be the next PM, the DAP reminded the public today that Anwar is the opposition pact’s choice to be the next leader of the country.

This is the consensus of three parties that is Anwar. If it is Pakatan Rakyat that wins, it is Anwar who will be prime minister,” DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng told reporters at the Parliament lobby when asked to comment.

Asked about the proposal for the party with the most seats to get the prime minister’s post, Lim said that consensus among the PR parties was more important.

“But we think (the one) that can represent the whole of PR, the whole of Malaysia is Anwar...” Lim said, pointing out that his party currently has the most seats, followed by PKR and PAS.

Malaysian employers practice racial bigotry, study shows

Malaysian employers tend to favour Chinese job applicants over their Malay counterparts, a recent university study has shown, indicating racial discrimination underscores the hiring process in the private sector labour market.

In their joint research, Universiti Malaya (UM) senior lecturer in development studies Dr Lee Hwok Aun and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) research fellow Dr Muhammed Abdul Khalid found that fresh Chinese graduates are more likely to be called for a job interview based on their resumes compared to Malays.

Our findings suggest that employers are generally predisposed favourably towards Chinese, substantially due to compatibility factors and unobservable qualities not revealed in job applications, and are more selective towards Malays, which results in fewer but considerably qualified applicants getting callbacks,” the duo stated in an abstract of their seminar paper being presented at UM.

The two academics said they had conducted a field experiment by sending made-up resumes of fresh Malay and Chinese graduates to real job advertisements.

From their research, Lee and Muhammed Abdul found that while both Malay and Chinese graduates who listed Chinese-language proficiency and stated that they graduated from a certain university were likely to increase their chances to be called for an interview, yet employers — especially those that were Chinese-controlled or foreign-run — were significantly inclined to pick the Chinese applicant.

They noted that the racial discrimination was sharper in engineering jobs than in the accounting or finance sector.

They also found that in the engineering industry, Malays were most likely to be rejected by foreign-controlled companies, followed by Malay-controlled companies and lastly Chinese-controlled firms.

However, they said their data does not directly show the motif of the racial discrimination in the hiring process based on the experiment they had conducted.

Lee and Muhammed Abdul are presenting their paper, titled “Does race matter in getting an interview? A field experiment of hiring discrimination in Peninsular Malaysia”, at UM’s Economics and Administration Faculty.

The question remains: What is the main factor that caused Malaysian employers tend to favour Chinese job applicants over their Malay counterparts?

 

Anti-Jew policy in Germany inspired Dr M’s banking reforms, says Sanusi

Tun Dr Mahathir was inspired by Germany’s past policy of limiting Jewish financial influence to help the Malays but it was later thwarted by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, former Cabinet minister Tan Sri Sanusi Junid said.

Sanusi told a Malay economic forum that Dr Mahathir and former Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin were hoping that Malays would control the economy but when they saw progress was slow, they decided to follow the German example of not granting banking licences to Jews.

But the plan failed when Anwar became finance minister and approved two banking licences to non-Malay banking groups — Alliance Bank and Hong Leong Bank.

“We thought that if we can’t control the economy, we would follow Germany,” Sanusi said at the Malay Economic Congress here. “In Germany banking licences are not given to the Jews.”

He said while pre-existing licences had been given to non-Malays, Daim made sure that all banks had Malay directors, which was important to ensure all banks had Malay influence.

“But unfortunately a huge disaster happened (kecelakaan besar); when Anwar became finance minister he approved banking licences for Alliance Bank and Hong Leong bank,” he said. “We didn’t want to give.”

Sanusi said that as a result there are now “two non-Malay banks without Malay influence.”

Malays have political power because they are smart

Former Kedah Mentri Besar noted that normally political power is held by those who have economic power.

“But Malays have political power because they are smart,” he said.

Sanusi told a Malay economic forum that Malaysia’s banking system was formerly largely controlled by the Chinese but many were taken over by or forced to merge with government-controlled entities, former Cabinet minister Tan Sri Sanusi Junid said.

The loss of Chinese-founded banking institutions is widely perceived by the Chinese community as of one of the ways they have been discriminated against under the guise of helping the Bumiputera community.

The Umno-led Barisan Nasional government however had previously maintained that direct intervention was required to uplift the Bumiputeras and that mergers would help create stronger banks that could withstand globalization.

The Najib administration has said however that it will gradually liberalize the financial sector and any banking mergers should now be based on market forces.

Sanusi also said at the forum that Malays were unable to accumulate wealth as while they earned money, it was ultimately spent in non-Malay businesses.

“Who is rich? We are? Where is the money? There is none. It goes through the channels of non-Malays. The money only passes through Malays and that’s why we are unable to accumulate,” he said.