Jeffrey Likens Assembly To Cowshed

KOTA KINABALU: A senior politician yesterday expressed disappointment over the conduct of the State Assembly sitting, and likened the august House to a cowshed.

Bingkor assemblyman Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan said the State Assembly has lost its touch to be a place where elected assemblymen are free to express and speak for the people, especially when debating the government’s policy speech by Head of State Tun Haji Juhar Mahiruddin.

“But here I find it is like a kandang sapi (cowshed), there is no discipline, no control, no freedom of speech, and they gang up from the backbenchers to the ministers, right up to the Speakers. And here I also find that the Speaker is even involved in the argument, in making comments and debate, when he is supposed to control the conduct of the session,” he said.

Jeffrey pointed out that the leaders today are dictated by their attitude, and their attitude is being dictated by the long indoctrination of how one should conduct oneself.

“They (backbenchers and ministers) are taking advantage of the Speaker. They kept interrupting, raising the Point of Order and asking for ‘penjelasan’ (explanation), but instead of asking me, they go around talking about it. And the Speaker does not adhere to explanation when I pointed out it was not right.

“And I am surprised that there are things I can say outside but I cannot say inside the House, which is supposed to be the other way round. Words like ‘autonomy’ and ‘negara’ (country), that is why I am very disappointed … we are supposed to progress from those colonial and old days to better days,” he said.

Jeffrey pointed out that all assemblymen should work together for the country and the people.

“We are one system, we are in the same system, the government has its role, so does the opposition. So why not let us do our part and express our part and let them (ministers) listen, and let the people listen and see if it is good. I was not even attacking the government, just giving suggestion how to improve the finance of the government, how to claim our rights and revenue from the collection of the federal government,” said Jeffrey.

He said the state government may claim its rights under the Schedule 10 of the Constitution to recover 40 per cent of the revenue that is collected by the federal government and back to the state.

“This is the Constitution. Imagine 40 per cent of RM40 billion, where this year they are projecting to collect RM40 billion in taxes, which is the nett revenue minus capitation and road grants. Let’s just say the minimum after deducting the two grants that may not even come up to RM5 billion, we will have RM35 billion.

“So 40 per cent from that is RM14 billion, which is additional fund for Sabah plus the RM4 billion they collect from the state government. We can have about RM18 billion in state revenue and it is much better than the RM4 billion we are getting now.

“And the same thing goes with the oil taken from the state, which is taken improperly. I suggested that we request for a review because it is within our rights. We are not asking something that does not belong to us. We can have that and have the right to impose royalty on our own, but royalty was denied to us,” he said.

“Imagine if we collect 10 per cent royalty which belongs to the state as the one they (federal government) paid to us is not oil royalty, because we have been asked to reject our own rights to collect royalty under Section 4 of the Oil Agreement.

“But just imagine if we collect even 10 per cent, and I am not even saying 20 per cent, on our own of the coming production of 500,000 barrels per-day, by 2015 it is three times the amount of what is being produced today in Sabah, which is 170,000 barrels per-day, to which last year, it made RM18.8 billion.

“By 2015, this amount of value will be more than RM50 billion. So with 10 per cent, we can get RM5 billion, and plus the 5 per cent they are giving, that will be RM2.5 billion, and altogether sums up to RM7.5 billion. Add up to the taxes which is RM18 billion, what we have is RM25 to RM26 billion in revenue, and that would be much better for the state so we can carry out much better development and resolve a lot of problems. We do not even have to beg the federal government for money,” he said.

Read more: http://www.theborneopost.com/2013/06/21/jeffrey-likens-assembly-to-cowshed/#ixzz2WnohLiqp

Christina Liew Is Sabahan Lah, Stupid!

Hantu Laut

It is a stark revelation that the RCI cannot be used as a yardstick to measure the extent of government involvement in the issuance of Malaysian identity cards to illegal immigrants.

Most of the identity cards were sold by irresponsible and corrupt West Malaysian officers who came to Sabah to make fast money with little conscience that their actions have far-reaching consequences, detrimental to the interests and well-being of Sabahans.

A number of witnesses called up by the commission had been unreliable. Some were too smart for their own good, some just plain stupid and some gave only half the truth.

The recent claim made by Sabah Suluk Ethnic Clan Association secretary Mohd Zaki Hari Susanto (a Suluk with an Indonesian name) that Api-Api assemblywoman Christina Liew was an Indonesian Chinese before becoming Malaysian was a clear case of ignorance. The man is just plain stupid, doesn't know what he is talking about. Many people knew Christina Liew from childhood and knew she is a Sabahan and a naturalised Malaysian. What was uttered by this man at the RCI was untrue.

Liew has clarified her status here.

Many young Malaysians are ignorant of the history of this country because our history books in schools are so badly written, it imparts very little knowledge of pre-independence history and the position of the migrant races who stepped foot on this shore before independence.

Those who were born outside Malaysia but were residents of Malaya before 31st August 1957 and those in Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore residents before 31st August 1963 had the option of staying as British citizen or become Malaysians by naturalisation.

Obviously, Liew's parents opted to become Malaysian citizens and the rest is history.

There seemed to be a mix-up where she was born. Christina says she was born in Hong Kong and came to Sabah with her parents when she was one month old, but RCI panel member Tan Sri Henry Chin seemed to think she was born in Tawau and claimed to know her family well.

Christina is not alone, there are many like her, naturalised on the day of the formation of Malaysia.

One, that I personally know is Court of Appeal Judge Datuk Clement Skinner, who was born in Burma and is a Sabahan and Malaysian by naturalisation. 

Nothing in the State or Federal Constitution that forbids naturalised citizen to become elected member.

Christina Liew Is From Indonesia ?

BERLAKU pertengkaran dalam pendengaran Suruhanjaya Siasatan Diraja (RCI) berhubung isu pendatang di Sabah hari ini apabila pemimpin masyarakat Suluk berulang kali menegaskan bahawa seorang anggota Dewan Undangan Negeri (ADUN) negeri itu dilahirkan di Indonesia.

Mohd Zaki Harry Susanto berkata, walaupun lahir di republik itu, Christina Liew (kanan) daripada PKR berjaya menjadi Wakil Rakyat Api-Api.

Mohd Zaki berkata, mereka mendapat maklumat daripada warganegara Indonesia di Tawau yang mengesahkan Liew seorang Cina Indonesia.

Beliau mengetengahkan isu itu kerana hanya kumpulan Bajau dan Suluk disasarkan dalam RCI, jelasnya.

"Jangan hanya sasarkan satu atau dua kumpulan etnik sahaja," katanya lagi.

Bagaimanapun, seorang pesuruhjaya RCI Henry Chin berkata, beliau pasti Liew lahir di Tawau dan beliau mengetahuinya kerana menjadi Ketua Polis di daerah di Sabah itu pada masa itu. (MKINI)

Sabahkini.

In Immigration Purgatory

Twenty years ago this morning, a ship called the Golden Venture ran aground in Queens. Inside its hold—a cramped, hot, windowless space that was about the size of a two-car garage—the vessel carried nearly three hundred undocumented immigrants from China. They came, mostly, from a series of villages in Fujian Province. Some of them might be called refugees, as they were fleeing political or religious persecution, or the occasional horrors of China’s one-child policy. But many, and perhaps most, would more accurately be described as economic migrants; they knew that in America there were dishes that needed washing, food that needed delivering, clothes that needed pressing. In a menial job on the margins of the U.S. economy, they could earn in a year what it might take a decade to make back home, and they were willing to risk their lives to get here.

The voyage was a Conradian nightmare, from Bangkok to Mombasa, Kenya, and then down around the Cape of Good Hope. In 1620, it took the Mayflower sixty days to reach these shores. In 1993, it took the Golden Venture a hundred and twenty.

When the ship plowed into a sandbar several hundred yards offshore, passengers mobbed the deck, then began, one after another, to jump over the side and into the chilly Atlantic. They had been informed by the “snakeheads”—human smugglers—who controlled the ship that if they could set foot on land in the United States before being caught by the authorities they would be permitted to apply for political asylum. Ten of the passengers did not survive the swim to shore. (In 2006, I wrote an article about the Golden Venture for the magazine, and then, later, a book.)

Today, after two decades of galloping economic growth in China, it may seem hard to imagine a time when people were willing to die in an effort to flee the country. But the Golden Venture arrived in New York on the crest of a great wave of illegal migration from China to the United States. In 1995, the C.I.A. estimated that a hundred thousand people were being smuggled here from China every year.

For the Clinton Administration, this posed an acute dilemma. When the Golden Venture arrived, it was quickly swarmed by TV news helicopters, which broadcast stark images of the malnourished passengers as they huddled in blankets on the beach. Until then, if you arrived in the United States without the proper documentation, but requested asylum when you got here, you were generally given a court date, then released. But many new arrivals failed to show up for these hearings, opting, instead, to try their luck as undocumented migrants. In the hours after the Golden Venture arrived, as the White House and immigration authorities tried to determine what to do with the passengers from the ship, it was decided that this catch-and-release asylum policy had become a “magnet” for illegal migration. The sheer magnitude of China’s population was enough to fluster even the most ardent of refugee advocates. (When Jimmy Carter admonished Deng Xiaoping in 1979 for not allowing more of his people to emigrate legally, Deng is said to have replied, “Why certainly, President Carter. How many millions would you like?”) 

Read more in the New Yorker

Philippines:Republic Of Anarchic

They were once labelled the "sick man of Asia" and things have not changed much ever since and even after every change of government, without doubt, they are still indisposed, economically and morally.


Every succeeding government leaders have their hands in the cookie jar, as competently corrupt as the previous ones.

The country is still suffering a cauldron of repressed anger from the Muslims of Southern Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, mired in abject poverty, mistreated, neglected and left to their own devices in one of the most most turbulent and lawless countries in the world.

About 30% of the population still live below the poverty line and things are not getting any better for them, the corrupt get richer and the poor poorer.


Due to decades of neglect by the Christian dominated government the Southern Filipinos are still mired in poverty and live in squalid conditions and the only thing they understand well is the barrel of the gun. 

A war of attrition against the central government continued for decades of disenfranchised and dissatisfied Moros fighting for an independent homeland.

Hundreds of thousands of them ran away from their restive provinces and migrated to Sabah in search of a better life. A better life that their own government could not provide them.

In Sabah, much to our own perils, we welcome them with open arms, gave them jobs and extended the same amenities as any Sabahan would have enjoyed. They burdened our health and education system to the core and destroyed our marine environment with their destructive fishing methods. Things that they would not have dreamt of getting in their homeland, we provide them for free. They returned our kindness with guns and bullets.



Out of the wormhole out crawled a fake sultan who saw the prosperity, richness and resourcefulness of our state tormenting his envious desire for money-grubbing. This green-eyed monster, who cannot differentiate between "pajak" and "sewa" of a treaty  signed by his ancestors ceding Sabah to the then British North Borneo and later assigned to Malaysia when Sabah gained independence, claimed that Sabah belong to him by virtue of a lease agreement signed by his forefathers and justifying his rightful claim by sending a ragtag private army to invade Sabah with the intention of taking back the territory.
 

From a mad sultan of a defunct dynasty to a lame-duck president who has no balls to do the right thing. 

President Aquino made himself a laughing stock to the whole world when he says he dared not arrest the sultan and his band of terrorists and criminals. The Sultan defied him here. 

Where in the world a private citizen is allowed to have his own army. Only in this lawless country such nonsense is possible.

Based on the offence of him keeping a private army, he can be arrested, charged and thrown in the slammer where he can do no more harm to Philippines and Malaysia diplomatic relations.

More hilarious is his Chief of Police, who is a bigger clown than the President, says he would not arrest those bandits if they return to the Philippines because they have not committed any crime in the Philippines.

As ridiculous as it get, even terrorist like Nur Misuari can threaten the President and his balls shrank so badly,  he dares not take action against the brain dead sultan. 

Aquino has told Malaysia even before being asked that he would not extradite the decrepit and dim-witted sultan to Malaysia to face our justice system for illegal invasion of our state, murder and destruction of lives and properties. He fears them.

Now, you know why the Philippines government could not get rid of terrorism in their country, because they have timid, irresolute and irresponsible leaders.


If the Philippines refused to extradite the scumbag we should do what the American and Israelis always do, send a covert mission over there to eliminate him and all his cohorts.