Hong Kong democracy protesters digging in for long haul

HONG KONG: Thousands of pro-democracy supporters took to Hong Kong’s streets Friday night after protest leaders implored them to dig in for the long haul following the collapse of talks with the government.

The mass rally attracting an estimated 15,000 drew the biggest crowd of the week, with numbers swelling as the night progressed and some demonstrators arriving with food, tents and bedding as the protests moved into their third week.

Crunch negotiations between protesters and Beijing-backed city officials were scheduled for Friday but fell apart Thursday after the government pulled out, blaming protesters for threatening to expand their campaign.

Demonstrators are calling for Beijing to grant the former British colony full democracy and for the city’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to resign.

Under plans unveiled by China in August, Hong Kong’s citizens will be able to vote for Leung’s successor in 2017, but only two-to-three vetted candidates will be allowed to stand — something detractors have dismissed as a “fake democracy”.

As Friday evening progressed the crowd of demonstrators grew from around 7,000 to 10,000 and then to more than an estimated 15,000 at the main protest site, a stretch of highway opposite the city government’s headquarters, an AFP reporter on the scene said.

During the rally pro-democracy leaders gave speeches, protesters chanted “Keep occupying” and sang the Cantonese version of a revolution anthem from hit musical Les Miserables “Do You Hear The People Sing?”.

The government must talk

Activists are banking on mustering significant numbers over the weekend and also potentially expanding their sit-ins to keep pressure on the government.

“I miss my bed at home but to struggle for democracy I call for everyone here to continue staying here,” Occupy Central co-founder Benny Tai said.

The crowds were smaller than the tens of thousands attending last week but the protest has begun to take on an air of permanence, with tents, portable showers and even the occasional bed.

“I will continue to stay here until the government talks to us,” Yuki Law, a 21-year-old nursing student told AFP.

“The government has never responded to the citizens so we want to support the movement until the government has a real response for us,” 27-year-old human resources officer Vincy Chan told AFP.

She said the government’s refusal to engage had backfired and brought more people out to protest.

Student leaders Friday insisted they were still open to finding a middle ground with the government but vowed no let up in their occupation of parts of Hong Kong despite growing public anger over the disruption they have caused.

Hong Kong Federation of Students general secretary Alex Chow told the crowd: “A lot of people tell us to give up and to go but when we look back at history 10 to 20 years from now we will see that Hong Kong people are making a new history.”

“Come to occupy the road outside the public headquarters, come bring your tents to show our persistence on long term occupy action,” student leader Joshua Wong told supporters.

But if Hong Kong’s leadership were rattled by the prospect of renewed large-scale protests they showed little sign of it.

City officials said Friday Chief Secretary Carrie Lam — who had been due to lead the talks with students — will leave for Guangzhou on Saturday on official business while Leung will head there Sunday.

Running out of patience

Analysts warned that the collapse of the talks pushes the confrontation between democracy protesters and the government into a dangerous phase, with neither side willing to back down.

But Michael DeGolyer, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, said a violent reaction from police was unlikely given it could reinvigorate the protest movement.

“They’re not going to do the martyrdom thing. That would be a completely unnecessary act of dominance,” he said.

Officers, however, hinted they might try and dismantle some of the barricades put up by protesters.

With patience among many Hong Kong residents running out following days of disruption, pressure is mounting on both Leung and the protest leaders to solve the stalemate.

Leung’s opponents were given a major boost this week when details emerged that he had kept secret large payments from an Australian company while he was in office.

The Beijing-backed chief executive has denied any wrongdoing, saying he was under no obligation to declare the earnings and that he did not work for any company while in office.

But opposition lawmakers have threatened to bring impeachment proceedings against him while the city’s top prosecutor will probe the allegations after a complaint was lodged with Hong Kong’s anti-corruption watchdog.

Observers say Leung’s bosses in China show no signs of dropping their support for the embattled leader.

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Netherlands says 10 more MH17 passengers identified

THE HAGUE: Medical experts have now identified 272 of the 298 people aboard the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 shot down in Ukraine in July, the Dutch justice ministry said Friday.

Ten more people were identified this week of whom seven held Dutch nationality, the ministry said in a statement, adding that their relatives would be informed.

It did not reveal the nationalities of the three others, per requests from the embassies concerned.

The information was given after Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans revealed that the body of one of the people on the plane was found with an oxygen mask around his neck.

The passenger was identified as an Australian passenger in media reports.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur was shot down on July 17 while flying over insurgent-held territory in conflict-wracked eastern Ukraine.

Forensics experts suspended their search for bodies due to clashes between Kiev and the pro-Russian rebels near the crash site northeast of Donetsk, but said they hoped to return once the fighting died down.

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Rape in war-torn S.Sudan ‘worst’ UN envoy ever witnessed

BENTIU: The levels of rape in war-torn South Sudan are the worst the UN special envoy on sexual violence has ever seen, she told AFP Friday, after meeting scores of survivors of attacks.

“In all my life and experience of nearly 30 years in public service and in the UN and as a government minister, I have never seen what I have seen today,” Zainab Bangura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, told AFP.

Bangura, who comes from Sierra Leone, said she had witnessed brutal violence during the civil war there, but conditions in South Sudan after almost ten months of conflict were worse in terms of attacks on women and girls.

She said she had been in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown when it fell. “We picked bodies from streets and buried them.”

Speaking in the South Sudan town of Bentiu, which has repeatedly changed hands in the war, she said both government troops and rebels were committing rapes.

Thousands of people have been killed and almost two million have fled fighting between government troops, mutinous soldiers and ragtag militia forces divided along tribal lines.

Almost 100,000 people are sheltering in squalid UN peacekeeping bases fearing they will be killed if they leave the barbed wire protection.

“It’s unbelievable. It’s painful. It’s challenging to see the conditions under which these women live, the harassments and sexual violence that take place at check points, and when the women go out to get food, and when they go out to get fire wood. It’s really extremely distressing,” Bangura said.

“These are not conditions and circumstances under which women can live. I heard a story of a woman who had just given birth who had been raped, I heard a story of an old woman who was raped, children as young as 10 or 11 years who are being raped on daily basis.”

Fighting broke out in the oil-rich country, also the world’s youngest nation, in December 2013 following a clash between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar.

The war spread rapidly across the country and has been marked by widespread human rights abuses and atrocities by both sides.

Bangura is visiting South Sudan in a bid to persuade both sides to end the violence and rekindle stalled peace efforts.

“I have travelled around the world and I come from a conflict country, but I have never seen what I saw today,” she said, adding it was worse than conditions she had seen in many countries including Bosnia, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Somalia.

“This is the worst case scenario for me, it is extremely difficult to deal with.”

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Illegal Somali charcoal exports fuel Islamist rebels, warlords

UNITED NATIONS: Illegal exports of Somali charcoal earned al Shabaab militants tens of millions of dollars in the past year and also financed violations of an arms embargo by clan-based militia that could fuel warlord tensions, UN investigators said in a new report.

The Somalia-Eritrea Monitoring Group, which oversees compliance with UN sanctions on the two countries, said it had counted 161 vessels exporting charcoal from Somalia’s southern ports of Kismayu and Barawe between June 2013 and May 2014.

The UN Security Council banned charcoal exports from Somalia in February 2012 in a bid to cut offfunds for al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-affiliated group that has been fighting for control of Somalia for years and enforces strict sharia law in areas it occupies.

“The total international market value of charcoal exported in 2013 and 2014 can be estimated as upwards of $250 million and could be much more, given that the Group may not have identified all shipments,” the monitors said in a confidential 482-page annual report, seen by Reuters on Friday.

“The scale of the international trade in Somali charcoal is largely consistent with its previous findings,” it said.

A third of the 161 shipments were in the names of two businessmen linked to al Shabaab, said the monitoring group, and the cargos were primarily destined for the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Kuwait.

Between June 2013 and January 2014 the group said charcoal was mainly exported from Kismayu and Barawe and since January shipments were primarily made from Kismayu where port operations are supervised by the Ras Kamboni militia and the Kenyan army, which is part of an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

The Kenyan military has denied allegations by the UN monitors that it aided illegal charcoal exports.

“The Monitoring Group has obtained information that, while businessmen linked to al Shabaab … continue to trade in charcoal freely, charcoal proceeds have also helped to finance the purchase of military vehicles by Ras Kamboni,” it said.

The UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Somalia in 1992 to cut the flow of weapons to feuding warlords, who had ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and plunged the country into civil war. Somalia held its first vote since 1991 in 2012 to elect a president and prime minister.

“The import of vehicles, in violation of the arms embargo, is an example of how the unchecked scramble for charcoal revenue has contributed to the arming of the environment, which is likely to contribute more to historical clan tensions relating to the control of Kismayu,” the monitors said.

Dozens of people were killed last year when clan leader Barre Hirale’s forces battled for control of Kismayu from Ras Kamboni loyal to Ahmed Madobe, who was chosen by a regional assembly to preside over the surrounding Jubbaland region.

Hirale laid down arms and joined reconciliation talks in August.

The U.N. monitors said al Shabaab had shifted most of its exports to Kismayu earlier this year to “disguise the operations of those traders working most closely with al Shabaab in Barawe.” But this week military strikes drove al Shabaab out of Barawe, their last major coastal stronghold.

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After gaffe, Microsoft board to look at gender pay gap, male culture

SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO: A well-known picture in tech circles, taken in 1978, shows the first 11 employees at Microsoft. Two are women. One of them left two years later after a pay dispute.

Almost four decades later, the ratio has improved: About a third of Microsoft’s 110,000 or so employees are women. But the company’s pay practices and attitude toward women are still open to question and will likely be taken up at the board level, according to one director, Maria Klawe.

The issue hit the headlines and social media on Thursday when new Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella suggested women in tech shouldn’t ask for pay raises but should instead trust the system and rely on “karma” to get what they deserve.

He later said he was wrong, but the damage was done, reinforcing the view that Microsoft – and the tech industry generally – is a boys’ club.

“He blew that question,” said Klawe in a telephone interview on Friday. “He’s retracted it. I think it’s going to take us all to a better place. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be thinking really hard about pay equity.”

It was Klawe, a longtime campaigner for women in tech, who asked Nadella the question onstage on Thursday that led to his remarks, and she has since led the company’s efforts at damage limitation.

Klawe, 63, said she has been pressing for hiring and promoting women at Microsoft since she joined the board five years ago, but the issue of pay raises for women had not been discussed by the board.

“I suspect it might be now,” she said.

Klawe pointed to the recruitment of Peggy Johnson from Qualcomm as head of business development in September as a recent success, but she conceded there have been backward steps, notably the ousting of Tami Reller and Julie Larson-Green, who ran the flagship Windows unit until a shakeup in 2013.

“I did feel badly that we had Tami and Julie on the executive team and then had two fewer people. But it really had to do with what made sense in terms of who was the right person for which job,” said Klawe. “I’m sure we’ll see more women in those levels.”

Reller has since left Microsoft, while Larson-Green is responsible for the overall look and feel of Microsoft’s software services.

Boys’ club

Microsoft has never been a beacon of diversity.

Karin Carter, who worked at the company in its heyday from 1983 until 1997 and went on to write a book about the experience, said there were only five or so women programmers at Microsoft when she joined, with the vast majority of women in support positions.

“The first time my fellow administrative assistant and I worked all night to get materials ready for a meeting, we got roses from the vice president of the international group,” said Carter. “My first thought was, ‘Roses? How about money?’”

Today the numbers are slightly better. Microsoft’s 15-strong senior leadership team, which runs the company day to day, has three women: Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood; Lisa Brummel, head of human resources; and recent hire Johnson.

Its board of 12 also has three women: former Wall Street banker Dina Dublon; Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College; and most recently Teri List-Stoll, chief financial officer of Kraft Foods Group.

But the issue of unequal pay looms large.

Numbers from job site Glassdoor show that men tend to earn more doing a similar job than women at Microsoft, though the data is far from complete and based on voluntary disclosure.

For example, a male Microsoft senior software development engineer makes about $137,000 per year, according to Glassdoor, compared with about $129,000 for women. Microsoft declined to comment or provide data on what it pays staff.

Microsoft is not alone. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that men earn 24 percent more, on average, than women in the tech sector. In computer and mathematical occupations, men working full-time make a median average of $1,452 per week, compared with $1,174 per week for women.

The pay gap, and how to close it, was brought to public attention last year by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg in her book “Lean In.” She wrote that for women, negotiating is “like trying to cross a minefield backward in high heels.” Women who push for higher salaries are viewed as more demanding than men who do the same, she writes, and pay costs “in goodwill and future advancement.”

The Microsoft furor may yet lead to improvement, said one campaigner.

“Nadella’s reaction was likely based on what he thinks men do – work hard and get rewarded – rather than recognizing that what they actually do is work hard, talk about the hard work they are doing and then get rewarded,” said Meiko Takayama, founder of Advancing Women Executives, an advocacy group. “If positioned in the right way, this can be a learning moment for everyone.”

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Budget gets no praise from Sandakan MP

No hope that price standardisation between East and West Malaysia will be achieved. Sabah will still bear higher prices for goods and higher living costs despite being the poorest state after Sarawak.

KOTA KINABALU: Sandakan MP Stephen Wong has welcomed the security initiatives for Sabah unveiled by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak on Friday but otherwise has only brickbats for Budget 2015.

On the plus side, he was referring to the allocation for the Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) which will rise from RM 75 million in the 2014 budget to RM 660 million in 2015.

Wong lamented the fact that the allocation for price standardisation has been reduced from RM 331 million in 2014 to RM 262 million for 2015.

“I see no hope that price standardisation between East and West Malaysia will be achieved,” he said. “Sadly, Sabah will still bear higher prices for goods and higher living costs despite being the poorest state after Sarawak.”

The National Cabotage Policy (NCP), he pointed out, continues to burden the people by not allowing Sabah to have direct shipping links with nearby countries.

He estimates that less than RM 3.5 billion or only 6.9% of the total RM 50.5 billion for development expenditure was allocated to Sabah.

“Sabah is still very far behind in terms of infrastructure and development,” he said in making the case for the state to have more funds from the Federal Government.

He conceded that he had been expecting better news for Sabah since the same party controlled Putrajaya and the Sabah Government.

The seven infrastructure projects announced by Najib, he complained, were all in Peninsular Malaysia. “The long-promised Libaran Road for Sandakan was not even mentioned in the budget speech.”

He saw little point in delving into the details on the rest of the Budget.

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Tamrin to enter defence over seditious speech

The PAS member was charged over a speech at a forum last year.

KUALA LUMPUR:The Sessions Court here today ordered PAS member Tamrin Abdul Ghafar to enter his defence to a sedition charge over his speech at a forum on May 13, last year.

Judge Azwarnida Affandi made the decision after DPP Kee Wei Lon managed to prove a prima facie case against the accused after four witnesses testified at the hearing of the case.

The court then fixed Nov 25 for Tamrin, 64, to enter his defence.

Tamrin’s counsel Ariff Azmi Hussein told the court that his client would enter his defence on oath from the witness’s stand.

Tamrin was charged with committing the offence at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, No. 1, Jalan Maharaja Lela, here, between 8.55pm and 11.15pm on May 13, last year.

The charge is under Section 4(1)(b) of the Sedition Act 1948 and is punishable under Section 4(1) of the same Act, which carries a jail term of up to three years or a fine not exceeding RM5,000, or both.

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Be grateful for half-month bonus

The Chief Secretary Ali Hamsa said civil servants should also work together with the government to implement and ensure success of the National Development Strategy

KUALA LUMPUR:Chief Secretary to the Government Ali Hamsa described the 2015 Budget tabled by Prime Minister Najib Razak as having reflected the government’s concerns over the wellbeing of the civil servants, especially women.

As such, he said civil servants should be grateful for the half-month salary or a minimum of RM500 as bonus which would be paid in January next year, as well as the special financial assistance of RM250 to be received by pensioners, as announced by the prime minister on Friday.

“Other benefits announced by the government in the 2015 Budget is the expansion of the MyBrain15 incentives to civil servants to pursue studies in local institutions of higher learning, which will complement the effort to produce quality civil servants,” he said.

Meantime, Ali said civil servants should practice wise spending while intensifying their efforts to improve their productivity so that the public delivery service would go beyond the expectation of the people in line with the concept of People First, Performance Now.

He said civil servants should also work together with the government to implement and ensure success of the National Development Strategy, which will be launched next year, while enlivening the initiatives under the Blue Ocean Strategy.

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National Budget neglects Sarawak

KUCHING: The Democratic Action Party Sarawak (DAP) sees Budget 2015 neglecting the development agenda, continuing to leave Sarawak in the doldrums, while at the same time pampering the bloated civil service and underlining that political power would remain over-centralized.

“Only RM 50.5 billion, or 18.4 per cent, of the 2015 Budget goes for development expenditure,” said Kuching MP Chong Chieng Jen. “This is a very unhealthy lopsided Budget.”

He was expressing his unhappiness with Prime Minister and Finance Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s stewardship of the economy.

RM 223.44 billion, or 81.6 per cent, has been allocated for administrative expenditure because the civil service remains over-sized, he added. “This is a gross wastage of public funds with so many people on the government payroll.”

The Prime Minister’s Department, he stressed, continues to dwarf even the ministries on the development front with an allocation of RM 13.034 billion, while 22 ministries had to share the remaining RM 37.44 billion.

“This shows the extent of the over centralization of political power and financial resources in the position of the Prime Minister,” said Chong. “We are being robbed of money which could have otherwise gone into the development of much-needed infrastructure in Sarawak.”

He expressed great disappointment that Najib made no mention in his budget speech of the resolution by the Sarawak Assembly in May seeking a rise in the oil royalty from the present measly 5 per cent to a respectable 20 per cent. Chong had his motion on the matter turned down twice since June by the Speaker, the latest being earlier this week when Parliament resumed sitting on Tues.

He noted that Najib had mentioned the Pan Borneo Highway in his budget speech but left out crucial details like when works would begin and how long they would take.

The Budget 2015 allocates RM 27 billion for the Pan-Borneo Highway from Lundu in Sarawak to Tawau in Sabah. On the eve of the Budget, the Works Minister Fadillah Yusof disclosed that he was expecting at least RM 3 billion for the project.

PKR Sarawak vice chairman See Chee How, chipping in, lamented that the budget makes no mention of the RM 300 million a year in state sales and service tax which Sarawak would lose once the GST is introduced on April 1 next year.

“The Federal Government should reimburse the Sarawak Government this sum from the GST,” said See.

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Helping low-income people quit smoking

Internet-based approaches are appealing because they’re low cost and might be used by smokers who would otherwise have no access to behavioral support or drugs

In a preliminary trial, an interactive website developed in England called StopAdvisor was found to be especially helpful to low-income people in quitting smoking.

Health researchers worry that people with low income or low education levels may be left out when it comes to digital innovations in health and wellness, but in this study, poorer participants benefited even more from the online tool than wealthier ones.

Low-income populations tend to have lower success rates in quitting smoking in general, but it’s not clear why, said lead study author Dr. Jamie Brown of the Health Behaviour Research Centre in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London.

They “make as many attempts to quit and report being as motivated as others, but success is lower,” Brown told Reuters Health.

“When you have other aspects of life draining your resources it might make stopping smoking even more difficult,” he said.

StopAdvisor was designed as both a source of useful information and a guide to help the smoker through the process of stopping with a structured quit plan.

Structured dialogue sessions on the interactive site presented behavior-change techniques that focused on helping with goal setting and action planning around a quit date, emphasizing the importance of abrupt cessation, acquiring appropriate medicines and how best to use them.

The site suggests changes in routines to minimize urges to smoke after the target quit date, develops specific coping strategies for anticipated difficulties in quitting and demonstrates clear expectations about the nature of those difficulties. Once a quit date goal has been set, the program sends email reminders to the participant.

After the quit date, the program offered new resources to support continued abstinence including battling urges to smoke, feeling self-efficacy, use of medicines and anticipating stressful or social events.

For the new study, researchers assigned 4,600 online volunteers over age 18 who smoked every day to either use StopAdvisor or an information-only website. Nearly half of the participants were of low socioeconomic status.

Six months after their quit dates, participants reported whether or not they had successfully quit, meaning they had smoked no more than five cigarettes since the quit date. Their claims were verified by saliva tests.

Overall, 10 percent of people in the StopAdvisor group and 10 percent in the comparison group had successfully quit smoking.

But when researchers looked at participants by socioeconomic status, they found that 8 percent of lower-income participants in the StopAdvisor group had successfully quit, compared to 6 percent of low-income participants using the non-interactive website.

Overall, high-socioeconomic status participants were more successful in quitting, but it didn’t matter which website they were using. About 12 percent of those in the StopAdvisor group and those in the information-only website group stopped smoking, according to the results in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

“StopAdvisor is based on behavior change theories and techniques, which have proven efficacy,” said Kamran Siddiqi, a researcher in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York, who coauthored an editorial accompanying the new results.

“It appears that it was those techniques that when delivered through a web-based program worked for some of the smokers in the intervention arm,” he told Reuters Health by email.

Despite their modest effect, internet-based approaches are appealing because they’re low cost and might be used by smokers who would otherwise have no access to behavioral support or drugs, he wrote in the editorial.

The most effective way to quit uses intensive face-to-face support and medication, Brown said. In the U.K. there are actual human stop-smoking advisors readily available for a very low cost or for free, which makes England a unique environment, he said.

But even so, only a small percentage of people trying to quit smoking take advantage of that resource, he said.

“StopAdvisor was evaluated in England with English smokers but we have no reason to believe it wouldn’t generalize,” Brown said. “You wouldn’t want to recommend it confidently without doing that additional evaluation, of course.”

The online tool probably works specifically for low-income people because it was developed with their suggestions in mind, after user testing with a group of 24 low socioeconomic status volunteers, Brown said.

“It involved using a think-aloud methodology where they were encouraged to say whatever came to mind as they used it, including style, imagery, navigation,” he said.

Incorporating user feedback, the developers employed a professional writer to go through the site and rewrite the text, making the language more accessible. They also tried to increase the interactivity of the site including some imagery or clickable content on every page.

Thirdly, they worked hard to explain to users how important it is to log in even if you think things are going well.

“If you wait until you are struggling to log in, it will be too late,” Brown said.

There are other web tools for quitting smoking, but none have been tailored specifically for low-income populations, Siddiqi said.

Currently the Public Health Authority is working to implement a version of Stop Advisor at a national level in England and is working with researchers in Belgium and New Zealand, Brown said, but there is no plan for a U.S. version.

However, if it proves effective there, it will likely be emulated elsewhere, he said.

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More funds needed for Pan Borneo Highway

Sabah and Sarawak need over RM1 billion each, including RM3 billion for upgrading, to fund the Pan Borneo Highway.

KUCHING: The long-delayed 2,239 km Pan Borneo Highway from Lundu in Sarawak to Tawau in Sabah needs more funds under Budget 2015.

Works Minister Fadillah Yusof said RM3 billion would be needed for upgrading works alone.

“We need more than RM1 billion each for Sabah and Sarawak for this project,” said Fadillah. “Only RM500 million was allocated under the 2014 Budget for the Pan Borneo Highway.”

Fadillah, who is also the Petra Jaya MP, was stating the top priority in his wish list for the forthcoming national budget.

The Works Ministry, he added, was also seeking more funds to continue other “problematic” projects which could not be completed on time. He did not say where these projects were being carried out.

“These projects could not be completed on time due to insufficient funds,” he explained. “The funds given were only for starting the projects.”

He stressed that he wanted to impose a strict ruling for future projects to ensure that such a situation does not arise again.

The rule of thumb, according to him, was to allow not more than five per cent problematic projects under normal circumstances.

He did not disclose the completion rate for his Ministry.

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Jeffrey queries Sabah’s Federal budget

Kitingan says full disclosure is needed on the Federal government's revenue collection from Sabah and Sarawak.

KOTA KINABALU: Bingkor Assemblyman Jeffrey Kitingan doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry over a statement by Kota Belud MP Abdul Rahman Dahlan that Sabah was allocated RM22.1 billion for the period 2012-2013 alone by Putrajaya while collecting only RM8.3 billion from the state.

“Rahman Dahlan is making the Federal government look foolish with his figures,” said Jeffrey. “Sabahans are not ignorant fools to swallow such figures.”

Jeffrey, who is also the Star Sabah Chief, was giving his take on Rahman Dahlan’s comments on the sidelines of a public forum over the weekend in Kota Kinabalu.

The Federal minister’s figures have been widely shared on the social media, especially Facebook, and ridiculed all around.

Jeffrey held that Rahman Dahlan has understated the figures on revenue from Sabah.

For starters, he said, Sabah contributed RM36.48 billion in oil revenue alone for the period 2012-2013 and another RM26.6 billion for the following period.

He pointed out that under the 40th Schedule of the Federal Constitution, Sabah was entitled to receive 40 per cent of the revenue the Federal government collected from the state.

“If the Federal government collected only RM8.3 billion in revenues from Sabah during the period 2012-2013, the state should only receive RM3.32 billion and not the RM22.1 billion cited by him,” he argued. “Is the Federal government being so generous to Sabah at the expense of the other states?”

The opposition politician claimed that a big chunk of Federal funds actually received by Sabah are in the form of salaries for Malayans employed by the Federal civil service and GLCs in the state and disbursed for contracts secured in Sabah by companies based in the peninsula.

Taking the argument further, the Bingkor Assemblyman recalled that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak announced during the 2014 Budget that Sabah and Sarawak would receive RM2.3 billion each for the year.

“If Sabah and Sarawak were two of the 13 states in Malaysia, as the Minister absurdly suggested during the public forum, they would have received a fairer share of RM6.15 billion each, not RM2.3 billion,” he said.

He urged Rahman Dahlan to come clean on Federal allocations for Sabah and Sarawak, how they were divided into operating expenditure and development, and how much was actually disbursed.

He also wants the minister to make a full disclosure of the revenue the Federal government collects from Sabah and Sarawak.

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206 3 1 235 NZ govt under fire over Rizalman case

Rodney Hide berates ministry for bungling in getting Malaysian diplomat back to New Zealand to face criminal charges.

PETALING JAYA: Holding nothing back, columnist Rodney Hide of The New Zealand Herald has torn into his country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry for being “super-useless” in getting Malaysian diplomat Muhammad Rizalman bin Ismail back to New Zealand to face charges of burglary and assault with intent to commit rape.

Accusing the ministry of “professional schmoozing”, Hide said it was “dirty politics” of the “dirtiest” kind that allowed Rizalman to still remain in Malaysia while bureaucrats from both sides trudged along sorting through red tape.

Hide wrote, “Justice delayed is justice denied” in referring to the 148 days that the victim Tania Billingsley and her family have had to wait to face Rizalman in court, since charges were brought against him.

Attacking ministry officials for allowing Rizalman to claim diplomatic immunity and return to Malaysia, Hide described it as “a shocking shambles”, criticising officials who had taken it upon themselves “to act contrary to our Government’s wishes” while failing to advise ministry boss John Allen of their actions.

Hide also highlighted that an inquiry was ordered as to how the mix-up happened, but that everyone was still in the dark as to the outcome of the inquiry.

“We now need an inquiry into why the inquiry is taking so long,” Hide wrote in what sounded like utter frustration.

He also drew attention to a recent announcement by ministry officials that Rizalman would be returning to New Zealand within “days” saying, “That was 94 days ago. Still no Rizalman.”

Targeting Foreign Minister Murray McCully, Hide wrote, “The minister chooses to dodge the issue. He refuses to front the shambles.”

Saying the usual ministry reply of “working through technically complex legal arrangements” was as good as being “told nothing”, Hide remarked that these shenanigans simply meant, “We have been denied an explanation.”

Meanwhile Prime Minister John Key expressed confidence Rizalman would be sent back to New Zealand to face the music.

Speaking to reporters after his post-cabinet press conference recently, Key said, “It’s still before the courts and I don’t really have much of an update, except to say that we are confident the process will run its course and Rizalman will return to New Zealand.

Rizalman, who was the former military attache at the Malaysian High Commission in Wellington, was arrested on May 10 after allegedly following 22-year-old Tania Billingsley to her home and attacking her.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told Key in July that Rizalman would be returned to face the charges. It was initially believed he would return immediately, but the case has dragged out over several months.

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Saudis say clergy responsible for spread of IS

PETALING JAYA: As the scourge of IS spreads cancer-like over the globe, it has surfaced that Saudis had acknowledged its suffocating presence in their society long before armies were formed and beheadings were carried out on infidels.

Made clear through the many Twitter messages that Saudis tweet as a means to vent their anger, indignation and frustration over this, many have also directed blame to their own government’s policies that perpetuate IS ideology.

In an article appearing on The Independent, it was reported that Saudis largely felt that religious clerics were to blame, in particular Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi clergy, for the indoctrination of the brand of extremism that IS promotes.

Calling IS the fruit of “the tree of Wah[h]abi preaching”, Abu Hamza al-Masa’ary tweeted that the clergy was largely to blame for turning Faisal Shaman al-Anizy, a Saudi doctor into a suicide bomber.

Echoing his sentiments was Abdullah al-Kwalit who tweeted, “You [government] should punish these snakes [preachers] … Allah dam[n] them”.

Others too have taken to Twitter to state either their disgust or dismay at how the clergy has played a pivotal role in getting Faisal to willingly embrace human destruction when his profession was one that called on him to do just the opposite.

Even Wahhabi sheikh Adil al-Kalbani, admitted, “Isis is a Salafi [fundamentalist] offshoot … a reality we should confront with transparency”.

Lamenting the lack of “tolerance and religious pluralism” that other countries teach their citizens, one Saudi tweeted, “they did not teach me that one day what we are learning will be implanted by Daesh and its offshoots”.

In the wake of IS, the Saudi government has redoubled its efforts to convince the people that Sharia law and not that of IS would be practiced.

The result has been a spate of beheadings and religious raids conducted on private homes including the charging of 27 Asian Christians for holding a church service.

Taking a somewhat philosophical slant, Souad al-Shimmary, a Saudi, tweeted, “Where did Daesh (IS) come from? It’s our product returned to us.”

Rajah al-Jihni however put the blame squarely on the nation’s education policy.

He tweeted, “Your schools are the ones that produced Daesh… what are you waiting for when you seek this educational policy?”

So while the liberals take to Twitter to air their frustrations and anger, there is little else they can do, as the religious climate in Saudi Arabia remains one that many cannot tolerate.

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Flood and mud: Residents live in fear

For almost two weeks residents in Taman Lily, Senawang have been putting up with mud and flood water in their homes.

SEREMBAN: For two weeks residents of Taman Lily, Senawang had to live with mud and floods because of a mixed development project behind their houses.

However despite reporting this to the Paroi state assemblymen, Mohd Ghazali Wahid, the Seremban MunicipalCouncil and even the police, nothing has come out of it and in desperation the residents have turned to their former assemblyman Mohd Taufek Abdul Ghani and the media for help.

Razak Razali, 48, representing 32 residents, explained to FMT, that a mixed development project (hypermarket and shop houses) behind their homes contributed to the mud and floods.

“After a heavy downpour, the water from the development project site, overflowed the monsoon drain and flooded our houses.

Azlan Shah Abdul Hamid, 38, said he estimated his losses around RM10, 000.

Another resident Halim Idrus, 41, said, whenever they went to work, they always feared they would find their houses flooded again upon their return.

“All of us are working. Our children are in school,” he said.

Meanwhile Mohd Taufek who is also the state PAS commissioner, pledged to do his best to help the residents.

“I will write a letter to MPS and relevant agencies, urging them to take immediate action.

“MPS should direct the developer to construct a retaining pond, so the water will not overflow into the monsoon drain and the regular sized drain at the rear of the houses,” he said.

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REVISITING THE THEORY OF THE LAZY MALAYS!

Ahmad Mustapha Hassan, The Ant Daily

This piece is an offshoot of the old colonial theory of the lazy natives. But this theory was debunked by the late Professor Syed Hussein Al-Attas in his book “The Myth of the Lazy Native”. It took him seven years to produce this very authoritative book after having done a very exhaustive research on the matter.

The colonial writers during the period of the expansion of imperialism had painted a very poor and degrading picture of the natives in the places that the imperial powers had colonised. This was particularly so concerning the Javanese, the Filipinos and the Malays.

One colonial writer from Germany insinuated that the Filipinos chose to construct their rafts from bamboos so that they could lie down and relax. By this, he implied that these natives just wanted to relax and not do any work. What a silly conclusion!

The natives in these countries were already toiling the land to produce food and amenities for their own communities. The sea had also been their source of food and so were the many rivers in their area. They were already independent economic activists. They needed nothing from the colonialists.

It was the colonialists who needed their services to produce the goods that their home countries needed. They wanted tin and other minerals. And they needed a labour force to produce these raw materials.

The indigenous people were simply not interested in helping the colonialists in their ventures. They would not pawn their freedom and they would not compromise their sovereignty in being independent workers in their own right. They were tied to the land as farmers and they were grateful that the seas and rivers provided them with plentiful fish and other products.

Their attitude was simply a setback to the aims and goals of the colonialists. The only way out for the colonialists was to bring in people from their other colonial territories which had an abundance of unemployed labour force.

In the Southeast Asian countries that they had colonised, there was no unemployment and the people were fully engaged in productive activities. There was no starvation that would compel them to leave the land for some other economic activities.

Royal Professor Ungku Aziz had expounded this elaborately in his writings on rural economics. His students were made to understand the economic activities in the rural areas. The work carried out by the rural folks was back breaking and they were subjected to all types of unkind weather situations. No lazy individual could face up to such a situation.

The environment that they were in and faced did not warrant them to venture into other economic spheres. But the end of colonial power had changed the whole economic scenario in these areas.

Suddenly the new governments especially in Malaya wanted to change this situation and had wanted the Malays to advance like all other ethnic communities in the country.

Thus, the lazy Malays theory had taken a twist.

The main cause was the affirmative action agenda. This agenda was the short cut to get Malays to be wealthy.

Thus in the Federation of Malaya, the Umno government wanted to leapfrog the Malays into a modern setting, creating a new class to be involved in business and commerce. Agencies were set up to provide the necessary help towards creating this new economic class. But the effort failed.

A new approach was made by granting some Umno warlords contracts to undertake government projects. Not having the expertise and the relevant attitude to undertake these contracts, they sub-contracted these projects to those non-Malays who had the experience and know-how.

A new Malay business class came into being through procuring commissions on the projects that had been given. That was not the desired goal of the scheme.

Thus the government itself set up enterprises and employed civil service bureaucrats to run and manage these government established business entities. Public money had to be used to establish them.

Not many of these enterprises met with great success. Many lost money. Thus the Malays had two types of bureaucrats, either they belonged to the civil service or were engaged in manning these government linked companies.

Another phenomenon was to award projects to those one or two so-called Malay capitalists so as to ensure that these projects will not fail. Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar represents this kind of strategy.

All in all, it can be said that the modern lazy Malays had been created by Umno and the Umno Baru government.

I am not an apologist but this is to correct the misconception on the matter.

Ahmad Mustapha Hassan is a former press secretary to second Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein and the writer of the book, “The Unmaking of Malaysia”.

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