Sarawak PKR chairman Baru Bian(pic) said today he was prepared to present evidence of Native Customary Rights (NCR) land grabs by the state government during a public debate.
Bian said he thanked the Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud for his willingness to accept the debate challenge and asked for it to be held as early as next week.
“As for the Chief Minister’s request for proof and evidence, we would like to inform him that our evidence is ready. The evidence cannot be revealed now or else there would not be a need for a debate,” said Bian in a statement.
“However, we are happy to draw his attention to the overwhelming mountain of evidence already submitted in court for over 200 NCR cases still pending to date which the Attorney-General is fully aware of.
“We will also be bringing additional supplementary evidence on top of the evidence already submitted in court to the debate to further support our case about natives’ loss of NCR lands and that this is not an old issue,” he added.
Bian had originally issued the challenge last Saturday for a debate with the government on NCR land seizure allegations.
Taib who has been in power for 30 years, however, said yesterday that he was only willing to debate if Bian could offer evidence of the land grabs.
His willingness to debate on NCR land comes just five months before government’s mandate expires.
“We hope the Chief Minister is not pretending to be ignorant of the evidence as an excuse to avoid or evade the debate,” said Bian.
He also repeated the party’s stand for the state government to withdraw all its cases against the natives over the NCR land grab.
“Our response is loud and clear; withdraw all government appeals against NCR cases won by the natives immediately,” said Bian.
“The courts have decided in favour of NCR landowners but the government still insists on appealing against these cases,” he added.
A lawyer by profession, Bian has been representing Sarawak natives in their attempt to stop the state government from acquiring their NCR land.
In September last year, the Kuching High Court ruled in favour of residents in seven longhouses in rural Sarawak who were about to be evicted from their land to accommodate the government’s plans to declare some 27,500 hectares of land in Ulu Sebuyau as a national park.
Early this month, the Court of Appeal ruled against a timber company, the Forestry Department and the Sarawak government for encroaching into land classified as the Penans’ NCR.
The NCR was enshrined in the Sarawak Land Code 1958, which recognises the natives’ collective ownership of land around their settlements for agriculture and hunting purposes.
The Obama administration stands ready to offer "any type of assistance" to Libyans seeking to oust Muammar Gaddafi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday, adding a warning to other African nations not to let mercenaries go to the aid of the longtime dictator.
Pakatan Rakyat leaders questioned if the prosecution of former Transport minister Chan Kong Choy was another of Prime Minister Najib Razak's "wayang kulit" aimed at giving the impression that his government was getting tough with corruption especially ahead of snap general elections widely expected to be called soon.
"Is this a pre-arranged sandiwara for the public? Why is he charged now when the Kerdau and Merlimau by-election campaigns are on-going? Is this to hoodwink the public that the government is serious in stamping out corruption to woo the voters in these by-elections and also as a preparation for the coming general election?" DAP MP for Segambut Lim Lip Eng told Malaysia Chronicle.
Chan, a former MCA deputy president, was charged at the Sessions Court with three counts of cheating the then prime minister Abdullah Badawi over renovation works at the PKFZ site between 2004 and 2006. He faces up to 5 years' jail on each count if found guilty.
DAP adviser Lim kit Siang was even more curt in his reaction to the news, "is that all? Why did it take so long?".
Will they be acquitted after the GE
Initially projected to cost RM1.8 billion, external auditors have warned the costs could balloon to more than RM12.5 billion if debt undertaken by the BN government was not revamped soon.
Chan is the second MCA 'big shot' to be charged over PKFZ. Former MCA president Ling Liong Sik was arrested in July 2010 for cheating the Cabinet into approving land purchases at valuations that were grossly inflated. Like Chan, he has denied the charges and has claimed trial.
"Why is Najib charging them one by one? The public is losing out as PKFZ has become a white elephant and the rakyat cannot see concrete punishment to the culprits," said Lip Eng.
Indeed, apart from opposition politicians, civil society leaders have also expressed concern. According to them, the charges pressed on the two MCA men were "light-weight" compared to huge amounts of taxpayers' money lost in the PKFZ deal.
There is worry that Ling and Chan will eventually be let off the hook like Perwaja Steel's Eric Chia, who had been widely regarded as former premier Mahathir Mohad's front man. Former ministers such Kasitah Gaddam too were prosecuted in a blaze of publicity but eventually escaped punishment.
"These top guns are dragged to court and charged but in the end they are aquitted. People are not so gullible these days. They can see that it is a sandiwara for the coming general election," said Lip Eng.
DAP MP for Cheras Tan Kok Wai also doubted the prosecution of both Chan and Ling were sincere.
"I just have one question. Will they be acquitted after the general election?" Kok Wai told Malaysia Chronicle.
Clinton made no mention of any U.S. military assistance in her remarks to reporters before flying to Geneva for talks with diplomats from Russia, the European Union and other powers eager to present a united anti-Gaddafi front.
Shortly before she left, two senators urged the administration to help arm a provisional government in Libya, where Gaddafi is in the midst of the desperate and increasingly violent bid to retain power.
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, also called for the United States and its allies to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent the military from again firing on civilian protesters from the air.
The White House had no immediate comment on their recommendations.
Clinton spoke to reporters one day after President Barack Obama branded Gaddafi an illegitimate ruler who must leave power immediately. "We want him to leave and we want him to end his regime and call off the mercenaries and those troops that remain loyal to him," she said. "How he manages that is obviously up to him and to his family."
The U.N. Security Council voted last Saturday to impose new penalties against the Gaddafi government, in power since 1969 in the oil-rich nation along Africa's Mediterranean Coast.
"We are just at the beginning of what will follow Gaddafi. ... But we've been reaching out to many different Libyans who are attempting to organize in the east and as the revolution moves westward there as well," Clinton said. "I think it's way too soon to tell how this is going to play out, but we're going to be ready and prepared to offer any kind of assistance that anyone wishes to have from the United States."
Efforts are under way to form a provisional government in the eastern part of the country where the rebellion began at midmonth.
The U.S., Clinton said, is threatening more measures against Gaddafi's government, but did not say what they were or when they might be announced.
Addressing the rulers of unnamed neighboring countries, she said: "You must stop mercenaries, you must stop those who may be going to Libya either at the behest or opportunistically to engage in violence or other criminal acts. And we will be working closely with those neighboring countries to ensure that they do so.
The African fighters that Gaddafi is allegedly using against protesters come from several nations.
Clinton's remarks did not go as far as those of McCain or Lieberman.
"Libyan pilots aren't going to fly if there is a no-fly zone and we could get air assets there to ensure it," McCain said. But he added, "I'm not ready to use ground forces or further intervention than that."
He said the U.S. should "recognize some provisional government that they are trying to set already up in the eastern part of Libya, help them with material assistance, make sure that every one of the mercenaries know that any acts they commit they will find themselves in front a war crimes tribunal. Get tough."
Lieberman spoke in similar terms, urging "tangible support, (a) no-fly zone, recognition of the revolutionary government, the citizens government and support for them with both humanitarian assistance and I would provide them with arms."
He likened the situation in Libya to the events in the Balkans in the 1990s when he said the U.S. "intervened to stop a genocide against Bosnians. And the first we did was to provide them the arms to defend themselves. That's what I think we ought to do in Libya."
McCain and Lieberman spoke on CNN's "State of the Union" from Egypt, where a largely peaceful popular uprising recently toppled President Hosni Mubarak from power after a reign of nearly three decades.
It was one of numerous rebellions across Northern Africa and the Middle East in recent months, all of them far less violent than the events in Libya, where Gaddafi has used his military and foreign mercenaries to try and crush a revolt and has threatened to begin arming Libyans who support his rule.
The rebellion began Feb. 15 in Benghazi, where a member of the city council said on Sunday that an ex-justice minister was appointed to lead a provisional government for cities under rebel control.
McCain and Lieberman also said Obama was slow to react to Gaddafi's brutal response to the protests. The administration has said the president did not want to risk any attack on Americans who had been trying to leave the country, and waited until a ferry loaded with evacuees reached Malta after spending two days in the harbor at Tripoli, the capital, because of bad weather.
"The British prime minister and the French president and others were not hesitant and they have citizens in that country," said McCain, who also appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Lieberman said he understood why the administration hesitated, but added, "I wish we had spoken out much more clearly and early against the Gaddafi regime."
Bush administration official known as one of the key architects of the Iraq war, has been sharply criticizing the Obama administration in recent weeks for its response to the crisis in Libya, saying the president has been "too slow" to condemn leader Muammar Gaddafi. But in an interview with CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on Sunday, Wolfowitz also went after his former boss for going too far in normalizing relations with Libya.
In 2003, President Bush announced that although Libya had been developing weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi had "agreed to immediately and unconditionally allow inspectors from international organizations to enter Libya." "These inspectors will render an accounting of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and will help oversee their elimination," Bush said.
In August 2005, Bush sent then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to Libya to begin a process of normalizing relations with the country.
Wolfowitz, who served as Deputy Secretary of Defense until June 2005, seemed to imply that he disagreed with some of the administration's decisions at the time, and he thought the president went too far.
"Look, I think we needed to give some acknowledgment to the fact that he handed over his nuclear weapons program, but it was an illegal program," said Wolfowitz. "And I thought we were giving him a lot by, in effect, saying you won't suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein. I don't think we had to go nearly as far as we went. There was a lot of pressure from the Pan Am 103 families because they wanted to collect the money that Gadhafi was offered."
Host Fareed Zakaria seemed surprised by Wolfowitz's claim about the Pan Am families and began to ask, "Do you think that's really --"
Wolfowitz replied that at one point, he was told that the pressure from the families was "significant" but added he couldn't prove it.
"But the United States went ahead and restored full diplomatic relations and had the secretary of state visit. I think we should have drawn more of a line," he added. "Some move was appropriate. I think we went too far."
Opposition forces are showing resolve to challenge the absolute rule of dynasties in Saudi Arabia and now Oman, which shares with Iran control of the strategic oil tanker route through the Strait of Hormouz and is a mediator between Iran and the West.
In the Omani town of Sohar, security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters demanding a greater voice in the country's affairs. At least one person was killed, police officials said, but other reports cited Omani media sources saying at least two died.
Oman's state-run news agency said protesters set cars and houses on fire, burned down a police station and set the governor's residence ablaze in the seaside town, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) northwest of the capital of Muscat.
It marked the first serious confrontation against protesters seeking to open up the ruling system of Sultan Qaboos bin Said, whose nation straddles the southeast corner of the Arabian peninsula and is co-guardian of the Strait of Hormuz. About 40 percent of the world's oil tanker traffic passes through the waterway at the mouth of the Gulf.
The sultan has already take bold steps to try to quell the unrest. On Saturday, he replaced six Cabinet members and last week boosted the minimum wage by more than 40 percent.
"We want new faces in the government and we have a long list of social reforms," said Habiba al-Hanay, a 45-year-old civil servant.
Omanis are not seeking to oust the country's ruler, al-Hanay said. "We just hope he will hear us and make changes," she added, noting that unemployment is high and education is poor in the country, which only has one university.
It's unclear whether the Bush administration did receive pressure from the families in that direction, but in 2008, ABC News reported that many of those same families -- who lost loved ones when Libya ordered the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 -- were upset that the Bush administration was normalizing relations while Gaddafi was still in power.
Libya had agreed to "pay $2.7 billion in compensation, or $10 million to each family of the 270 victims." But at that point, each family was still owed a final $2 million. Libya, as ABC reported, "was supposed to pay it when the U.S. removed it from its list of states that sponsor terrorism in 2006."
"I would gladly forego the money to have Libya remain on the state sponsored terrorism list, so long as Gaddafi's in power," said Peter Lowenstein, who lost his son in the bombing.
Wolfowitz also continued his criticism of Obama's response to the current crisis, saying he was "mystified" by the administration's reaction.
"We've been just way too slow," he said. "And that slowness, we're going to pay a price for, for a long time. Al Jazeera, which is no friend to the United States but which has become, with some justification, a hero of these revolutionary movements is taking the -- showing a picture of the White House or the president, why is the U.S. being so silent? Why is it being as silent as these people? And then it shows pictures of the people who have been killed in the protests. It's a devastating image."
In Sunday's Washington Post, reporter Scott Wilson says that the administration measured its response out of fear that a hostage situation of U.S. citizens could develop in Libya. Diplomats in Tripoli reportedly told administration officials that "certain kinds of messaging from the American government could endanger the security of American citizens."
"That was the debate, and frankly we erred on the side of caution, for certain, and at the cost of some criticism," said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. "But when you're sitting in government and you're told that ignoring that advice could endanger American citizens, that's a line you don't feel very comfortable crossing."
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