“The first fact that we need to understand is that America has a longer history of disenfranchisement than it does of enfranchisement. What do I mean by that? At the time of the American Revolution when America was finding its footing, more than two-thirds of the people who resided in the colonies couldn't vote. You had to be white, you had to be male, you had to have property, and you had to be privileged. This history of America is a history of political exclusion... It was because people were trying to control power from the very beginning.”
If you remember, in 1999 when he attacked anwar, it gave rise to reformasi and PKR, In 2008 when he attacked abdullah, it gave rise to political tsunami that resulted BN losing power in 5 states and 2/3 parliamentary majority. If he attack or sabotage najib now,
Mahathir issaving the malay race from Najib. Good for him to continue on all this statement. His son will be follow and without any changes become MB of Kedah. One stone killing two / three birds. All Malaysian Malays, Chinese, Indian and others race, please wake up,
the main thing is we must have one school system. Liberalising cud lead to many sch systems. No country in e world liberalise their school system, not even e greatest democracies on earth, UK & USA.
Support e establishmt of a single schooling system but not necessarily with only Bahasa Malaysia as its med of learning. We can devise a multi-language medium of learning such that 55% of subject be taught in BM, 25% in Mandarin, 10% in Tamil, & 5% each in Iban & Kadazan. Besides that we must make it compulsory for all to learn English, allow the teaching of all mother tongues in national schools, and introduce other foreign languages such as French, German, Japanese, Russian & Korean s optional subjects. National unity shud be e prime target of national schools. Segragating people into different schools from a young age is a sure cause of national disunity. Not that I agree with Dr M but that I hv held this view even aft joining PR. If we can hv a multiracial party, why can't have a multi- racial schooling system unles of course we r all self-centred racists without an iota of care for national unity & harmony.Sometimes only ? Seems to me no matter what is done to the Indians, they always go back to vote for BN. The Cow head incident, racism, poor treatment of Tamil Schools, discrimination in jobs and business opportunities, denial of citizenship, calls to hang prominent Indians, especially ladies like Ambiga, Irene Fernandez and Cynthia Gabriel, or at the very least, calls to deprive them of Malaysian citizenship ! Will the Indians ever learn ? Somehow I don't think so, and hence they are the weak link as far as the Opposition winning GE13 is concerned.When umno fart, all other mosquitoe parties will say it smell like rose. If all you leaders of BN mosquito parties really care about the rakyat, just quit BN enbloc. That will earn respect.....not just issue statement which in the end means nothing. this an admission, on the part of MCA, that it was and is inept at representing the interests of the community it is representing? That they have been kowtowing to UMNO for the last 50 years? With this shameful admission why don't they leave the political arena?Agreed. surely back fired on the non malay voters. If he has the guts to openly give that statement, Imagine if BN is returned to power again what other damages he will do to our country. as it is now being an retired old man he has so much influence lobbying his son for kedah menteri besar chair, the other son for san miguel and take over exxonmobil and being the fuel supplier to Mas. What kind of human being he is? For once and for all come this GE, we must shut this old man's mouth.This idiot doesn't know that he is dpm only for the Malays. The non Malays don't recognize him as such for he has made it very clear that he is Malay first. He has no business to be dpm for all Malaysians. He should be booted out at the next round of elections!took so long for these stoopid MCA fellas to realise that the Mujahideen fler is a "Malay first, Malaysian second "what a beautiful charade. we must have singing and group dancing too in the next one. Where is the pornstar? Liow suddenly so daring. Too little too late. Why the porn-sident and son so quiet? Why blame MCA or MIC when its UMNO that makes the decision. Stop blaming all the others or anything under the sun when the complete blame lies at your feet. Correct yourself and your mistakes first before you try to blame others for losing the elections. Why only now you want to solve the problems of the indians and chinese. Where were you all these years.They are not supposed to know the people's sentiments. Even if they know, what can they do. The leaders are to be taken care of and they are much smaller in number than the people. Once leaders are taken care of, why worry about the people. The people only see them during elections. Do they have monthly meetings with their constituents? MCA only knows to rant it's frustrations and a week or a few days will hug UMNO leaders and say they have forgiven them. MCA is another pondan party with a useless president and deputy president. Leave BN lah and teach them a lesson for trying to rubbish you and sucking the peoples money. Liow, when did you and MCA DISCOVER that UMNO/BN has been practising double or triple standards? Through a PhD thesis? It looks like MCA did not do very well for having to take the last 25 years to conclude this thesis! Or have you been sleeping? After more than a generation you have to admit that MCA has failed badly. By your yardstick, should MCA be given more time?
MIC , anybody home ? Please stand up and say your piece to this accusation. DPM is just a Dead Piece of Meat and PM is Poisoned Meat. MIC, MCA , best chance to walk out from this shit group. See if they can manage without you guys.Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s critical comments on the existence of Tamil and Chinese schools in this country has drawn an unprecedented tirade against him from the Tamil media, with many Indian leaders firing salvos at the former premier for his unacceptable stand.In a recent interview with Utusan Malaysia, Mahathir’s comments suggested that vernacular schools should be abolished to have one single education system.Everyone was surprised because during his tenure of 22 years as the premier of this country no one remembered such remarks coming from him. Knowing the political dangers of making such statements as a prime minister, Mahathir never seriously ventured into the arena of vernacular school education during his days.Upon the publication of Mahathir’s comments, the Tamil media went into a frenzy as many Indian NGOs and leaders lambasted Mahathir for his comments on removing Tamil schools as it would ultimately eradicate Tamil education in this country, a subject close to the hearts of Tamils who form the largest segment within the Indian community.“A venom known as Mahathir” was the heading of the editorial serial of Tamil daily Thinakural written by the newspaper’s editor BR Rajan. In a series of articles, Rajan outlined Mahathir’s venomous attacks on minorities and their right to learn their mother tongues.Other Tamil newspapers also carried similar statements attacking Mahathir.Several Indian NGO leaders soon joined the fray in condemning Mahathir for making statements against minority races and vernacular education.However, the senior MIC leaders carefully avoided a confrontation with Mahathir on this issue for reasons best known to them. MIC is also known for its continued battle for the betterment of Tamil schools and Tamil education.Can BN repair the damage?Mahathir is always seen as the voice of Umno and BN. Reports suggest that even Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s actions are to some extent influenced by Mahathir’s thinking.Mahathir is going around the country whipping up support for Umno and BN with the 13th general election in his mind. He has even summoned government officers for his meetings with BN-Umno party leaders, but it remains to be seen whether his campaigns are in fact helping BN or pushing the minority votes away from BN, thereby further spoiling its chances of retaining Putrajaya.Some of Mahathir’s recent comments are causing colossal damage to BN’s efforts in getting the crucial Chinese and Indians votes during the forthcoming general election.The Chinese community is not pleased with his views on Chinese private schools and before their perceptions could be corrected by the BN government, Mahathir further angered the Chinese community by criticising Najib for recognising educational certificates from Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) college, which is run by MCA.While the Chinese community is upset with the comments from Mahathir, his Utusan interview has also clearly caused discontentment among the Indian community.The Indian community is already upset and unhappy with Umno-BN for its actions against S Ambiga. Before the dust surrounding Ambiga’s issues could settle, Mahathir’s comments have caused further displeasure within the Indian community.Mahathir’s comments cannot be ignored just because it is not coming from a government minister of the day. He is still seen as part of the government, greatly influencing its affairs.The Indian community, too, had a respectable view about Mahathir for his past contributions to the country but that seems to be shattered now in view of his comments on the Tamil schools.Some segments of the Indian community still argue that Mahathir’s racially inclined policies during his 22-year tenure as premier was one of the key factors that retarded the growth and progress of the Indian community and some single him out for the sorry state of the Indian community today.Some firm and unwavering assurances from the prime minister or his deputy on vernacular education – which may be forthcoming – would be able to change the perceptions created by Mahathir on vernacular education in this country, but the damage has already been done as far as the Indian votes are concerned.Only time would tell us whether the mighty BN machinery would be able to overcome and correct the damage.
On Eid, the usually skinny Urdu newspapers in Mumbai looked fat and prosperous. A closer perusal of the pages gave away the reason: politicians cutting across parties had placed ads greeting Muslims on the occasion of Eid. The gesture is perhaps laudable but it also points to a fast-growing trend: the broke Urdu media's growing dependence on political patronage.
Today, Urdu and the writers and journalists who communicate through it are reaping like never before the fruits of canny politicians' new-found "love" for them. Newspaper and magazine anniversaries, book launches, mushairas-—virtually every Urdu function these days is bankrolled by the political brigade. The mantra among Urdu writers is: if you want to hold an event but don't have the wherewithal, don't worry. Call a politician.
Recently, Lucknow-based Urdu writer Faiyaz Riffat flew into Mumbai with his new compilation of Shahid Ahmed Dehlvi's essays called Dilli Jo Ek Shahar Tha. Keen on having a book launch in Mumbai, he contacted a friend who introduced him to ex-MLA Yusuf Abrahni. Without batting an eyelid, Abrahni bankrolled the event, which included a lavish dinner at Islam Gymkhana. "Urdu dailies and writers highlight the Muslim community's issues like no other media does. If we don't help them, who else will?" asks Abrahni.
Few have benefited more from political benevolence in recent months than a Nagpada-based Haj-Umrah tour operator who also edits the Urdu monthly Huda Times International. In June, when the magazine turned three, Makki discussed his plan to celebrate its anniversary with a friend who took him to Congress MP Sanjay Nirupam. Nirupam immediately promised to book a club in Andheri for the event but subsequently changed his mind—since it was an Urdu magazine function and the audience would be mostly Muslim, the MP espied an opportunity to show the Muslim voters in his constituency that he cared for their language. He roped Aslam Sheikh, an MLA from Malad, into the project and invited Union law and minority affairs minister Salman Khurshid as the chief guest.
On June 2, as the rain gods conspired to spoil the event at a maidan in Malad, the venue was hurriedly shifted to a nearby community hall. Makki, who would perhaps have not got Khurshid as a guest without Nirupam's involvement, even felicitated the senior minister with his magazine's 'Pride of the Nation' award. When asked what exactly Khurshid had done for the nation to merit this award, Makki rationalized that he was from a family of freedom fighters. However, he is a bit miffed now that the politicians ended up "hijacking" his programme.
For many, these events are also a means to get close to influential politicians. "Such functions may not benefit Urdu but certainly benefit many unknowns who get themselves photographed with the politicians and preserve the pictures as trophies," remarks senior Urdu journalist Khalil Zahid who has been jobless ever since his own once-powerful weekly Akhbar-e-Alam folded up in 1992. "A big politician had promised to fund it if I turned it into a daily, but he never kept the promise and I incurred huge losses," he says.
Why the mad rush for political patronage? Can't Urdu and its writers survive without the latter? "Corporate houses don't give us advertisements. We will die if political patronage stops," admits Sarfraz Arzoo, editor-proprietor of the daily Hindustan. When Arzoo's paper celebrated its platinum jubilee a couple of years ago, a dozen big politicians attended it. Arzoo denies that they funded the function, but a veteran city scribe provides a perspective. "A politician may not directly fund Urdu newspapers' functions, but he asks moneybags like builders and other wheeler-dealers to bear the cost," he says." The moneybags can refuse the paperwallas but can't refuse their maibaap powerful politicians."
And of course minority politics has to play a role in politicians' increasing patronage to Urdu papers. "Minority politics has turned Urdu into 'Musalman'," observes poet Nida Fazli. "The Maharashtra government has shifted the Urdu Academy from the cultural department to the minority department as if to confirm the ludicrous myth that Urdu belongs to Muslims alone. They have forgotten Urdu's tall Hindu writers like Premchand, Ratan Nath Sarshar and Dayashankar Naseem. Fazli adds that if any language belongs exclusively to Muslims, it is Arabic, not Urdu, because the Quran is in Arabic while Urdu is a product of India's Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (composite culture).
True to type, politicians make big promises at Urdu functions but seldom keep them. When Urdu Times celebrated its golden jubilee at a five-star hotel on April 24 this year, many political bigwigs of Maharashtra, including Sharad Pawar and chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, attended it. The neta shailed Urdu's beauty and announced several sops. "The CM announced autonomy to the state Urdu Academy. But he hasn't kept his promise," complains Imtiaz Ahmed, the proprietor of Urdu Times.
The function did not ameliorate the problems faced by the Urdu language, but it certainly showcased politicians' "concern" for it. Which, in the final analysis, is what the show seems to be all about.As students and parents at Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools® sites across the country study our nation’s history this summer, they’ll learn about the long struggle for voting rights in our nation and the importance of the vote to a vibrant democracy. The college servant-leaders who are teaching the pre-K-12 children came to CDF Haley Farm near Knoxville, Tenn. in June for national training week. One of their speakers was Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Associate Professor at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University. He spoke to them about the history of the black struggle for the vote and how the fight to control power by controlling the vote has a very long history in America. That struggle is still very evident in 2012.
Dr. Jeffries described a common narrative about African American history that woefully simplifies most of the last 150 years. That narrative says all barriers to voting were settled for good once President Johnson and Congress “gave” black citizens the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and now that we have President and First Lady Obama and their two beautiful children in the White House we’ve reached a wonderful “post-racial” moment in America. But as Dr. Jeffries carefully explained, this oversimplification has always been a myth -- or worse, a lie -- and to ignore current threats to voting rights shows an ignorance of history and a willingness to jeopardize our democracy and future.
Dr. Jeffries explained to our college leaders how Frederick Douglass and others insisted on giving African Americans the vote along with freedom when slavery was finally abolished, but the moment of promise after the 15th Amendment didn’t last long: “How is it possible that African Americans after slavery can have the vote in hand and then 100 years later from 1865 to 1965 are still fighting for the vote? We have to understand that American history is not linear or upward progress. American history is about peaks and valleys.” After the brief peak of black elected officials during Reconstruction right after the Civil War ended, the next valley began when Mississippi called a constitutional convention to look for ways around the 15th Amendment. The result was decades of new voting laws across the South requiring literacy tests, “grandfather” clauses that prohibited anyone from voting if their grandfather hadn’t, and other “colorblind” policies whose main purpose was actually to keep people of one color from participating in our democracy.
But during the long years of Jim Crow, African Americans never lost sight of the prize: “They redirected their energy, put it into community development, put it into land acquisition, put it into education... [but] they never gave up on the vote itself,” Dr. Jeffries said. By the 1960s the active fight for voting rights was back on the front burner and once again people were risking and giving their lives in order to be able to vote. Fifty years ago, civil rights organizations, pushed by young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers, came together to form COFO, the Council of Federated Organizations, in order to work together more effectively to secure the vote in Mississippi’s closed society.
They challenged the Jim Crow Mississippi Democratic Party by later establishing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the segregationist regular democrats in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1964. They held mock votes and ran candidates to demonstrate their desire for a fair voice in the electoral process. Some lost their lives and suffered brutal harassment and jailings over the next several years including Medgar Evers and three young civil rights workers: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Although the sacrifices of the Civil Rights Movement are still fresh wounds for all of us who lived through it, for another generation of Americans they already are becoming ancient history. It is important that we teach our children and adults our history so that we do not repeat it or take our rights for granted by failing to exercise them.
Far too many Americans take the right to vote so much for granted they don’t even bother to exercise it. Dr. Jeffries warned that the same old threats are once again reorganizing under different policies and new names right now: “Those who were opposed to the empowerment of African Americans... never gave up trying to rob African Americans and people of color and poor people of the franchise... It's a continuous line that has never been disrupted, and today, as we move into the 21st century, we have to locate and understand that the efforts of voter suppression now are an extension of that effort then.” He also warned that today’s methods are more subtle and precise:
“Before... the goal was to take the vote away from all African Americans. But if you understand how electoral politics works, particularly at the federal level but even at the local level, you understand that you no longer need to take the vote away from everybody ... All you have to do is take out a couple thousand. That's what voter suppression is about, and that’s what we're dealing with today, these efforts around voter identification, these efforts around felony disenfranchisement... Just make it hard enough for [a few or some people] not to be able to go down on Election Day to vote, and you can carry the day. And they propose this legislation in state after state after state under the guise of democracy. It's the most undemocratic thing that you could do. And this isn’t about party affiliation. It’s Democrats one day, it’s Republicans the next day, but it's all anti-democratic.”
California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin have passed laws making it more difficult to vote. People of color, seniors, poor people, and the disabled face new barriers that we must take every step to overcome this year.
There has never been a safe time in America to drop vigilance about attempts to shut people out of the vote, the lifeblood of democracy. As Frederick Douglass made clear, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” He warned that we can never take anything for granted, especially black citizenship. Although it may be wrapped up in new euphemisms and better etiquette, he reminded that it’s the same old snake. So this year, let’s all be alert. Be active. Use your power as a citizen and vote. Don’t let anyone take it away from you. Let’s mount an urgent and systematic state-by-state fight against the latest kinds of disenfranchisement and counter every single effort at voter suppression with redoubled commitments to voter education, voter registration, and voter turnout. Our democracy and our children’s futures depend on it.
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