Browsing Category: "Politik"
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has lost a final bid to have his sodomy trial held in a lower court, ending a long wrangle over where the case should be heard, his lawyer said Thursday.
The Court of Appeal rejected the application and affirmed an earlier decision that the politically charged case should be heard in the High Court. The trial is due to start July 8.
Amid widespread doubts over the standards of Malaysia’s judiciary, Anwar’s supporters have said they fear authorities will be able to manipulate the case more easily in the High Court.
“The decision is not appealable. I am most disappointed with the decision today,” his lawyer Sankara Nair told AFP.
Anwar, 61, has repeatedly rejected sodomy allegations levelled by a 23-year-old former aide; the same charge that saw him jailed a decade ago, as a government conspiracy to derail his plan to topple the ruling coalition.
Read Anwar's Appeal Rejected, Trial On July 8
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Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has asked a Malaysian court to throw out a sodomy charge against him, two weeks before the start of a trial that he maintains is politically motivated, his lawyer said Thursday.
The government has repeatedly denied Anwar’s claim that the charge was orchestrated to block him from leading a three-party opposition alliance that severely eroded the ruling coalition’s parliamentary majority in the March 2008 election.
Anwar submitted a petition to the High Court on Wednesday that said the case was a conspiracy concocted by his foes in the government, his lawyer Sankara Nair said in a statement.
In his application, Anwar asserted that a medical report dated July 13 last year by a government hospital found no evidence of anal penetration on his accuser.
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Malaysia’s opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said on Monday he is confident a court will find no evidence of sodomy when his case, which has inflamed political passions in Malaysia, resumes in July. Anwar, who spent six years in jail on a 1998 sodomy conviction that was ultimately overturned, faces a 20-year sentence if convicted on the new charge. Homosexuality is outlawed in Malaysia.
That would effectively end his political career which has seen him come close to mounting a challenge to the National Front government that has ruled Malaysia for the 51 years since independence from Britain.
Political tensions in Malaysia have been stoked by arrests of opposition supporters and when Anwar was tried in the late 1990s, tens of thousands of people took to the streets. “We’ve seen the conduct of the judiciary in the past, in the recent past as reasons to worry about that,” Anwar told a luncheon of foreign correspondents in Singapore, in reply to a question about the possibility of mass protests at his trial.
Read Anwar Confident Will Win Sodomy Case
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Police raided a Malaysian opposition party’s headquarters to search for seditious material, sparking accusations Sunday of a crackdown on political dissent.
The hour long search late Saturday marked the first time police had raided the Democratic Action Party’s main office in its 42-year history, said the party’s parliamentary chief, Lim Kit Siang. Plainclothes policemen entered the office without a search warrant and seized a computer and DVDs, he said.
The move comes amid an increasingly acrimonious battle for control of northern Perak state, which the ruling National Front coalition wrested from a three-party opposition alliance in February. The struggle has turned into an emotional fight between opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is struggling to revive the National Front’s slumping popularity.
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The Court of Appeal yesterday returned a unanimous decision that Barisan Nasional’s Datuk Zambry Abd Kadir is the rightful Perak mentri besar, ruling that his Pakatan Rakyat rival Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddinn had ceased to command the majority in the Perak state assembly.
The judges also ruled that the Sultan was right in appointing Zambry the MB and that there was no need for a vote of no confidence in the House against Nizar.
The three-member Bench comprising Justices Md Raus Shariff, Zainun Ali and Ahmad Maarop delivered judgment after hearing submissions from both parties a day earlier.
“It is clear the respondent (the state opposition leader) had ceased to command confidence of the Perak state assembly. The Sultan was right to appoint Zambry,” Md Raus said.
However, the Court of Appeal decision is not expected to bring an end to the crisis in Perak as the parties can still appeal to the Federal Court.
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A new political party for Malaysia’s ethnic Indian minority was launched on 19 Mei 2009, with its leader saying it would fight discrimination against the disadvantaged community.
The Malaysian Makkal Sakti (People’s Power) party is an offshoot of the banned rights group Hindraf, which had five of its leaders detained without trial after mounting unprecedented anti-discrimination protests in 2007.
The party’s leader, R. Thanenthiran, took on a prominent role in Hindraf after the detentions, which ended in recent weeks when the five were released by newly appointed prime minister Najib Razak.
“Each and every citizen of this country should be treated equally,” Thanenthiran told a press conference held to launch the party.
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Joblessness and poverty are a more potent source of tension between Muslims and wider European and U.S. society than religious differences, one of the first major studies of Muslim integration since the Sept. 11 terror attacks claimed on Thursday.
Attacks by Islamic extremists on the United States and European capitals such as Madrid and London have sparked debate on whether a failure of Muslims to integrate into Western society has fueled extremism.
But a study of around 30,000 people in 27 countries by the Gallup polling company claims non-Muslims including the public and lawmakers have misunderstood the attitudes of most Muslims in the West, stifling attempts to promote understanding.
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“May 13? What is that?” That was not the answer I was expecting when I first approached a table of Chinese students from a top private college having supper to ask them what they thought of the race riots, often touted by politicians as a black mark on race relations, that happened 40 years ago.
And the student I asked, Alvin from Kuala Lumpur, had never even heard of it.
I had come to Asia Cafe in SS15 in Subang Jaya a couple of nights ahead of the 40th anniversary of May 13, 1969. The food court is a magnet for students and young adults who gather underneath a huge willowy angsana tree to indulge in the modern Malaysian ritual of watching European football on giant projection screens while sipping drinks with friends and supping on sizzling seafood.
I was on a mission to hear what members of the generation born two decades after the riots had to say about it.
As it turns out, not many find the May 13 riots relevant as they feel they occurred at a time too distant in the past and were of no consequence to their lives. However, everyone had a lot to say about the secondary topic which is the state of race relations today.
Read May 13, 1969: View From A Food Court
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The last time Lee Hung Poh walked unassisted was 40 years ago, before a bullet fired in the heat of Malaysia’s worst race riots sliced through her spine and shattered her future.
Neither the 57 year old Lee nor her country has ever completely recovered.
To be sure, Malaysia, a Southeast Asian nation of 27 million people, has been remarkably stable since the week long mayhem that began May 13, 1969. But as the country marks the 40th anniversary of the riots, its uneasy racial detente is coming under stress.
Ethnic Chinese and Indians, the two largest minorities, have become more vocal in demanding racial equality in part because of growing economic hardships, and Indians staged unprecedented public protests in November 2007. Mindful of the mounting disenchantment, a new prime minister is proposing a partial rollback of a main legacy of the riots, an affirmative action program for the majority Malays.
If change goes smoothly, it may be for the better. As Malaysians have grown wealthier and better educated, they have demanded a more open discussion of race, and the government has acquiesced to a degree. But the shift is also stirring old passions the Malays and Chinese in particular don’t fully trust each other and therein lies a risk.
Read 40 Years After 13 May 1969
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