Found 138 matches for Abdul Razak
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| 2004-04-20 | Flawed polls put Pak Lah on uneasy throne
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| 2004-04-14 | The EC chief admits he and his officers played fast and loose with the rules to short-circuit the polls
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| 2004-04-06 | Oil, violence, and the scuffle for influence in southern Thailand The bilateral suspicions spring from this different perceptions. It
lasts to this day. Malaysian intelligence and other officials had
rushed to southern Thailand, the most recently last week, as the
violence escalated. Once the Malaysian involvement was ill disguised.
In the early 1970s, I met a Thai Malay rebel from the Pattani United
Liberation Organisation or PULO in Kuala Lumpur, who had come to meet
the then Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, no less. She did not, but
she saw lesser officials from his office. But at the time, her
presence did not surprise. There was open talk of the several Thai
Malay rebel groups vying for Malaysian support, working their way
through numerous UMNO officials. One unmentioned foreign policy view
was support for minority Malays in foreign countries fighting for
their own space, if not independence.
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| 2004-03-28 | Pak Lah names an interim Cabinet amidst a Malay minority in parliament
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| 2004-03-24 | The BN crosses the Rubicon with this General Election
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| 2004-03-20 | The BN is caught in its own trap as the election campaign winds down
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| 2004-03-19 | The EC is at the BN's beck and call to frustrate the Opposition
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| 2004-03-18 | Guerrila tactics in the general election undercuts the National Front
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| 2004-03-17 | Why free and fair elections is not possible
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| 2004-03-08 | The exquisitely fine art of selecting, and back-stabbing, BN candidates
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| 2004-03-04 | Parliament, and all state assemblies but Sarawak, is dissolved
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| 2004-03-01 | Why does Dato' Seri Najib seek to desert his Pekan parliamentary constituency? THE MENTRI BESAR OF PAHANG, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob, said the National Front (BN) list is ready but for three parliamentary constituencies - Bentong, Indera Mahkota, Pekan (The Star, 28 February 2004, p12). Pekan? The seat of the Dato' Shahbander of Pahang, which two successive holders of the post, Malaysia's second prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and his son, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib, they had held for UMNO since 1955? The constituency was far larger in 1955 than it is today, but its crown jewel is within the present boundaries. Dato' Seri Adnan did not say why. How did a solid albeit feudal UMNO stronghold be now a marginal constituency? In 1999, the deputy prime minister, as he was not then, squeaked in by 241 votes, and this after the 2,400 postal votes were counted. The feudal spell and Razak mystique could no longer sustain his son's political future. When the constituencies were redrawn since, an army and an airforce camp from the adjoining Mentakab and Kuantan constituencies, with 4,000 voters were brought within the new Pekan electoral boundary. On the face of it, Dato' Seri Najib should easily romp home. The reality is far, far different.
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| 2004-01-08 | Pak Lah - Surprise! Surprise! - reappoints the Mahathir cabinet as his own On his appointment, the news agencies and the media are quick to garland him, and others, with superlatives. He is, one news agency reported, a "British-trained economist". He is not. He is a British university drop out. He rose in politics as the son of the second Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and which began when his father died in 1976. He has an awesome political machine but is a political lightweight known more for his political treachery, and his wife's defence deals. Dr Mahathir wanted him as deputy prime minister to repay what the Malays call "hutang budi" (a cultural debt one must honour in one's lifetime). His father, Tun Razak, protected Dr Mahathir when the then Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, sacked him from UMNO after the 1969 racial riots for openly challenging him.
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| 2004-01-03 | An UMNO bigwig is assaulted, so it is war on illegal racers
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| 2004-01-02 | Nepotism, like corruption, is a crime in Malaysia only if the wrong party is guilty of it NEPOTISM IS ALIVE AND well in Malaysia. As elsewhere in the world. When Rupert Murdoch considers who should oversee his vast business empire after him, the products of his loins get a head start. So when the Genting Highlands chieftain retires at 85. It is common in the business and financial world. In politics and in the civil service, it is frowned upon but it exists after a fashion. When one has the power to do it, why should one demur? The dynastic succession is now a political ideal as a monarchy or a commercial fact of life. Often this nepotic evidence is indirect, allowing the children of the leader to make hay while daddy (or as is as common, mummy) governs or rules. In several Asian countries, sons succeed fathers. Competence is implicit in several, but not all, of them. In Singapore, its long time Prime Minister and now senior minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, has sons and their wives in important cogs in the republic's wheel; one, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, will be prime minister before this year is out. In North Korea, Kim Chong Il succeed to the presidency when his father, Mr Kim Il Sung died in 1994. In Malaysia it varies. Two cabinet ministers owe their position to their late fathers: the second prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and the third, Tun Hussein Onn and their sons, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak and Dato' Hishamuddin Tun Hussein sit in the cabinet. The DAP leader, Mr Lim Kit Siang, grooms his son, Mr Lim Guan Eng, to succeed him. It is considered a "right" to allow the children to make hay while their fathers shine.
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| 2003-12-11 | Pak Lah is busy in Malacca so Parliament's farewell dinner for Dr Mahathir is postponed, if not cancelled
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| 2003-11-24 | UMNO sacks an editor-in-chief as its new president tightens his hold
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| 2003-11-06 | Pak Lah in the hot seat The UMNO president does not welcome or allow debate. He wants total control, and questioning his views is treachery. At one time it was not. The president - Dato' Sir Onn Jaffar, Tengku Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak, Tun Hussein Onn - consulted their critics and considered their views. Dato' Sir Onn left when that conflicted with his. Under Dr Mahathir, he did not, and disallowed any other view than his. That culture has stuck. Laws and regulations are passed only to be recalled and amended because consultations were excluded in its framing. Pak Lah deserves a chance to show his mettle. He should not be circuited from office because of the past. But if he is not careful, it could. More important, UMNO is in the midst of an internal convulsion. The events of 1987 would face an accounting in the first decade of the 21st century. UMNO was declared illegal and a Mahathir UMNO took its place but not with any strategic or tactical intent but so Dr Mahathir could stay on in office. Now that he is no more in office, the more important question is if this Mahathir UMNO is still relevant to the Malay. Pak Lah must prove it is. Can he?
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| 2003-10-27 | BN veterans wants to stay on even if it makes BN weaker and the Opposition stronger Bodies and groups renew themselves by regularly renewing their members, with the older members making way for the new. The more often this is done, the more likely the body or group is relevant. This was how UMNO renewed itself in the past, the regular elections and challenges defined its role, and kept the Opposition at bay. But since the Malay political and civil service coup after the 1969 racial riots, power in UMNO was kept within a cabal led by its president, no less. Tun Abdul Razak and Tun Hussein Onn, the first two presidents after the coup held office for a total of ten years. The third, Dr Mahathir led it for 22 years. He brooked no opposition and to keep himself in power, he was prepared to destroy UMNO. He did that in 1988, when he allowed the courts to declare UMNO an illegal body if only so he could exclude his principal rival for the UMNO presidency - Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, along with his political enemies in he party - in his new UMNO.
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| 2003-10-19 | Could we ever study English as a language, not as a political agenda? Neither the Prime Minister of the day, Tun Abdul Razak, nor the cabinet could reverse it. Not with so many revanchist Malay politicians, including one Dr Mahathir bin Mohamed, baying for blood. He would not admit it but it was he, as minister of education, in the 1970s who destroyed the teaching of English in Malaysian schools by his policy that English must be learnt only to communicate, that grammar and literature are unimportant, and if one spoke enough English to make one understood, that is enough. The Malay teachers, who by and large did not study English, could not teach it; non-Malay teachers could not for political reasons; so it was better to scrap English from the curriculum. It is this same political rationale which now brings English back into the curriculum. That it has come back after a generation means the English teachers of the 1960s and 1970s have all retired, and those since taught it to communicate, not understand.
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This archive was created as a tribute to the late veteran
journalist MGG Pillai. We believed his writings are useful to develop a critical
thinking analysis.
By the way, the original mggpillai.com web site (2001-2006) was actually created
by one of us.
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