Year 2009

Nature lovers don’t mind suffering and sacrificing a little for Mother Earth.

A day after Tuesday’s by-elections, the message for the ruling Barisan Nasional is clearer than ever: It has to rethink its race-based strategy. Tuesday’s two losses meant four straight victories in Peninsula Malaysia for the opposition alliance, Pakatan Rakyat (PR), since the 2008 general election.

Is Pak Lah the third prime minister to be brought down by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad? Not only did Mahathir sent off three of his four deputies – Tun Musa Hitam, Tun Ghafar Baba and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim – in his half-a-century political career,…

Will the souls of the dead hold back out-of-town voters, especially the Chinese, in the three by-elections on Tuesday? The fact is that Qing Ming, better known as All Souls Day in Malaysia, will be observed this weekend among the Chinese. “We are concerned about…

‘One should judge me by my actions,’ said Najib Abdul Razak, after assuming his new position as Umno president. The rhetorical flourishes of the incoming prime minister is reaching unprecedented heights of incredulity and ridiculousness when measured against his actions over the last two months,…

WET weather has put a damper on the nightly ceramah circuit in Bukit Gantang. In the past week, most Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) gigs drew crowds in the range of 150 to less than 500 by the time the night’s speeches were…

Umno’s newly-minted vice-president and Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein was unhappy with the contents of history books and wanted “better” history lessons.

Of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s litany of failures, one of the least recognised yet important ones is that through his “back to the kampung base” programme, Abdullah was trying to solve Tun Abdul Razak Hussein’s problem, not his own.

Can Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) pull it off again in rural Batang Ai and create another upset in the by-election after it managed to do so in the urban seat of Padungan in the 2006 Sarawak state election? “If PKR can win with a comfortable…