I tweeted a week ago that if a non-politician could be appointed as the Health Minister, perhaps the Prime Minister’s Health Advisor Tan Sri Jemilah Mahmood could be a good choice. If it has to be an UMNO politician to avoid political problems, at least Khairy appears to be so much more competent than Adham Baba.
Dr Adham Baba, the new health minister, made a disastrous first television appearance on March 19 in which he told the public to drink warm water to “flush” the virus down to the stomach. The doctor, who used to run several small-town private clinics, was roundly panned on social media and instructed by Muhyiddin’s media operatives to disappear from public view.
Under a state of emergency, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and his cabinet now have powers to make laws without parliamentary approval. This essentially means Malaysia’s rendezvous with democracy – which only began with the May 2018 election that brought down the only ruling coalition the country had known since its independence in 1957 – is now fully frozen. So what’s next?
An election will come, sooner or later. We need to prepare for it. To understand the current political chaos, we have to appreciate a three-kingdom situation, whether in terms of political coalitions or voting blocs.
Understanding DAP is not just important to DAP members or its allies. DAP’s significant influence and the size of its parliamentary presence today means that the media and the public needs to get it right to avoid misjudgment.
The year 2020 has been unprecedented in many ways. We were faced with the greatest political, economic and health crises in many years. The crises exposed our weaknesses. We may be angry with the Sheraton move. The economic and Covid-19 crises may cause us to despair. But as we end the year 2020 and move into 2021 I hope we’re still optimistic.
Recently, Azmin Ali has been trying to re-write history to whitewash his reputation. Don’t be fooled. Azmin was the main architect of the failed coup in October 2019 which was the precursor to the Sheraton coup. Here are the facts for the record. After Azmin…
No other economic concern is more important than the question of jobs. We should place the agenda of job creation front and centre. And the Government should be the catalyst to drive this agenda. Through Budget 2021, over a period of two years, the Government…
‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other…
The nation’s future hangs in the balance, and the proposed emergency rule by the Muhyiddin administration will be the beginning of a downhill spiral, with no end in sight. There are better ways to handle Covid-19 pandemic but imposing emergency rule is not it. There…