Itu sahaja cara untuk tanya Najib...
Tokoh wartawan veteran, Datuk Abdul Kadir Jasin mempertahankan dua wartawan Australia yang dikatakan cuba melepasi garisan keselamatan untuk bertanya soalan kepada Datuk Seri Najib Razak di Sarawak baru-baru ini.
Melalui blognya, beliau berkata, itu sahaja cara yang masih ada bagi wartawan untuk mendapat jawapan terus daripada Perdana Menteri.
Katanya lagi, hanya wartawan arus perdana yang boleh bertanya soalan kepada Najib, dan itu pun menerusi sesi wawancara yang sudah diatur dan dengan soalan yang dikemukakan lebih awal.
“Sekarang tidak ada cara lain menemuramah Mohd Najib selain ‘menyerang hendap’. Ketakutan telah menyebabkan beliau mengelak bersemuka dengan wartawan.
“Menurut beberapa orang pengarang media arus perdana, Mohd Najib sudah lama tidak mengadakan sidang akhbar. Ada tidak pun ketika lawatan rasmi ke luar negara. Itu pun hanya dengan para pengarang yang mengiringi beliau,” katanya dalam artikel terbaru di blognya hari ini.
Bekas Ketua Pengarang Kumpulan New Straits Times itu juga memaklumkan telah bertanya kepada salah seorang setiausaha akhbar Najib bagi mengesahkan dakwaan tersebut, tetapi masih belum mendapat jawapan.
Pada 12 Mac lalu, PDRM Sarawak menahan dua wartawan ABC Australia, Linton Besser Louie Eroglu atas sebab ‘menghalang tugas penjawat awam’.
Mereka tidak didakwa atas apa-apa kesalahan, tetapi dihantar pulang kerana melanggar Seksyen 18(3)(h) Akta Imigresen 1959/63.
Kena tanya soalan dengan wartawan pun takut?
kata darah pahlawan Bugis...
Beliau membandingkan layanan tersebut yang jauh berbeza ketika era pentadbiran Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad dan Tunku Abdul Rahman.
“Ketika zaman yang disifatkan media propaganda Mohd Najib sebagai tidak bebas dan autokratik, khususnya era Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, wartawan bebas tanya soalan. Sidang akhbar menjadi darah daging media massa,” katanya.
Ketika era Tunku pula, Bapa Kemerdekaan itu sentiasa melayan semua wartawan dengan baik, tanpa membezakan antara wartawan kanan mahu pun yang baru dalam bidang itu. - fmt
PAS clutching at straws...
PAS triggered a flurry of speculation when it announced last week that it will link up with a multiracial opposition party to form a third force in Malaysian politics.
It said it was keeping the identity of its intended collaborator under wraps until matters firmed up in a week’s time.
When it was revealed yesterday that the partner was Parti Ikatan Bangsa Malaysia (Ikatan), observers who were scurrying last week to find out the identity of PAS’ partner could barely suppress a chuckle.
Sure, Ikatan is a multiracial party but in terms of clout and presence in the national political landscape, it’s even less of a lightweight than Parti Rakyat Malaysia which at least fielded a candidate in the Permatang Pauh parliamentary by-election in May 2015.
Ikatan is the creation of Sheikh Kadir Abdul Fadzir, a former MP for Kulim-Bandar Baru, former cabinet minister and former Umno supreme council member.
Kadir, a Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah enthusiast, had been trying to get the Gua Musang MP to break away from Umno and join Ikatan.
Razaleigh is too polite a man to tell Kadir that he’s on to nothing but Kadir is too enamoured of a past where Umno, though a single-race party, kept the multiracial dimensions to national questions pretty firmly in mind when deciding issues.
Ikatan was Kadir’s response to frustration at seeing Umno retreat into enthnocentrism and is intended as a stalking horse for the day when Umno realises it is embedded in a cul de sac, escape from which can only come by opening up its membership to other races
Credit Kadir for continuing to hold a torch for the multiracial vision of founding premier Tunku Abdul Rahman who will not be able to recognise as his the Umno of today.
But Kadir does not possess the stature to sustain Ikatan as a stalking horse for the day when Umno’s enthocentricism will collapse of its own contradictions and Ikatan will be a safe harbour for Umno-types to lick wounds and readjust bearings.
That’s probably the reason why Kadir has decided on an alliance with PAS - to stay afloat by attaching to a tugboat to weather the uncertainties of the present national political situation.
By accepting Ikatan as a partner, PAS is equally cloudy about itself and of the future, with the degree of its uncertainty reflected in its unconcern that the leader which Ikatan upholds (Tunku) is far from being a beau ideal to the Islamist party.
Under the leadership of Abdul Hadi Awang, the party’s position on issues facing the nation has become a guessing game, with the president spouting a lot of stuff that is vague to the point of vacuity.
Hadi’s rants do not trouble anyone in the party save the state assemblyperson for Salor in Kelantan, Husam Musa, once a luminary in the state administration of the late menteri besar, Nik Aziz Nik Mat.
Voices of seeming demurral
Other voices of seeming demurral, belonging to vice-president Iskandar Abdul Samad and deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, are not taken as contravening the president although, on the face of what they actually say, their narratives are at variance to the president’s.
However, they are not threatened with expulsion whereas Husam is. This contributes to an overall picture of a party that does not know how to shift its feet even if it’s certain of its final destination: the creation of an Islamic state.
Nobody is fooled that PAS has done itself a power of good by linking up with Ikatan; most know that it has done so to tell people that it is not running on the spot but moving in some direction.
PAS has to demonstrate that it is moving after most of the rest of the oppositionists in the country have arrayed itself behind the Citizens’ Declaration (CD), whose chief convenor is Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
PAS has chosen to stay aloof from the crowd supporting the CD, an aloofness that is not good for its stature because when pratically everyone who is anyone in the opposition are aligned behind the CD, the Islamist party cannot credibly project an ‘only the lonely’ stance and come out smelling roses.
It has to seem to do something. Hence the tie-up with Ikatan and the decision to label it the ‘third force’ in Malaysian politics.
It is a force that last week was previewed as a bang but this week has emerged as only a whimper.
The early verdict is that PAS is clutching at straws while Ikatan has elected to go on life support than remain moribund. - Terence Netto, mk
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