Pengikut

29 Oktober 2011

MODUS ROMPAKAN WANG RAKYAT

Isu projek terbengkalai bukan lagi isu baru. Daily Express beberapa bulan lalu melaporkan bahawa sebuah jawatankuasa di peringkat negeri terpaksa ditubuhkan bagi memantau ratusan projek yang terbengkalai. Di Pitas saja, berpuluh projek makmal komputer terbengkalai. Beberapa projek bangunan pra-sekolah turut terbengkalai.Wah ini seperti sudah jadi lumrah dan kebiasaan sehingga tidak ada perasaan bersalah kerana membazirkan wang rakyat. Antara sebab terbengkalai ialah sistem sub kontrak yang sekian lama diamalkan. Kontraktor utama yang berpengkalan di semenanjung akan sub kan kontrak kepada rakan kontraktor mereka di Sabah dan kepada sub seterusnya. Kadangkala sub utama dari KL hanya berperanan sebagai perunding. Sistem sub menghakis nilai wang yang sebenar sehingga peratusan yang benar-benar digunakan dalam lapangan susut kepada hampir 40%.
Inilah satu modus operandi rompakan wang rakyat yang dilihat bersih dan tiada apa-apa kesalahan. Semuanya berpunca dari ciptaan sistem dan mekanisme berpaksikan kepada kehendak parti tertentu dan membelakang hak rakyat. Kalau ini berterusan, tak pasti sampai bilalah wang rakyat dapat bertahan. Anda mahu ini berterusan?

18 Oktober 2011

CATATAN BELANJAWAN

Kerajaan tak boleh atau tak dapat menggunakan walau sesen pun wang rakyat@negara tanpa melalui kelulusan Parlimen khususnya melalui kelulusan dalam belanjawan negara. Inilah gambaran mudah kenapa pentingnya bajet kepada kita semua. Bajet 2012 dah seminggu berlalu dan "sosek" media massa tentang kehebatan bajet ini masih berkumandang. Elok kiranya kita melihat pula bajet ini dari sudut lain supaya seimbang pengetahuan kita. Ini antara beberapa dapatan saya dalam bajet ini.

1. Hampir semua bantuan adalah bentuk One Off. Ini jelas menggambarkan satu rasuah untuk pilihanraya yang bakal menjelang. Konsep bantuan One Off tidak ada jaminan untuk diberikan secara konsisten. Kerajaan boleh menariknya pada bila-bila masa.
2. Pengecualian cukai ke atas perkhidmatan teksi ternyata hanya menguntungkan para pengusaha teksi yang majoriti adalah kroni umno dan pemandu teksi tidak menikmati apa-apa.
3. Projek tebatan banjir bernilai RM1.3 Bilion menggunakan wang rakyat Malaysia tetapi itu hanya untuk Perlis, Perak dan Johor sahaja.
4. Unjuran pertumbuhan 5-6% terlalu optimis. Berbanding unjuran Bank Dunia (4.8-5.7%), MIER (5.2-5.5%), RHB (4.3-4.5%) dan Bank Pembangunan Asia (4.8-5.1%).
5. Peruntukan untuk Kementerian Kerjaya Raya naik 29% dan Kementerian Kerajaan Tempatan naik 61%. Kedua-dua kementerian ini adalah lombong emas projek dan jelas kenaikan ini memberikan makan kepada kroni-kroni dan mungkin juga modal pilihanraya.
6. 78% belanjawan untuk perbelanjaan mengurus sementara hanya 22% untuk pembangunan dan pelaburan. Ini adalah satu peratusan yang sangat berisiko dalam konteks menjana pulangan pendapatan negara.
8. Hutang negara mencecah RM437 Bilion. Kerajaan tak menyentuh bagaimana untuk menbayar hutang yang sangat tinggi ni.
9. Dalam bajet tu, Perdana Menteri menekankan kenaikan FDI tapi ramai yag tak sedar bahawa 54% FDI di Malaysia disumbangkan oleh Pulau Pinang dan Selangor (Pakatan Rakyat).

Demikian sedikit coretan saya ttg belanjawan baru-baru ni. Bagi saya, bajet ini biasa-biasa saja. Bajet normal dan tiada apa-apa istimewanya. Walau apa pun konteks bajet negara, Sabah Sarawak tetap penyumbang utama kepada kekayaan Malaysia dan pada masa yang sama penerima peruntukan paling sedikit. Fikir-fikirkan...

06 Oktober 2011

SABAH "TANAH" AIRKU

Saya baru tahu rupanya Yayasan Melaka dan Yayasan Selangor telah dianugerahkan ribuan ekar tanah di Sabah. Ini amat menyedihkan pada saat ribuan penduduk peribumi berhadapan dengan isu rampasan tanah oleh syarikat-syarikat malahan agensi kerajaan, pada masa yang sama MEREKA dengan mudahnya memberikan tanah kepada yang tidak berhak terhadap bumi Sabah ini. Inilah antara keratan kenyataan akhbar oleh Datuk Dr.Jeffrey Kitingan semalam yang menjelaskan isu ini. Oleh itu marilah rakyat Sabah, gunakalah perhitungan waras untuk menolak pemimpin dan parti yang menghalalkan rampasan hak peribumi.
" At the Malaysia Day gathering in Tongod, the villagers had highlighted their plight of having confirmed NCR in the early 1990s and their land applications surveyed and approved and included in the Tongod Regional Planning Study but in the late 1990s their approvals were withdrawn and the very same land of more than 20,000 and 25,000 acres were alienated to 2 companies respectively. It was discovered that some of the directors in one of the companies are present-day senior political leaders in UMNO and UPKO and the irony is that Tongod is a BN and UPKO stronghold.
The approved companies were specifically imposed with conditions to survey and omit all roads, “kampung areas”, schools, churches, burial grounds and all lands worked on and planted by the villagers” since the 1970s. This condition was not complied with andt the very rubber and fruit trees planted by the villagers were mischievously bulldozed by the companies. This breach even prompted the then State Assemblyman to write to the then Chief Minister to revoke the alienation approval or to postpone the alienation of the land titles to the companies concerned but to no avail.
Today, the affected villagers in Tongod involving more than 5 villages and some 500 families are “squatters” in their very own land which they and their ancestors have toiled even before the formation of Malaysia in 1963. The natives are entitled to their native lands and NCR long before the existence of the Land Ordinance but the present State Government and their leaders are deaf and blind to the plight of the villagers in Tongod.
It makes no sense for the Government to alienate native lands and extinguish the rights of the natives to NCR by alienating native lands to companies and not to natives. Even Yayasan Melaka and Yayasan Selangor, both Government agencies from West Malaysia, are alienated large tracts of land in Sabah. And these 2 cases are known, what about the unknowns? ../2- On another case, the so-called “solution” to the land-grab in Kota Marudu is not in the best interests of the local villagers who have worked on the native lands for generations and then find their crops and buildings bulldozed and the very land alienated to companies with one companies being alienated 40,000 hectares affecting some 30 villages and even the State Agency, SAFODA, being alienated 4,793.9 hectares affecting some 18 villages.
Dr. Jeffrey asked “Why restrict the natives to per family of 15 acres of communal titled land and 5 acres of land declared as village reserve land when they are entitled to the full rights to the native lands and attached NCR?” The subsequent “award” or settlement of the 20-acres plot for the entitled families will forever extinguish the NCR from the balance of the 44,793.9 hectares of “State lands” that are now alienated to the company and SAFODA.

Dr. Jeffrey further added “Why must SAFODA compete with the villagers and deprive the natives from their native lands and NCR?” and “Why is SAFODA and the State Government not supporting the natives and their rights to the native lands and NCR?”
“What happened to the promises carved into the “Batu Sumpah” in Keningau” where the native lands and native rights need to be honoured?” Dr. Jeffrey further asked.
As the State Government and the State leaders have done little to protect the legitimate rights and hopes of the natives with regards to the native lands and NCR, UBF have no alternative but to form the “Native Lands and NCR Panel” to render whatever assistance including taking the State Government to Court to assist the plight of the natives who are being deprived of their native lands throughout Sabah.
UBF have received complaints of many cases and will first look into the land cases in Tongod, Bingkor, Kota Marudu, Kunak and Pensiangan and take the necessary legal action in due course on behalf of the affected natives.
Dr. Jeffrey Kitingan further calls for volunteers and any interested person or persons to join and render assistance in the “Native Lands and NCR Panel” and to support fellow native Sabahans. All volunteers and interested persons can email their interest to secretariat.ubf@gmail.com or telephone at 088-282108 and 016-8244250.

26 September 2011

KISAH BENAR DARI UNIVERSITI KAMUNTING

Agak lama tak update blog ini kerana kesibukan menggila.10 hari selepas PM umumkan pemansuhan ISA, bekas tahanan ISA selama 2/15 tahun Datuk Dr.Jeffrey kongsikan secebis kisah daripada 1001 suka duka semasa dalam tahanan ISA. Berdasarkan kisah ini, jelaslah bahawa ISA memang kejam kepada yang memang tak bersalah seperti Dr.Jeffrey. Dibebaskan selepas dua tahun setengah dalam ISA tanpa pendakwaan amat tidak adil. Inilah kisah beliau....
DR. JEFFREY Kitingan is an enigma, not least because he is partly elusive, partly unpredictable and partly Houdini. You can never really find him and when you do, he very quickly disappears.

As his friend and compatriot in a civil rights mission, I know him and yet I don’t and, as a friend, you tend to wonder if he would ever fully trust you. After the Internal Security Act (ISA) experience, his character became part of his natural defence mechanism.

Those were ‘The Cruel Years’, not ‘The Wonder Years’. The ISA had moulded him into the person that he is today and he remains fascinating.

When former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad applauded Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s proposal to abolish the ISA, he decided to lace his comment with the sort of sarcasm that would add salt to the injury faced by former ISA detainees like Jeffrey.

Mahathir described the ISA as ‘not too cruel’. Jeffrey recalls a very different scenario in Mahathir’s office in January 1994 upon his release from ISA detention.

Mahathir apparently said then, “I am sorry about the detention, Jeffrey, I know it is cruel.”

“The cruelty of ISA is immeasurable,” Jeffrey says.

Recalling the details of his arrest, Jeffrey said that he had to sign a letter the police had given him at the Tambunan Ka’amatan (Harvest Festival) on the 10th May 1991 in the presence of some 200 FRU personnel, who left the scene immediately after he signed the document.

On the 13th May 1991, he presented himself for an appointment at the Karamunsing police station. He was arrested on the spot and sent to the Kepayan detention centre. That same afternoon he was flown to Kuala Lumpur (KL) on an MAS flight with only himself and Special Branch police officers as passengers.

That evening, though, the plane was not permitted to land at the Kuala Lumpur airport and he ended up being flown to Pulau Pinang to spend the entire night in a cell. The next morning, he was flown back to KL. Upon landing, he was blindfolded and shoved into a black maria.

Jeffrey paused and without a single expression on his face, he looked at me and said, “At that moment, I lost sight of the world and my material life, not knowing where they were taking me and what they were going to do with me. I was glad to still be breathing.”

Hours later, what seemed to Jeffrey like an eternity, the vehicle arrived at a building in a place he would never know and his blindfold was taken off. He was ordered to strip naked and remove every item of clothing, including his watch. “I felt ashamed,” he says, “and felt ready to be wrapped up for my own funeral.”

Given a blue uniform with the number “931” on the left side of his chest, Jeffrey’s photographs were taken at various angles before he was locked up in a maximum security cell. “As the door shut behind me, I found myself confined to what can be described as a living hell to what seems forever.”

Jeffrey was thrown into his cell in the first 60 days after his arrest. He was accused of subversive political activities and is one of Malaysia’s most renowned political detainees under the ISA.

In that cold, bare room with nothing but an empty, solid wooden bed measuring about 2 ½ feet wide, there were no mattress, blanket, pillow, toilet, sink, water or window. There was a small peephole on the door that you could only look through from the outside and two holes on the floor the size of a chicken egg for ventilation.

The room, Jeffrey said, was so small that he would pace up and down and see only walls and felt no different to a caged animal. “That’s how I realised how animals in a zoo behave when they’re deprived of their freedom.”

The lights were uncommonly bright and never, ever switched off. Occasionally, loud music would suddenly be played to shock him and he was deprived of his sleep.

“The toilet was at the other end of the building and if they don’t hear you knock you end up sleeping in a cell with your urine and faeces everywhere. I had to clean up my own waste with nothing but the newspaper they gave to wrap up my faeces.”

Jeffrey could not recall a time when he could even take a shower as there were no facilities for bathing and there were no towels. “We just had the toilet”, he says solemnly.

Jeffrey told me that this method of sensory deprivation was a living nightmare and the detainee would be denied any sense of time or conscious connection with the outside world.

“I felt lost, I felt alone and I felt abandoned even by my own God. I tried talking to myself just to hear my own voice. Where am I? Who am I? Am I dead or just dreaming? I even tried to sing. In the first week, I blamed God and scolded him. What did I do wrong? After one week, I thanked him for giving me the opportunity to experience this.”

Not knowing whether he was dead or alive or in some terrible dream, Jeffrey asked me to imagine the agony of having to endure 60 days of this repetitive nightmare. The idea revolted me and my imagination did not allow me to feel the pain and suffering. Yet, it was Jeffrey’s imagination that kept him sane.

“I had to hold on to reality by creating patterns in my mind with my meals. Wrapped in plastic and newspaper, the rice was always wet and sometimes I had one fish and maybe six strands of beansprouts. I saw patterns in my food. I would look at the walls and sometimes it felt like patterns would fly out of the wall and come to life.”

In a solitary world where Jeffrey could not experience a 24 hour cycle of being alive and being asleep, he managed to count his days and nights.

“To have some sense of time and give or take a margin of 3 to 4 days inaccuracy, I could determine how long I was in there by scratching the wall surface each time the rat comes through the hole in the ground or whenever my meal was delivered.”

He went through a terrifying interrogation ordeal that was tame in comparison to what he heard the other detainees had to go through.

“Some of them said they went through physical torture. I must have been one of the lucky ones. The first time they interrogated me I had to sit on a red stool in a dark red coloured room with eight nameless interrogators who humiliated and insulted me as if I was a condemned, worthless criminal ready to be sent to hell. They did this non-stop and deprived me of rest, sleep, food and water till I could no longer bear it and asked to see a doctor.”

Jeffrey felt himself growing weaker, rapidly losing weight and his beard began to grow. He was eventually sent to the doctor in a blindfold with two men holding up his frail body. He was given vitamins and told to sit in the sunlight for twenty minutes. It was only after his recovery that he was told the interrogation took 4 days and 3 nights.

After two months of solitary confinement, Jeffrey was hoping for his release and was told that if he was taken to the airport he would be a free man. He was taken instead to Kamunting Detention Camp and spent the next 2 ½ years detained without a trial.

“You don’t go straight to Kamunting. You go into an empty building somewhere on transit with hardly anybody around. I was then transferred to Camp 5 in Kamunting. That would be the time you’re given a pillow and a blanket.

“Those are the only possessions. It’s worse than being a convict. The camp had maximum security and was a U-shaped building, I remember, with a barb-wired security fence as high as 12 to 15 feet, reinforced by zinc and cement so that you could not see the outside world. You could only see the sky. They locked us up at night and opened the cells in the morning; like a chicken coop.”

Kamunting had open areas for inmates to play sports but their footballs would burst against the wired fence. They bathed communally and they would poke and shove one another for soap and hassled to hurry. Every week, they would assemble to raise the Malaysian flag and sing the national anthem and recite the ‘Rukun Negara’. Their library was filled with propaganda materials and was uninspiring.

Jeffrey wrote books, poems and read voraciously. His family would post all the reading materials he requested from them. He learnt meditation and practised yoga, teaching taekwondo to communist detainees. They, in turn, taught him Chi Kung.

“The inmates were high tensioned people; communists, terrorists, political detainees, spies, immigration fraudsters. An accidental knock in the playground would end up in fights. In the TV room, they argued all the time.

“The Indians would want to watch the Hindi movies, the Malays their dramas. I saw all sorts of people, especially the vengeful, dangerous types who vent their anger on other inmates. I believe these types would always keep their anger inside, even after their release. Yet, there were ‘happy-go-lucky’ types who would kill time by talking forever or giving others a massage.”

He remembered the paranoia they developed through whispering campaigns where some detainees were believed to be spies from the Special Branch. The inmates even became possessive over photos and pictures of women pasted on the table.

They engaged in manual labour by cleaning the compound, cutting the grass, doing domestic chores and cleaning the toilets. They took turns to cook and followed the roster quite diligently although the only delicacy they enjoyed was the odd snake or bird caught in the compound.

When the authorities found out about the addition of caught wildlife in their diet, the roster was changed and they had to eat ‘institutionalised, prisoner’s food’ that had no variety and was only adequate to prevent starvation.

The inmates would rather be sick in the detention camp than face the humiliation of being handcuffed to their beds in the hospitals. A lot of them went mad and tried to commit suicide, banging their heads violently on the floors, especially if they knew that their term of imprisonment would be extended.

“They would rather die than spend another day inside”, Jeffrey says.

I asked Jeffrey how he coped and survived the experience, wondering if there was a deep psychological scarring for a man who was spiritually intellectual. In his mind, Jeffrey believes that ISA gave him a greater insight into human nature.

“I survived by playing the role of a researcher,” he says. “I studied and observed the behaviour of detainees in confinement. Somehow, by taking on the role of a healer and friend I managed to remove myself mentally from the situation.”

Jeffrey’s diaries were confiscated and the letters he sent and received were screened. “I wrote a letter in Dusun [local native dialect] once and the officer couldn’t understand it and sent it through. The letter caused a demonstration at home because it told of my experience. The officer was promptly replaced.”

Released with conditions in January 1994, Jeffrey was told not to be involved in politics and organisations and remembered Mahathir telling him not to teach the people what they don’t know.

“This must be the attitude; to keep the people ignorant,” he says.

He remains resolute in his political drive to abolish all legislation deemed to be an affront of human and civil rights and tows that fine line of risks which many fear to tread.

“Behind the negative is the positive,” he says calmly. “In that situation, I couldn’t see the world with my eyes so I travelled with my mind and learnt to function through my spirit. The development of this mental vision is where I began to truly understand myself and I found solutions to many outstanding problems which were recorded in my writings and letters. Once you have gone through death, you become fearless.”