“The committee is not a legal structure; it’s not a rigid structure. It’s a framework to provide exchange of ideas on religion. “We don’t want to call it an inter-faith panel, but a special committee to promote understanding and harmony among the various faiths. “The idea of the committee is for the members to hold [...]

HOME Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein announced in August 2009 that amendments to the Internal Security Act (ISA) would be tabled during the following October Parliament sitting. This was just after the massive anti-ISA protest in Kuala Lumpur. That amendment, however, never materialised. Hishammuddin then said in December 2009 that the ISA amendments would be [...]

(Pic by Adrian Van Leen / sxc.hu) PREDICTABLE. This best sums up the reactions by some Muslim groups and the government to the High Court’s 31 Dec 2009 decision to lift the ban on the use of “Allah” by Catholic paper Herald. Malaysians were probably able to anticipate the newspaper headlines and ensuing comments, given [...]

Construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 (Public domain; Wiki commons) WALKING can be political. East Germans tried crossing the Berlin Wall for the 28 years that it existed. Many eventually moved to the West through Hungary and Czechoslovakia after August 1989, and took to the streets in East Berlin en masse three months later. [...]

Will Najib wait for the MIC, MCA, Gerakan and PPP to play catch-up? AFTER the March 2008 general election, when public sentiment against the Barisan Nasional (BN) swirled dark and hopes were bright for the Pakatan Rakyat (PR)’s multicultural politics, Umno was everybody’s favourite punching bag. Perhaps riding on public sentiment that favoured the opposition, [...]

PETALING JAYA, 23 Oct 2009: Money politics must be addressed through laws that allow independent investigations into the ethical conduct of political parties, including during party elections, said Universiti Malaya’s Prof Dr Edmund Terence Gomez. But the political analyst told The Nut Graph in a telephone interview that he didn’t think Umno would try to [...]