SAME circus, different act. The dramatic highlight of the Perak legislative assembly sitting on 7 May 2009 was the violent removal of Speaker V Sivakumar by police officers. The highlight of Wednesday’s 28 Oct sitting was the simultaneous running of two separate assemblies under the same roof. Was anything achieved? Sure, Barisan Nasional (BN) passed [...]

IT was Earth Overshoot Day on 25 Sept 2009. The day human demand for natural resources and waste production exceeded the ecosystem’s regenerative capacity for the year. From this date till the end of the year, we would be meeting our ecological demand on a deficit, by using up resource stocks and building up greenhouse [...]

Sivakumar (left) and Ganesan PETALING JAYA, 23 July 2009: Embattled Perak Speaker V Sivakumar will chair a Powers and Privileges Committee hearing on 27 July 2009 against Barisan Nasional-installed Speaker Datuk R Ganesan for “usurping the functions and role of the speaker in the House”. The committee hearing will be held in the speaker’s chambers, [...]

ON 3 March, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said ridiculed the idea of meeting for serious deliberation beneath a tree. Yesterday, on 4 March, Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar followed in her dubious footsteps. The Perak representatives’ decision to hold an emergency assembly sitting under a tree on 3 March, he said, had made [...]

KOTA BARU, 4 March 2009: The Perak state assembly sitting held under a tree yesterday was shameful, and tarnished the country’s image in the eyes of the world, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar. The emergency sitting of 27 Pakatan Rakyat (PR) state representatives from PAS, DAP and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) outside [...]

(© Wong Mei Teng / sxc.hu)THERE were a couple of Christmases, as a teenager, when my family did not put up a Christmas tree. I’d like to claim that we were opting out of the crass commercialism of garish ornaments and plastic trees. The truth, however, stood a little more to the right of such [...]