Our execrable Education System

Long ago, Lat drew a cartoon. It compared a study on mosquitoes carried out by a foreign scholar and a Malaysian one.  The foreign scholar is shown with a stack of books (volumes 1 to 5).  The Malaysian scholar has a wafer-thin manuscript with an arrow that says: ‘Ini adalah nyamuk.’  Do you remember that? Lat should come out of retirement! That just about sums up the state of our schools. Most ...

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Are We One Nation or Three?

When our forebears commenced building Malaysia 61 years ago, we were a plural nation. We comprised of many ethnic groups. We still do. Somewhere along the way, things changed. We have lost that Malaysian identity.  Over the years, we have regressed into a form of forced cultural separation.  We have withdrawn, for refuge, into our respective ethnic groups. This does not bode well. A look at recent history might give some ...

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How do the ‘Rule of Law’ and Separation of Powers’ really work?

In the last few weeks we have been hearing the phrase ‘the Rule of Law’. It is time to examine this and another related concept, the ‘Separation of Powers’. If we do, we will encourage our nation rulers to work better, work more effectively, and work to produce justice. Rule of Law The concept of Rule of Law is easy to understand.  You needn't be a lawyer to know what it is: you can ...

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Gerrymandering: Destruction Of A Democracy-101

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CX4NkBsvlk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0aJu63DIik Is every vote of equal strength? Does every vote, cast at any part of the nation, possess the same effect? Let’s use the 2018 General Elections (GE-14) as an example. The Kapar parliamentary constituency [P109] represents one seat in parliament. The Putrajaya constituency [P125] also represents one seat. What is the difference? Kapar had, in GE-14, 124,983 voters. Putrajaya had 27,314 voters. So, comparing apple-to-apple, for a single parliamentary seat, Kapar had 4.6 times ...

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