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Letter from Pulau Tikus |
Logan remembered THANKS TO Cecil Rajendra and the Bar a ceremony was held at the Logan Memorial in Penang to unveil a plague to that great man’s memory. An extraordinary lawyer, James Logan jumped over the prejudicies of the White man to help a poor seray farmer against the powerful East India Company which reigned over this part of the Bengal prefecture. He also saw that the despised, sinister, pig tailed Chinaman belonged to organisations strictly adhering to accepted rules and regulations and agitated to have them recognised and included in the then colonial society. According to Indonesia’s No 1 blogger he was the one who gave the islands south of the Malay peninsula the name of Indonsia.. The 11 relatives of Logan who came from Australia and Johore were guests of honour. The press was there in full to witness the unveiling of the plague by Mr Justice O’Hara yet, most astonishingly, the Bar Council newsletter ignored the event. The state of justice It’s good to hear that court proceedings will be video recorded, The last time when courts tried to be honest was when the great chief justice Tun Azmi introduced the American machine shorthand writer system to the courts. The service, which was starting to prove it self as the stenos learnt to master the method stopped because of the protests from the judges ostensibly because the stenos were incompetent. But every lawyer knows the truth - that the main opposition to the recordings was from cerain judges could no longer doctor the evidence to suit their dishonesty. Support also came from those who could hardly speak good English, those who had unseemly outbursts and those who were downright rude, and even those who thought they knew Latin but did not know what “coram” meant and thought it meant “court”. We keep our fingers crossed. That the judges are nothing but glorified clerks with fat take home pay of 38,000 a month is confirmed by announcement of the Chief Justice that he has asked two judges to leave; for not doing their work, it seems. Judges i.e. real judges , are all supposed to be equal and no one is above another. In normal times the chief justice would only be in charge of administration. More news from the courts show that the selection of “judges” falls short of good judgment. Only the other day, when the evidence had all been heard in the case of a man accused of stabbing his wife and daughter, the case was postponed for one moth for the judge to consider what to decide! |
| And here is
about the most scandalous case of all: A man falsely charged with a
drug offence had to wait seven years before his case reached the
courts. Discovery The Star tells us that at a recent “brainstorming session” the transport minister and some others “discovered “ that there were many accidents and fatalities involving heavy vehicles. “ It is good news that the minister has discovered what we have known all along. Once upon a time black boxes were installed on those accident prone vehicles. But the killing went on with powerful interests protecting the murderers. An order from the ministry in 2004 suddenly stopped the monitoring. And now - unmanned cameras will be watching the 17,971 vehicles on the roads at 831 spots. Well, well! Years ago they installed Swiss cameras at road corners did they not? And what happened? Rumours were that they had no film- too expensive! ! Some still stand at street corners, sad reminders of this country’s famed talk and no action reputation. Tidak apa Someone has fenced off the whole lake at the Kinta Royal Wetlands in the Kinta Nature Park in Batu Gajah. There was talk of the Park being without a management body but what was the department of Wildlife and National Parks doing? This is yet another example of projects which are started and then forgotten. Even when they are not forgotten like the Penang Hill Railway no one cares about maintenance. But know about spending money! It’s going to be another RM60 million this time and at the end of it a “better” train ride! The new state government has been in power now for one and a half years but the engine room continues to break down. Kenyir Lake is another forgotten spot. And now somebody wakes up and sets aside RM19 million for “improvement”. No one cares to see to regular maintenance. A naval ship caught fire and then a second time. If the Navy cannot be efficient what are we complaining about mere land lubbers who can’t keep the Hill Railway going? Penang's transport The DAP “Budget” calls for a state transport authority. That makes sense. The central control over transport was because buses were hard to come by immediately after the British had reclaimed Malaya and Singapore. Control was necessary to ensure an even handed distribution of resources. This regime has stupidly continued to this day. How can KL decide how many buses Penang should have and their routes? And the same question arises for taxis. Oriental Long ago, Syed Husein Alatas and Edward Said wrote critiques of colonial superiority which they called Orientalism. It dominated the writing of Mahathir Mohamed and of UMNO, slaves to the colonial concept of the myth of the lazy native. Not surprisingly a China company recently announced that they were going to build an oriental-style city in Penang which ‘oriental style’ turned out to be nothing but a replica of Chinese architecture - bridges, pavilions and gardens fashioned after the Ming and Qing dynasties. |
| Not
surprising because post Mao China is fast
becoming an American imitation and regards the “oriental world” with
spectacles made to the specifications of the Orientalists. Bar Council Organisations should be careful not to follow the ways of government in this police state. Yet the Bar Council has refused to allow a lawyer to launch his book at Bar premises.We don’t know the reason but probably it was because he had once sued the Bar Council. The Council should be reminded that Bar premises belong to all lawyers. Penang saves State government announces savings made in expenditure of 36 millions However they have not cut down the size of government but imitate UMNO in giving out bloated government jobs for the boys. Passing exams Citizen Nades of the Sun gave us a sample of the atrocious English of a law student and tells us the sad story of an examiner who refused to pass students who failed their marks and lost her job. That tells us plenty about education in this country. Indonesian maids Employers are a mean lot. They pay part time workers RM4.50 an hour. They pay Indonesian maids RM300 a month and work them whenever they are awake. They can’t afford to pay more they say. It does not occur to them to say if I can't afford it I shall do without it. We don’t hear such complaints from the Australians or the Swiss that they have to pay maids local wages. Isa An UMNO bigshot found guilty of money politics by an UMNO committee and suspended but is a candidate chosen by UMNO for a by-election. Pakatan is astonished that he won. But they are out of touch with reality. Isa’s victory either shows that the electorate doesn’t believe that UMNO committees are just or it could mean that they don't trust the Pakatan to be much different from UMNO. Esplanade I am glad that the Esplanade is resounding with music. A band will be playing every Saturday night we hear. Those who made this possible are to be congratulated. Reporting the police state Instead of repealing the ISA the government is going o look at laws in 18 countries before reviewing the ISA, that is to say, the governmet is not willing to set its citizens free. Sad to say, it has the support of the Gerakan whose central council committee is for “reform” of the ISA, not its abolition. |
| When
UMNO put up a candidate for election recently his opponents
delightfully seized on the fact that he was a disbarred lawyer.
The Bar Council explained the procedure to the press. Nothing to be
excited about surely. But the deputy prime minister didn’t like this at
all. "We don't know what is the agenda of the Bar Council... It is as
if they are on the side of certain quarters. I am sure they have some
agenda." Sinister isn’t it? Go to the top |
|
Pure Lotus Hospice of Compassion 73 Jalan Utama 04 229 5481 plotus@streamyx.com www.purelotushospice.com |
|
LESTARI HERITAGE NETWORK
www.lestariheritage.net for urban conservation |
| ______ INDEX Point to the
article that you want to read, and
CLICK Food guide Letter from Pulau Tikus Moral guardian Rashid Maidin (2) Temasek |
| _____________________ The Penang File Issue 69 |
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