From Around The Blogs - The Week of Feb. 15, 2010

From Around The Blogs
The Week of February 15, 2010

By Joe Fernandez

Sarawak under Taib doesn’t welcome visitors
Much of the blame for the poor tourist traffic to Kuching, or S’wak, is the fault of the Immigration Dept. This is also true of the Immigration in Bandar Seri Begawan. So, visitors to S’wak get turned off by the third degree treatment they get at the hands of the Immigration. Even S’wakians are viewed with suspicion if they have been away from the state for quite some time or were born overseas. One returning Bidayuh lady, with an American husband in tow, was lectured by a mere Immigration officer at the airport for marrying a foreigner. This lady was plucky enough & told off the Immigration officer in no uncertain terms. When the husband asked the wife: "What was that all about" she declined to tell him for fear the husband might get physical with the Immigration officer. The husband of course suspected something was amiss & told the Immigration officer: "You watch it buddy.” The S'wak Gov't fears outsiders upsetting the cosy set up that Taib Mahmud has in the state. Above all, the Taib regime fears the natives having access to outsiders. The list of banned persons is long.

M’sian Insider crawling with ex-Nst staff
Former Nst reporter Jahabar Sadiq, son of an Indian father and Chinese mother, is most famous for telling off his Malay colleagues at the paper who insisted that he was Malay. He was too intelligent for his own good and took pride in being himself. Such a person is unlikely to slavishly root for a person like Najib who has so many skeletons in his cupboard and is definitely under the watchful eyes of his deputy who has shown no signs of being loyal to him. He's the right person in the right place with a boss, Kalimullah Hassan, who doesn't hesitate to bad-mouth anybody who he thinks is not worth his time. Kalimullah thought his former boss Ghafar Baba was "a bloody old fool" who had no business being the DPM or even in the Federal Cabinet. It would be no surprise if Kalimullah is sponsoring Raja Petra's stay in England. That's the kind of thing that Kalimullah & Jahabar can be expected to do. They are probably joined in this by the m'sianInsider Editor who is another Nst-staffer.

Muhyi will act soon against Najib
Muhyi will increasingly find that there is no way he can go to the polls with someone tainted like Najib leading the way. He has to take a stand sooner or later & tell Najib to go. Umno led by Muhyi stands a much better chance of redeeming its credibility than continuing to root lamely for Najib. As if things are not bad enough with Najib, there's his wife too. Many people feel that Najib was done in by his wife. This is poetic justice since Najib stole somebody else's wife & dumped his own including his children. How can someone this disloyal to his own family be loyal to the people & the nation? He was not even loyal to his own friends. Two of them face the gallows for being involved in the killing of Altantuya. He was disloyal to Altantuya & she was blown up by C4, courtesy of his friends at the Police. They now face death for something he & his wife planned. Probably, the wife had an even bigger role than him. Najib is living on borrowed time. Muhyi will act soon & tell him to go.

Mahathir prodding Najib into crisis
Najib wants to get rid of Kayveas the Big Mouth & Samy Vellu the Thick Skin. He's having better luck with the PPP. As PM, he can put the squeeze in favour of Murugiah failing which PPP will be deregistered & suspended from the BN pending its appeal. A new PPP led by Murugiah will be accepted by the BN. Kayveas & his faction will be history. Once Najib has dealt with PPP, he will turn on MIC. Meanwhile Samy Vellu gets a respite since Najib cannot be seen fighting too many enemies at the same time. He's afraid they will gang up against him. His advisor in all this is Mahathir who is pulling the strings from behind. Najib himself is a duffer who doesn't know whether he's coming or going most of the time. MCA & SPDP is also in crisis & Najib has the cheek to claim that the opposition alliance is falling apart. If anything is falling apart, it's BN. Within Umno itself, there are so many camps with Muhyi gearing to oust him once & for all for being tainted. Altantuya, submarines, sodomy etc