You’ve watched many American TV series or movies on how the bad guys were arrested by special force because they threatened the national security. One of my favorites is definitely “24” although sometimes you wondered if Jack Bauer really possessed the super-stamina throughout the entire 24-hours. But the baddies were really bad because they were toying with chemical and nuclear bomb so it’s no-brainer that such acts are tantamount to threats to the national security. I guess that justify the need to poke knife into their finger-tips or inject them with special drugs to torture them in order to gain information.

But the concept of national security in Malaysia is definitely different. Here, whoever who dares to question the government in power is deemed to have threatened national security. So while the member of ruling government, Ahmad Ismail, was given a slap on the wrist and asked him to go on a 3-year-long holiday despite his racist remarks it was the innocent who got the show-cause letters and detention without trial. Three newspapers were issued show cause letters namely Sin Chew Daily, The Sun and Suara Keadilan. At the same time, Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) was detained under Section 73 (1) of the ISA as he was deemed a threat to security, peace and public order.

Earlier RPK claimed his article on Islam was the reason why his portal was blocked (and unblocked yesterday) but it’s not known which one of his articles was the catalysts for this latest move (to detain him). But it doesn’t matter because generally most of his articles are anti-government. Even if he didn’t expose the Altantuya’s connection to the deputy PM’s wife, his latest article on the Real Story of May 13 (Part 1) is enough to land him in hot soup. If his claim that UMNO fanned racial sentiments every 20-years without fail since 1968 is true, then this year (2008) would be the big-year for the party. Although the article was written nine years ago, RPK should have his own reason to republish it now.

The guy probably knew that another round of Operasi Lalang is on its way and more opposition leaders and activists could have been short-listed to be put behind bars under the Internal Security Act – to prevent them from seize power. Going by this logic then opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim could be the next guy to be RPK’s cell-mate. After imitated Mahathir’s tactic of sodomy accusation it appears the Badawi administration will most likely copy the Operasi Lalang as well. The publishing licenses for the three newspapers will probably be revoked and with RPK and Anwar behind bars, it’s almost game over for the opposition alliance. However it would be interesting to see if the crackdown will be expanded to include bloggers. The government has been pointing their blaming-fingers ever since they suffered their worst performance post Mar-election.

I guess it doesn’t matter if the ringgit going down the toilet because it seems nobody really cares about the country’s economy. The PM and his deputy PM are worrying about the Dec’s party election and with the deputy PM’s latest flip-flop Moody Economy’s prediction of the ringgit at 3.80 to a dollar by year-end might be an understatement. Heck! Who cares if the ringgit went down to 4.00 to a dollar? Going by how the economy is set on auto-pilot mode, it would be suicidal for the Central Bank to even try to intervene to stabilize the ringgit. Furthermore there’s no guarantee that the U.S. Federal Reserve will not cut the interest rate this year. And if that happened the pressure will be even greater for the Central Bank to increase its interest rate.

But really, why only concentrate on oppositions for the ISA’s menu? Why not include Mahathir as well since he could be the person who will strip Badawi naked of his premiership? And don’t forget that deputy Najib could partner with Muhyddin to challenge Badawi. Hey! If Najib do that, has Badawi prepared his tag-team yet? How about Badawi-Khairy vs Najib-Muhyddin vs Razaleigh-Sanusi? Maybe Badawi-Najib vs Razaleigh-Muhyddin would be the most likely combination. Well the musical chair is still moving so I guess we’ll never know till the last minute. Nevertheless if RPK needs to get out, he has all the time to pray for Anwar’s success.

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September 12th, 2008 by financetwitter

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