Philip Golingai

Enter the ‘Emperor of Indonesia’

2012-01-26T23:47:00.013+08:00

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

A Tanjung Malim-born Dutch citizen claims he is a descendent of the Emperor of China and that his bloodline is linked to royal families in India, Java and Siam.

IT is not every day that you get to meet a trillionaire. So when I was invited to interview Kamal Ashnawi, a person I've never heard of, I said yes.

On Saturday morning, at a Kuala Lumpur hotel coffee house together with two of Kamal's aides, I waited for the so-called trillionaire.

Wearing a baseball cap, long-sleeved shirt and jeans, he sauntered over to our table. The two aides bowed, pressed their palms together to their forehead as if greeting royalty and kissed his hands.

“We call him Tuanku as he is a sultan from Indonesia,” one of the aides whispered to me.

According to Kamal, he is a Dutch citizen born in Tanjung Malim, Perak, on Jan 1, 1964.

“I'm a descendent of the Emperor of China and in a history that went haywire, my family fled from China to Kedah. I traced my bloodline to the royal families of China, India, Java and Siam,” claimed the man who is also known as Raden Mas Prabhu Gusti Agung Ki Asmoro Wijoyo.

“I grew up in Tanjung Malim and my family here is very simple and ordinary. Nobody in my family talks about our royal blood and wealth. But my grandmother once told me: “You are special and, when the time comes, you will know.”

It was in Holland in the late 1980s that Kamal “found out who he really was”. A member of an Indonesian royal family, kicked out of the country by president Sukarno, told him he was of royal blood.

In London in the early 1990s, a lawyer told Kamal about his royal family's massive wealth. Unconvinced, he told the lawyer to prove his claims.

He and the lawyer flew from London to Hong Kong to meet the “keeper of the royal treasure”. From there, Kamal and the keeper travelled to Kunming in China.

They hiked up a mountain for four hours and reached a cave guarded by an old couple who, Kamal says, are immortals.

“If you tried to pass them without their blessing, you would cough blood and die,” he said.

Inside the three-metre-high cave, Kamal saw gold bars stacked like a pagoda, US$15mil (RM46mil) in jade and US$10mil (RM31mil) in diamonds and stacks of US dollars.

“I took a gold bar and knocked it on a rock. It was really gold. The treasure is the wealth of the dynasties that ruled China. Their wealth was also kept in other mountains and in vaults all over the world,” he said.

About three years ago, when Kamal watched Nicholas Cage's movie National Treasure, he laughed.

“The treasure in the movie was small compared to the wealth I saw in the mountain,” he said.

Next, Kamal told of his meeting two years ago in Kuala Lumpur with Dr Wong Eng Po, a royal physician from China.

Dr Wong placed his hand on Kamal's bald head, then immediately bowed in front of Kamal and ordered his five followers to do the same.

“He said I was the reincarnation of Emperor Nurhaci (1661-1626) of China. He felt an energy on my head which was superhuman because an emperor, unlike an ordinary human, has to think more.

“I'm the reincarnation of two emperors of China,” Kamal added.

He elaborated that a few years ago, the royal family decided he would be the sole administrator of the royal wealth kept in secret accounts in about 1,000 banks worldwide.

“This means that 86.7% of the world's money belongs to me,” he said.

Taking out several folders, Kamal said: “You're lucky, I brought documents.”

He produced an A4-sized paper with the photographs of the national treasure, the immortal couple and several “official-looking” letters allegedly from HSBC certifying he has an account of five trillion euros (RM20tril).

“That is a small amount. I have more money in other banks and institutions,” he added.

I wondered why his name has not appeared in the Forbes' list of world's richest people. And a suspicion lingered about his claims.

However, I could not authenticate his documents since the bank was closed for Chinese New Year.

Kamal has not made any withdrawal from the account as “it is not money that you can move just like that”.

“The money is under the control of Indonesia, Germany, Britain, the US and the Euro Central Bank and I've got to go smooth with them,” he said.

“I can't use the money directly but I will invest in certain projects. Like three trillion euros (RM12tril) to green a desert in China.”

Curious, I asked what was the difference between a billionaire and a trillionaire.

He replied: “A billionaire needs to show he has the money. But for me, I don't need to show that I got money. I can travel in a bus. I can wear slippers.”

Born in the year of the dragon, Kamal believes 2012 is his year. In March, he says he will negotiate with institutions such as the IMF to be recognised as the Emperor of Indonesia.

He says he's rich. But his story could just be as rich.

Let's hope he is not another Elie Youssef Najem, the so-called Lebanese billionaire who made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

And words are all it takes...

2012-01-23T01:01:00.012+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Two wrong words by Ceylyn Tay in a speech that appeared on YouTube led to a barrage of personal attacks that has left the novice politician devastated. But she is confident that she will overcome the experience.

IT is about 7pm on a Sunday and Ipoh City councillor Ceylyn Tay checks the comments on a YouTube video linked to her Facebook page.

In the video, Tay, a virtually unknown Gerakan politician, was giving a 20-minute speech in Cantonese to about 3,000 people at a 1Malaysia function in Ipoh on Jan 7.

The comments included “Ham ka chan” (a Cantonese proverb which means to curse someone’s family an entire generation to death), “This stupid woman is selling off the Chinese”, “kepala cacat” (mentally handicapped), “I’m ashamed of you and I’m ashamed of your mother” and “we’ll get a bunch of guys to #$%& you”.

Some of the vulgar words, according to Tay, are Chinese phrases which are too hard to translate into English.

The 36-year-old mother of two daughters felt her temperature rising.

“Wow! What’s this? I was very, very upset. I blanked out for a moment,” Tay recalled in an interview in Ipoh on Thursday, four days after her YouTube video went viral.

“When I watched my speech again, I felt that I did not say anything that could have hurt anyone.”

“And I realised that I was attacked because I was speaking at a Barisan Nasional function.

“If I spoke at a Pakatan Rakyat function, that would be another story.”

She cried. And she did not want anyone around her.

“Even later (that night) when my husband (a 44-year-old businessman) returned home, he asked what had happened and I told him ‘Don’t ask’.

“He wanted to comfort me but I said: ‘Don’t touch me!’”she said.

The novice politician added: “Even now I am still upset that my friends have joked that they want to send me to Tanjung Rambutan.”

The next day the YouTube video was taken down after about 16,000 views. But then – in Tay’s words – “all sorts of edited versions” were uploaded to the video-sharing website.

The statement, according to Tay, which riled the viewers, was: “Malaysia is a multi-racial country and we can’t have a two-party system, unlike the US and England as these two countries have a single race.”

“I used the wrong words ‘single race’. What I meant was the US and England have homogeneous societies,” explained the Malacca-born woman who grew up in Ipoh.

“Some viewers commented ‘Are you saying that (US President) Barack Obama is not black? That he is bleached!’

“What I actually meant was Americans share the same language, religion and culture.”

During the interview at the office of Gerakan deputy president Datuk Chang Ko Youn, Tay was accompanied by four “bodyguards” (Gerakan members).

They were there to give her morale support and to answer her phone calls.

Her iPhone has been ringing non-stop as her phone number was posted on her Facebook page. And she has received so many prank calls and text messages asking for a date.

“Does it help that you have a pretty face?” I asked.

“I don’t think I have a pretty face,” said Tay, who is a singer and emcees events.

“Then why are some men excited over you that they want to date you?” I asked.

“Maybe because that night I was wearing a red top,” she said.

“Maybe because in Barisan there is no other lady from the Chinese community who can speak quite steadily.

“Unlike other politicians who are quite conservative, I am very open in my speech.”

“And I say things in quite a funny way. For example, (Perak DAP) Nga Kor Ming has mentioned several times that if Pakatan ruled it would waive the bumiputra quota and I said: ‘Nik Aziz (Kelantan Mentri Besar Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat) might not agree and he would buy RM5 worth of kerosene and burn the DAP’.”

“Do you think you’ve become a national figure?” I asked.

“Kind of,” Tay said. “I can see that there are people, not only from Perak, but Johor, Penang and Singapore who want to add me to their FB.

“That’s how I know the video is spreading.”

“Is this negative publicity good for you?” I asked.

“I think this is a very good experience. Not everyone has this chance that within a few days everyone knows about you,” she said.

“Many people want to make me weak but I feel if I can overcome this, in the future I can overcome anything.”

“Now the attacks I’ve received are from Facebook. It will get worse if the Opposition politicians start attacking me.”

The ‘what-ifs’ in Sabah politics

2012-01-16T00:46:00.012+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The reality in Sabah is that if elections were called today, BN will retain the state. However, that does not stop the Opposition from dreaming because anything can happen politically in Malaysia’s Wild Wild East.

“INI kali lah! (This is the time!)” is the Opposition’s battle cry in Sabah.

During my five-week Christmas holiday in my home state the mood among opposition-minded Sabahans is that this time the Barisan Nasional government which has ruled Sabah since 1994 will fall.

“In 1999, 2004 and 2008 we had the feeling that the winds of change would sweep Sabah but it did not happen. But this time the winds are blowing stronger,” said an opposition leader, referring to the state polls in 1999, 2004 and 2008 which Barisan National won convincingly.

“Ini kali lah!” interjected a 40-something Kadazandusun man wearing a T-shirt with Datuk Dr Jeffery Kitingan’s United Borneo Front logo.

But the political reality in Sabah is that if elections were called today, Barisan will retain the state. However, that does not stop the Opposition from dreaming that it will form the next government as anything can happen politically in Malaysia’s Wild Wild East.

You can’t blame the Opposition from thinking that the political ground in the Land Below the Wind is shifting. There are so many what-ifs in the Wild Wild East.

Top on my list is what if an Umno warlord ditched his party, which is the backbone of Sabah BN (controlling 32 state seats out of 60).

“Yes, he is going to form a party. There are flags and T-shirts of his new party in his house,” an Umno mini warlord and assemblyman told me with confidence.

He listed the names of Umno leaders who would join the new opposition party – three incumbent MPs (one with a glamourous wife), a former chief minister, a former federal minister, a state minister and half a dozen warlords and former lawmakers.

The speculated list is impressive. It is as if the Manchester United reserve team plus Dimitar Berbatov and Paul Scholes had ditched the Red Devils to form a club to contest against United in the FA Cup.

“Why do they want to be ABU (“Anything But Umno” or its original meaning “Anything But United”)?” I asked the politician.

“They’ve being sidelined or they think they are going to be sidelined. Most of them are (political) gamblers.

“They have nothing to lose. They think this is their last chance to throw the dice,” explained the mini warlord, who is speculated to turn ABU if he was dropped as a candidate.

If these dissenters do indeed leave Umno, they would enhance the stereotype that Sabah politicians are “Sdn Bhd (private limited)” individuals who are in politics for their own interest.

My top second favourite what-if is that a Sabah-based party will do what Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) did in 1990.

On the eve of the 1990 election, PBS led by Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan pulled out of BN to join the opposition Gagasan Rakyat (including Semangat 46 and DAP) alliance.

Speculation is rife – even among party diehards – that it is just a matter of time that the party will join forces with Datuk Yong Teck Lee’s Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP), which left the BN on Sept 15, 2008.

There are other wilder what-ifs in Sabah politics.

“It is a poker game. Someone is bluffing,” explained a seasoned political analyst.

The only sure thing for the Opposition if elections were to be called today is DAP is assured of winning some seats in Sabah. The party’s result in 2008 (winning the Kota Kinabalu MP’s seat and the Sri Tanjung state seat) is an indication of its strength.

The “Ini kali lah!” mood is also fanned by the belief there is a curse that a Sabah government will fall every nine years. Usno (United Sabah National Party) ruled from 1967 to 1976, Berjaya from 1976 to 1985 and PBS from 1985 to 1994.

There’s some truth in this “curse” except that BN has ruled the state for 18 years since 1994.

But the political analyst has an explanation to “prove” that the nine-year curse happened in 2003.

“From 1994 to 2003, Sabah was ruled by rotation Chief Ministers,” he said, referring to Umno’s Tun Sakaran Dandai, Umno’s Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak, SAPP’s Yong, Upko’s Tan Sri Bernard Dompok, Umno’s Datuk Seri Osu Sukam and LDP’s Tan Sri Chong Kah Kiat.

“And when the rotation was stopped in 2003, Sabah has been ruled by one Chief Minister who is Datuk Musa Aman.”

An interesting theory. Notice that the last number of the year each subsequent government rose to power is reduced by one — 1967, 1976, 1985, 1994, 2003 ... and 2012?

All abuzz over Lajim’s next game plan

2012-01-09T00:41:00.006+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The main players are all coy about the issue although talk is rampant that Sabah political bigwig Datuk Lajim Ukin wants to leave Umno to head a party.

IS Deputy Housing and Local Government Minister and Umno Supreme Council member Datuk Lajim Ukin forming a political party or staying put in Umno?

That’s the top coffeeshop topic in Sabah. And the talk is that the Beaufort MP will take over a mosquito Sabah-based party called Sabah People’s Front (SPF).

And it is not only the public who are talking about it but politicians, too.

“For one year, psychologically, Lajim has been ready to leave Umno,” a Sabah-based Opposition party president told me while he was with several of his supporters at a coffeeshop near Kota Kinabalu.

The faces of his supporters lit up. Like multi-level marketing downliners, their political optimism needs to be boosted constantly.

At a private event, a Barisan political party president asked me rhetorically: “Do you think Lajim will do it?”

Another Opposition party leader, whom I spoke to in his office in Kota Kinabalu, said he gave a 20% probability that Lajim would leave Umno to lead an Opposition party.

On record, Lajim, one of the first Parti Bersatu Sabah assemblymen to ditch the party in 1994, causing its Sabah government to collapse, is keeping mum about his political future.

I called him on Friday and the politician, who was then in Kuala Lumpur, said: “Let’s not talk about that matter.”

Since I could not get a denial or a confirmation from the Umno warlord from Beaufort, I decided to meet the man who is supposed to “sell” his party to Lajim.

“What do you mean when you say that the talk is I want to sell my party?” asked SPF president Berman Angkap at a hotel coffee house in Kota Kinabalu.

The virtually unknown 54-year-old politician was holding court with three of his Supreme Council members.

On Aug 9, 2000, Berman became acting president of Bersekutu, a mosquito party until it was taken over by former Sabah chief minister Tan Sri Harris Salleh as his comeback vehicle in the 1999 Sabah polls.

In December 2010, Bersekutu, which had never won a seat, changed its name to SPF because, according to Berman, it was an “old name” and it had been led by many presidents.

“Is there a regulation that allows a party to be bought?” Berman asked in Malay. “We will go to jail if we sell the party.”

His party leaders nodded their heads in unison. And their eyes gleamed whenever I used the word “buy”.

“I am number 3 in this party. Number 2 is the Supreme Council members and Number 1 is the delegates,” continued the Rungus politician.

“Based on our constitution, we have to call for an EGM before we can have a transition of power. And we need two-thirds of the 350-odd delegates to agree to the move.

“It is not a simple matter of me handing the party to another person.”

This is not the first time that talk had surfaced that Berman would give up his party. It happened prior to the 2004 and 2008 general elections. But the wooing never materialised into a “marriage”.

“I did not take the speculation that certain politicians wanted to take over my party as serious as I knew that they were not serious about it,” he said of his 2004 and 2008 experiences.

Asked about Lajim, Berman said: “What I read in the newspapers is that there is a suspicion that he is going to join our party. But until now I’ve not seen his application.

“And, if I am not mistaken, he is still an Umno Supreme Council member and a Deputy Minister. So how can he be with us?” he asked rather sarcastically.

However, Berman admitted that he had met Lajim twice last year, but during their encounters, they spoke only about Sabah politics.

“But he is a man with a position, title and big name. I don’t think he would simply say: ‘Berman, I want to take over your party’.”

I asked whether Datuk Dr Jeffery Kitingan had approached him with regards to taking over SPF. He said he had met the Opposition politician but they only spoke about Dr Jeffery’s pet project – United Borneo Front.

But Dr Jeffery’s right-hand man swears that the maverick politician had sent someone to negotiate with Berman, but the asking price was too high.

“Will you be SPF president when General Election 13 is called?” I asked Berman.

He replied: “Today I am still the president of SPF, but I don’t know tomorrow because it is not me who will make that decision.”

And Asian of the Year is ...

2012-01-02T00:34:00.011+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Newspaper network group ANN shortlists personalities who have left their mark in 2011.

SO who’s my Asian of the Year? Clue: She is the most beautiful Prime Minister in the world.

Last year, @asianewsnetwork (Asia News Network) tweeted: “Who do you think stood out in the region this year? #AsianoftheYear”

And I tweeted: Yingluck Shinawatra.

In June 2011, I was in Bangkok to cover the Thai general election and I witnessed how the 44-year-old businesswoman, against all odds, became the first Thai woman Prime Minister within 49 days of her political debut.

On second thought, I tweeted: Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thaksin, the former prime minister who was ousted in a coup in 2006 and the brother of Yingluck, is Asia’s comeback kid. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, Thaksin is indestructible, politically.

And behind the scenes, the fugitive (he fled Thailand to escape a jail sentence) engineered the electoral victory of his younger sister’s political party.

So, who did Asia News Network, which is a network of national daily newspapers (including The Star) published in Asian cities, select as Asian of the Year?

I e-mailed the question to Yasmin Lee Arpon, an ANN editor. She is a former colleague as I was attached with ANN in Bangkok from 2006 to 2010.

Yingluck, according to Yasmin, received the most tweet nominations for ANN’s Asian of the Year. And Thaksin received the most unexpected tweet nominations.

So is Yingluck ANN’s Asian of the Year?

Before I reveal who, allow me to introduce ANN’s 2011 Blacklist. And the dishonour (drum rolls) went to Nuon Chea and Gloria Arroyo.

Nuon Chea, @ Brother Number Two, is the man behind the most grim, bloodiest episode in Cambodian history.

“After Pol Pot died in 1998, he became the most important surviving Khmer Rouge leader and now stands trial before a Cambodia-UN court for crimes against h umanity, genocide, and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949,” wrote Nguon Serath of The Cambodia Herald.

Arroyo, according to Yasmin, is on the blacklist as “her rise and fall from power hopefully serves as a lesson to other leaders”.

The former Philippine president is in jail (a hospital suite at a government hospital in Manila) facing charges of electoral sabotage.

Here’s the shortlist for ANN’s Asian of the Year:

> Anna Hazare, India’s 74-year-old anti-corruption activist. “A modern day hero in fighting corruption in India,” explained Yasmin.

> Burmese president Thein Sein. “Some analysts compare Burmese President Thein Sein to former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev for introducing the Burmese version of perestroika and glasnost (reconstruction and openness) to the military-dominated country,” wrote Supalak Ganjanakhundee of The Nation (Thailand).

“But many others doubt whether he is a real reformer.”

> Queen Jetsun Pema, the 21-year-old lady who captured the hearts of Bhutan and its monarch King Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck.

“She is referred to as the Kate Middleton of Bhutan/Asia, capturing the heart of one of the region’s most eligible bachelors,” Yasmin explained.

> Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, the boss of AirAsia. “For changing the course of travel in the region through AirAsia, which celebrates its 10th year,” said the ANN editor.

> Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen, who took the reigns as chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2008 after its figure head, ex-president Chen Shui-bian, chairman of the Democratic Progressive, was jailed for corruption.

“Whether opposition leader Tsai wins the presidential election, she will be credited for changing Taiwanese politics famous for its personal cult building, smear campaign and distracting fanfare,” explained Alan Fong of The China Post.

> And Yingluck. “Because she is the first female PM in Thailand,” Yasmin said.

ANN’s Asian Heroes are Japan’s Fukushima 50.

“They symbolise the faceless and nameless victims of the nuclear meltdown following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami,” the ANN editor explained.

And ANN’s 2011 Asian of the Year is Ai Weiwei.

“After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he raised the issue on the real number of schoolchildren killed and solicited information from netizens on their names, publishing them daily on his blog. The figures/information did not match the official ones,” Yasmin explained.

Ai Weiwei has been provoking the government through his art and blog posts/tweets. In April last year, he was arrested on charges of tax evasion on his way to Hong Kong/Taiwan to discuss a coming art exhibition.

For 81 days he was detained, not allowed to talk to lawyers and family. His supporters raised the money so he can pay the tax in part.

“He ‘educates’ people, particularly the Chinese with no exposure to the outside world thanks to the Great Firewall of China, through his art and tweets (his blog has been closed down),” noted Yasmin.

I wonder who will be ANN’s 2012 Asian of the Year?

Mudslinging or debate?

2011-12-19T00:18:00.006+08:00

One Man's Meat
by PHILIP GOLINGAI

The two antagonists have twittered agreement to debate, but getting them into the same room to thrash out the Lynas issue without scoring political points is quite impossible.

IF a debate on Lynas were ever to happen, it might be as civil as a nuclear bomb. Fresh from the civil and intellectual public debate mobilised via Twitter between Kedah Gerakan Youth chief @TanKengLiang and the Bar Council’s @EdmundBon on the Peaceful Assembly Bill on Dec 11, Twitterers were clamouring for more debate.

The next day, @TaiZeeKin tweeted: “After @TanKengLiang on PABill, let’s keep the fever going by our 2nd (debate) series, @Fuziah99 vs @TiLianKer on Lynas!” Twitterers on TwitterJaya (the moniker of the Malaysian Twittersphere) are familiar with the “radioactive” tweet exchanges between Kuantan MCA division chief Datuk Ti Lian Ker and Kuantan MP Fuziah Salleh on the controversial Lynas rare earth project.

To some, the prospect of a public debate between MCA central committee member Ti and PKR vice-president Fuziah is as mouth watering as a mug of KR1M choco malt.

@szeming87 tweeted: “I would love to see debate on #Lynas (between) @TiLianKer & @Fuziah99.”

Almost immediately after @TaiZeeKin issued the debate challenge, @TiLianKer replied: “Sure! (I) can give a point or two on how 2 b a responsible people’s (representative) without aiming to score political brownies by blasting.”

And @Fuziah99 tweeted: “I accept. Have been challenging @TiLianKer for a debate for a long time before this.”

In explaining why he wanted to debate Fuziah, Ti said: “I have been wanting to call her bluff and have been throwing her challenges for a debate ever since she blasted irresponsibly with inadequate facts and distorted information on Lynas calculated to incite anger against the leaders (especially PM, Pahang MB and even DYMM Tuanku Pahang) and fear of the masses for their health and safety.

“There have been much proven untruth and conflicting information in Fuziah’s public statements. For example, she alleged that we are using China standards and not stringent Australian standards, which is false,” he said.

Ti explained that he was “not pro Lynas, nor am I a spokesman for Lynas”.

“But I am interested to seek a solution to an issue that could have been avoided had our (Kuantan voters’) people’s representative exercised due diligence or process!”

Fuziah accepted the debate challenge despite a tweet being confined to 140 characters.

“It is not a real platform for intellectual discourse or exchange of constructive ideas. Lynas is an issue which needs to be understood properly,” she said.

“It is also an issue which is multifaceted and needs to be looked at from various angles before one can make a decision on its safety or on the viability of the project.”

Fuziah added her observation was Ti was more interested in attacking her on a personal level rather than talking about the Lynas issue.

It is not the first time both politicians have accepted a debate challenge on #Lynas, however.

Ti recalled that he was the first to issue a challenge.

But, he said, Fuziah insisted on a debate in Kuantan as “she has the upper hand in terms of a militant emotional crowd there”.

“The debate should be on neutral ground with a rational, intellectual, sincere audience out to seek a solution or a win-win situation for all parties,” he explained.

“Subsequently, whenever we engaged in a debate in TwitterJaya, she will throw a challenge but she insisted on a political agenda i.e. to pander to the emotions and fear on the ground in Kuantan whereby any attempt to explain the facts and science of rare earth will be seen to be (coming from) a ‘traitor’.”

Fuziah has a different recollection.

“I don’t ever remember him agreeing to a debate. Every time he attacked me publicly, I challenged him to a debate but he had always declined, citing that he is no expert on the issue. Furthermore, no organiser has come forth before,” she related.

“As far as I remember, I have personally challenged (Ti) to a debate at least three times. And it was on Twitter every time.”

From their exchanges, it looks like a mud-wrestling match is a more apt description than a public debate.

When both politicians agreed to the debate on Monday, @skeatx tweeted: “This will be more of a mudslinging match instead.”

If @WanSaiful (Wan Saiful Wan Jan, Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs Malaysia CEO, who moderated the Tan vs Bon debate) could get Ti and Fuziah in the same room for a debate, he probably would win a Nobel Peace Prize.

From tweets to public debate

2011-12-05T00:01:00.012+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Born of a challenge on TwitterJaya, come Sunday, tweets on the Peaceful Assembly Bill will turn public debate, with the main twitterers facing off.

IT was a match made in Twitter. After exchanges confined to 140 characters in TwitterJaya, lawyers Tan Keng Liang and Edmund Bon agreed to bring their debate on the Peaceful Assembly Bill (#pa2011) to the public arena.

And #EdmundBonDebatesTanKengLiang will roar at the Malaysian Centre for Constitutionalism & Human Rights (PusatRakyatLB) in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, on Sunday.

Kedah Gerakan Youth chief @TanKengLiang recalled: “I saw #EdmundBonDebatesTanKengLiang on my timeline (on Nov 28) and a tweet by @saroki19 - ‘@EdmundBon agree to live debate #pa2011, well done. @TanKengLiang how? 1Malaysia waiting 4 answer’.”

Tan believed that it would be a great opportunity for him to clarify the misconception over the Bill, and he accepted the challenge.

@EdmundBon, who is with LoyarBurok.com, MyConsti and PusatRakyatLB related:

“On Nov 28 the Bar Council was in the midst of mobilising members to participate in #Walk4Freedom (to protest against #pa2011 at Parliament) and naturally conversations on TwitterJaya veered towards the Bill.

“I was trying to simplify how the Bill detrimentally affects the layperson through #FunFacts and Tan was tweeting in support of the Bill.

“Then out of the blue @saroki19 asked ‘Bon care to debate’, and I said ‘accepted’.”

In explaining his challenge, @saroki19 said he wanted to find out “what kind of man Tan was, as he was famous in TwitterJaya”.

Indeed, in TwitterJaya (the moniker of the Malaysian Twittersphere) Tan with 10,578 followers is so popular that he has his own hashtag - #KenLiangMania.

The joke in Twittersphere is if there is an election for P223 TwitterJaya, Tan will win it.

As @kcl1308 pointed out in his tweet: “I can see people are really excited about @TanKengLiang! He (is) almost like a movie star!”

The organiser, @saroki19, noted that there was interest in the debate because people wanted to see Tan in action.

“I want to see whether TKL is as articulate as he is in TJ (TwitterJaya). And the topic is quite hot at the moment,” said @NickLiewKY. He will travel from Penang to Ipoh and then together with @JoLum500 head for Kuala Lumpur to witness the debate.

The debate is a must-watch for @DatuWil as @TanKengLiang is his punching bag.

“I whack him on Twitter when I have a bad day at work,” he said.

“@TanKengLiang is oblivious to his own irritating persistence of fighting a losing cause.”

For example, referring to Perak DAP secretary Nga Kor Ming’s “Black Metallic” remark, @TanKengLiang tweeted: “So, will DAP take any action on @NgaKorMing + @NgehKooHam? Or hope Malaysians will forget about it? @LimKitSiang”.

And @MikiChoo retweeted: “yawWwnn”.

But to Barisan National cyber troopers, Tan is a hero.

@KhanOfWar tweeted: “@TanKengLiang is a real fighter we all #SupportTanKengLiang Kudos!”

Bon, with 3,406 followers, is no pushover in TwitterJaya.

Reading tweets about @EdmundBon, you can sense a certain adoration for him.

#BonCon is a popular hastag. According to him, “activists and friends think that I somehow ‘conned’ them to do activism work”.

Some Twitterers think #EdmundBonDebatesTanKengLiang will be bigger than the October Tweet Festival in Petaling Jaya.

The festival broke the Guinness World Records for the most number of check-ins (1,935) at a Tweetup.

On Saturday, @LimMengKeong tweeted: “I’ve been learning some karate moves to protect @TanKengLiang, just in case some of his fans get too excited.”

Just like maniacal Beatles fans, @PhilipGolingai expects women will throw their panties at Tan while he is debating.

The event will be moderated by @WanSaiful (Wan Saiful Wan Jan, the CEO of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs Malaysia or IDEAS).

And @HoongLing (Chew Hoong Ling, Voice of Women president, liver donor and Durian FM DJ) has volunteered to cover the event.

Tan is hoping @TonyPua (DAP publicity secretary Tony Pua) will attend the debate so that he can consume a mug of Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia’s (KR1M) Chocolate Malt in front of him.

The challenge (born in TwitterJaya) is if Tan dares to drink the malt drink, Pua will donate RM1,000 to charity.

Yesterday, Pua tweeted three photographs of cheques totalling RM1,000.

Echoing the confusion on #pa2011, @DidiMazril cheekily tweeted in Malay: “You don’t need to apply for a permit to hold this debate?”

And Tan replied: “Police permit not needed 4 debate at @PusatRakyatLB. It’s a private place ..... unless demo outside the building.”

Is it game on for the lawyer vs lawyer debate?

Unlike Opposition MPs who staged a walkout before the Peaceful Assembly Bill 2011 was passed on Tuesday, it was unlikely Bon and Tan would #WalkOut.

And as @SmellyKateMoss tweeted: “Attention TJ! Must see!”

Women to the forefront

2011-12-03T00:09:00.015+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The fairer sex seems to be in an apparent bid to take over control. It's happening right at our backyard with the women-only train coaches, taxis and now Malaysia's first women's radio station in Capital FM 88.9. Maybe it's time for men to re-affirm who's the boss ... or not.

MEN, watch out. If we are not careful, sooner or later women will take control and kick us out of the bedroom.

Don't give me that quizzical macho look!

The signs are there. Women-only Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad coaches. Then women-only taxis.

And now Malaysia's first women's radio station Capital FM 88.9.

To paraphrase Helen Reddy's song I am Woman, women are roaring “in numbers too big to ignore”.

And the newly-launched Capital FM promises to be “the only radio station that provides women a voice and a hub to exchange thoughts and opinions”.

“Scary”, a male friend, who comes from the Neanderthal age, told me: “This might be a start of a Woman on Top' movement”, while giving me an expression that reminded me of an eunuch.

For me, I kept an open mind. I find the idea of a women's radio station as exciting as a Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull On the Floor music video.

But I did wonder what kind of music Capital FM 88.9 celebrity presenters such as Asha Gill and Joanne Kam would play.

Would it be exclusively songs with a female theme?

Before the radio station went on air on Thursday, I asked my colleague Martin Vengadesan, a music columnist, what he thought.

He suggested: It's Raining Men by The Weather Girls, You Oughta Know by Alanis Nadine Morissette, Independent Women by Destiny's Child and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper.

The concept of a radio station targeting urban women in Klang Valley aged between 25-35 has also sizzled my Twitter timeline.

Tweeting on the station that aims to be a platform for women's issues, @adellaaudrey commented: “so what do they yak about? Shopping? Sale? Pilates? Girl power? wait, ... MEN???”

Or perhaps cerebral topics as @asohan (Asohan Aryaduray) tweeted: “Something for #CapitalFM to discuss? RT @nytimes Jailed Afghan Woman Freed but Urged to Marry Rapist.”

I was curious about the radio station. So on Thursday, the day it was launched, I eavesdropped.

In their The Jam Break segment (from 4pm to 8pm), radio DJs Xandria Ooi and Liang were talking about the advantage of dating a younger guy.

At 7.49pm a caller named Sue remarked: “It is refreshing. Makes you feel young. Nowadays, there's not much of an age gap.”

Wow! I thought. They're talking about “Cougar” (a woman, 40 years of age or older, who pursues younger men).

Such a subversive topic which 40-something men like me feel threatened.

Gleefully, Sue, the caller, added: “Men now are more open. They can talk about cooking and cleaning. And men clean better. They don't mind doing household work.”

Ouch! Looks like men will be kicked out of the bedroom to the kitchen.

The Obedient Wives Club should protest against such an emasculating statement.

Another “ouch!” was during Groovedown, a 8pm to midnight segment which offers a “safe haven” for women as they are invited to share their thoughts and questions on relationships and social lifestyle.

Presenter Sheela Haran taunted: “Guys, you can listen in as well. Maybe you will learn a thing or two.”

Looks like the “Woman on Top” movement has really begun.

Someone should start a counter movement. Perhaps we should launch a “Real Radio for Real Men”.

Perkasa boss Datuk Ibrahim Ali and Malaysia Under-23 team coach Ong Kim Swee can be a guest in a segment that talks about all things men.

We can have topics such as “Who is more handsome: Wayne Rooney or John Terry?” or “Why a woman should drop everything when the hubby is in the mood for love?”.

Men, watch out. We need to show women who's the boss.

Oops! Got to go as my wife commanded me to prepare milk for our three-year-old Apsara.

Think global or you lose out

2011-11-28T23:55:00.009+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

They (Malaysian businessmen) don’t think global. They don’t want to even think Asean. For them, they are in a comfort zone and it is enough to do business in Malaysia.

NINE years ago, Datuk Ilyas Mohamed’s businessmen friends laughed when he asked them to invest in Indonesia.

“Malaysian economy was at its best until 10 years ago. We were at the peak. After that, it started to go down,” recalled the Cartrade Group executive chairman.

And Ilyas decided to enter the Indonesian market. His first deal was to buy Mandala Airlines.

The deal, however, fell through when a Singaporean company outbid his group. It put more money on the table.

But the setback did not discourage him.

“I am very fortunate as I have a business partner there, who is one of the richest men in Indonesia,” noted the 50-something businessman.

His silent partner is a low profile multi-billionaire (we’re not talking about rupiahs but in US dollars).

“He is by name my partner. But he is not interested in my business as it is too small for him. Half of Jakarta belongs to him,” Ilyas related.

(Who? Google: Artha Graha Group.)

Now, 20% of Ilyas’ business is in Malaysia and the rest overseas, mostly in Indonesia; coal mining in Kalimantan and property development in Surabaya and Jakarta.

And his friends, who laughed at him as they thought he would be conned in Indonesia, are now following his footsteps.

“Indonesia is THE market. They have 245 million people. Can you go wrong in a market with 245 million people? And the Indonesian Government welcomes Malaysian companies,” he explained.

“There are a lot of opportunities in Indonesia. They are not even developing. They are just about to develop. If you go in now it is the best time. You can’t piggy back when they are (already) up there.”

Ilyas, however, cautioned:

“Of course, the important thing is to find the right partner. Many people go there and find the wrong partner, they get conned and then they say Indonesians are ‘penipu’ (conmen).”

The Malaysian market is small as the country’s population is 28 million.

“You can do small business (in Malaysia). But if you want to think big, you have to go out (of Malaysia),” the businessman said.

How big is Indonesia?

“Out of the 245 million Indonesians, about 10% are super rich and that’s the total population of Malaysia,” Ilyas said.

How rich is “rich”?

“Oh, they are very, very rich,” he said and gave a figure (in ringgit) which I thought was unbelievable.

The thing with Malaysians, according to Ilyas, was we think small.

“They don’t think global. If not global then think Asean.

“But, they don’t want to even think Asean,” he said.

“For them, they are in a comfort zone. Sudahlah (it is enough) to do business in Malaysia.”

Most Malaysian businessmen (and we are not talking about the bosses of CIMB etc) do not want to venture.

For example, Ilyas said, “Sri Lanka is a good market now. Their trade minister, chief justice and banker (with a bank equivalent to Maybank) came down to talk to our businessmen. But they were not interested.”

It is the opposite for Singapore entrepreneurs. With their rock solid Singapore dollar, they are rushing into Sri Lanka.

“They know that their local base is small and they have to do business outside of Singapore,” he said.

The Philippines’ economy is also booming.

“Over the past 30 years, Filipinos are fed up with politics. And they work and work, building the economy themselves. And if we are not careful, we might be sending maids to the Philippines soon,” Ilyas said.

It is politics as usual in Malaysia.

“Instead of coming up with ideas on how to create business opportunities, our politicians come up with all sort of (political) issues,” Ilyas contended.

“They are creating issues for cheap publicity. For example, you can take 10 Chinese, 10 Indians and 10 Malays and sit them down together and there will be no racial issue among them.

“But it is the politicians and not the rakyat that come up with all sort of racial issues.”

“How to be a global player when you are thinking of politics 24 hours a day?”

Ilyas flies in and out of Indonesia spending about 15 to 16 days a month in that country.

So I asked: “Why don’t you relax and do business in Malaysia?”

His eyes gleamed. “Of course as a businessman, you are an opportunist. When you see so much of opportunities (in Indonesia) you just can’t resist.”

Ilyas assures that the Indonesian market is not as hostile as its fans during an Indonesia vs Malaysia football match.

Consumed with local affairs

2011-11-21T23:47:00.015+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The Philippines looms as the next big Asean entity and Indonesia is the place to ‘park’ one’s money, but we would rather not know that the barbarians are at the gate.

THE barbarians are at the gate and yet Malaysians are more fixated with whether a mentri besar was caught for khalwat with a girl from Pasir Panjang.

Not true, says the MB. But tongues still wag.

Perhaps we should be more concerned with the fact that the Philippines will be the next big thing in Asean.

I remember reading a report saying that if we are not careful, in two decades or so we will be sending maids to Manila.

The thing about us is we are more consumed with domestic affairs than foreign happenings.

Yes, from my Twitter timeline, Malaysians are also interested in the fact that former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was arrested on charges of fraud and Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam was captured.

But we are more intrigued with when Parliament will be dissolved, and whether Parti Kita president Datuk Zaid Ibrahim will contest in Petaling Jaya Utara or Petaling Jaya Selatan.

I, too, am guilty of paying too much attention to local politics and not enough to global issues.

Yes, I’m aware of the eurozone debt crisis. But don’t ask me to get into specifics.

However, I’ve become a specialist on Kedah Gerakan Youth chief Tan Keng Liang’s challenge to DAP publicity secretary Tony Pua: he will consume a mug of Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia’s (KR1M) Chocolate Malt if the Petaling Jaya Utara MP donates RM1,000 to charity.

The challenge came after Pua claimed that KR1M’s 1Malaysia Growing Up Milk contained eight times the permitted amount of Vitamin A and was missing essential nutrients such as Omega 3, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin C and folic acid.

There was so much excitement in TwitterJaya (the moniker of the Malaysian twittersphere) over the issue, with some twitterers milking the issue with clever tweets such as “Pray for @TanKengLiang because he is going to drink 1Malaysia Choco Milk”.

Another big issue on TwitterJaya has spawned the mother of all puns and has also something to do with milk.

So syiok I was to absorb these comments like SpongeBob SquarePants, until I read a tweet by @Art_Harun (the lawyer) on Wednesday.

He tweeted in Malay: Malaysian politics – last month it was about molesting breast, this month it is about cows. When will we discuss the maximum impact of the eurozone on our economy?

Ouch. Time to come out from under my coconut shell.

So I decided to find out what the barbarians (Malaysia’s foreign rivals) were up to.

On Friday, I met a 20-something think-tank director at Coffee Bean in Bangsar Village to pick his brain.

The cerebral hotshot, who wants to keep a low profile at the moment, listed three challenges that Malaysia faces.

“Population wise, we are too small. We have a population of 28 million. Compare that with Indonesia’s 245 million, Thailand’s 66 million and the Philippines’ 103 million,” said the animated man, still wearing his maroon Friday prayer shirt.

“In terms of economies of scale, our enterprises will not grow so big because our market is small. We don’t have any option but to invest outside.”

Malaysian enterprises, he said, should think Asean to survive and grow.

“We should be on the forefront of ‘big’ Asean,” he explained.

He noted that Malaysian companies such as CIMB and Khazanah were investing in vibrant Indonesia, the country to “park” one’s money.

And through Twitter, he understands how important Indonesia is to the United States by reading the tweets of the American ambassador to Jakarta.

“Food security,” he said. “Many Malaysians do not realise that Malaysia imports almost everything – rice, fish and even chilli.

“Imagine chilli! I did not know that we imported chilli until I attended a briefing by Pemandu (Performance Management and Delivery Unit).

“We are also overly dependent on foreign workers. Free movement of people is important in a globalised world.

“But certain industries, such as palm oil and construction, should train Malaysians to work in these sectors.

“Suddenly they are finding it difficult to recruit Indonesian workers as that country’s economy is booming. Indonesians would rather work in Malaysian-owned palm oil plantations in their own country than in Malaysia.”

Note to myself: download the Economist iPad edition that has, as its cover story, “The magic of diasporas: Immigrant networks are a rare bright spark in the world economy”.

In the meantime, I wonder what will happen to Tan should he drink the 1Malaysia Chocolate Malt.

No bowing out for the seladang

2011-11-14T23:40:00.006+08:00

One Man's Meat
By Philip Golingai

PRM, a left-wing party in the country, is looking for a resurgence in the coming general election

A DIE-HARD Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) supporter trudged up a long flight of stairs to the party headquarters on the third floor of a shoplot in Petaling Jaya.

I could literally hear the 57-year-old man’s knee creaking as he spiritedly - one step at a time - advanced towards where PRM was celebrating its 56th birthday on Friday.

On the way up, he talked about the days in the 1960s when, as a boy, he put up PRM posters during the election campaign against the “kapal layar” (the sailboat logo of the Alliance, predecessor to Barisan Nasional).

“It was during the Vietnam War era when anti-Americanism was the rage and support for the party was at its height,” he recalled.

PRM won the parliamentary seats of Kuala Lumpur and Johor Baru in the 1959 general election.

At 11am sharp on 11.11.11, PRM president Rohana Ariffin and her comrades cut a cake with the party’s logo - the head of a seladang (the Malayan gaur), witnessed by about 50 people, including two party members who were ISA detainees.

After the party, I spoke to Rohana, a retired associate professor of Universiti Sains Malaysia.

A bit wary of attending a party with leftist leanings as it is the season to attack all things linked to Socialism, I asked the president to explain her party.

“The socialist party - as far as we know it in Malaysia - believes in the democratic process of being elected into power and not through armed revolution,” said the 60-something who was wearing a red bandana.

“If you ask what socialist ideology is, it believes that all production of the country should be for the consumption of the rakyat first and not so much for profit.

“You can make a certain amount of profit but the rakyat’s interest comes first, especially that of the working class.”

PRM is one of Malaysia’s oldest political parties. It was founded as Parti Rakyat on Nov 11, 1955 by Ahmad Boestamam, Dr Burhanuddin Al Helmy and Ishak Mohamad.

“The party was strong in the 1960s and 1970s. But since it was the only legitimate left-wing party in the country at that time, the Government came down hard on people with socialist ideologies,” said Rohana.

“When you look at the evolution of the party, most PRM leaders (such as Boestamam, Kassim Ahmad and Syed Husin Ali) have been detained in prison.”

In 2003, PRM was thought to have been dissolved when it merged with Parti Keadilan Nasional to form Parti Keadilan Rakyat.

“At that time, the party leadership was quite ‘tired’ because society would not accept us as they saw PRM as left-wing and there was a popular movement which was Keadilan, so they decided to merge.”

However, like the seladang, PRM stubbornly refused to become extinct.

“The only problem with the merger was that we should have had a last delegates’ meeting to dissolve the party in an honourable manner,” Rohana recalled.

But in the haste to merge, the leadership “forgot” to do so.

In 2005, die-hard supporters convened a national congress and “resurrected” the party as it was never de-registered.

During the interview with Rohana, PRM supporters would quietly slip RM10 or RM50 to the party president as they bid goodbye to her.

“This is our culture,” she explained. “We are a very poor party and we rely on financial support from our members. Usually what we do is pay with our own money for an event we organise and then our members will give donations.”

It is heart-warming for Rohana to see die-hard supporters climb the steps to attend the party’s event.

“For example, there was a 70-something member who came from Sungai Tembiling (in Pahang) by boat and bus and he told me, ‘Parti Rakyat is my party and I will never change’,” Rohana related.

“And even among the young the spirit is there. Our party is rejuvenated by the young who are interested in left-wing politics.”

The young, she said, were fed up with the infighting in Parliament between the Government and the Opposition.

“There is no compromise or middle ground in any issue that the two coalitions can’t see the trees for the forest.”

The party is seeking relevance in the next election.

It is targeting to contest in seats like Selayang, Balik Pulau and Petaling Jaya Selatan.

The seladang, which can’t be put to pasture, is hoping left-wing politics will make a resurgence.

YB a mind reader?

2011-11-11T21:10:00.023+08:00

One Man's Meat
by PHILIP GOLINGAI

If you are not the Prime Minister or on whispering terms with him, don’t pretend you know when the election will be called.

EVEN at the eleventh hour, some Malaysians were still speculating whether something big – other than the once-in-a-lifetime wedding date – would happen on 11.11.11.

Yesterday, my smartphone was bombarded with SMSes asking whether Parliament would be dissolved today.

The spread of such speculation can be blamed on politicians who think they can read the Prime Minister’s mind.

Since speculating on the election date has fevered Malaysians, let me list 11 things politicians – to borrow a DAP battle cry in the Sarawak polls – should ubah (change) about themselves.

1) If you are not the Prime Minister or on whispering terms with him, don’t pretend you know when the election will be called.

Yes, it is a powerful feeling to have people lean closer to listen to your theory that it is 11.11.11 because 11 is the PM’s favourite number. But such coffeeshop talk is not good for those planning a life in November.

2) Don’t be a jack-in-a-box politician.

Just like a certain party president who appeared out of nowhere and was PhotoShopped cycling next to the Prime Minister, there are political unknowns who suddenly pop out like a jack-in-a-box.

On the day Parliament is dissolved, they declare themselves a candidate.

If you want to be a candidate, at least let your presence be felt. Perhaps tweet (ie on the Auditor-General’s Report) or lead a fiery protest against something (ie Elton John’s concert).

3) Don’t be a foul-mouthed politician.

Just because you wear a T-shirt with a Superman logo, it does not mean you have superpowers to abuse your rivals with expletives that will make even Kim Kardashian blush. Win over your voters with a cause.

4) Don’t pull a Carlos Tevez.

Make sure that you don’t miscalculate and book your holiday on the day Parliament is dissolved. If not, you would end up holidaying in China while your comrades are campaigning.

They would accuse you of behaving like the Manchester City striker who was charged for refusing to play when told to do so by his coach.

Perhaps you should listen to more coffee shop talk on when Parliament will be dissolved.

5) Don’t be a yo-yo politician.

Meaning: don’t be consistently inconsistent. Don’t say “yes” to hudud today and “no” tomorrow. Chameleons are great for the Animal Planet series but not for Parliament.

6) Stop being a drain-orientated politician.

If you are a politician of a certain status (ie an exco member), don’t proudly tweet that you are solving your constituents’ drainage problem.

Your state has bigger problems than a blocked drain. Leave that to your municipal councillors.

7) Be a frog prince.

Don’t be a political frog who would jump party the moment you experience a political awakening while sleeping in Parliament.

Surprise your voters so that when they “kiss” ugly you, you turn out to be a frog prince as honourable as Nelson Mandela.

8) If you are not Nelson Mandela, don’t compare yourself to Nelson Mandela.

There are politicians from both sides of the political spectrum who have shamelessly compared themselves to Mahatma Gandhi, Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.

Funny thing is that some of them are more Silvio Berlusconi than Mandela.

9) Quit if you are a has-been politician.

There’s nothing more dangerous than a politician who is looking at the rear-view mirror of his political career.

A has-been politician might join a “trustworthy” non-governmental organisation and start accusing his party of things (ie corrupt practices) he was blind to when he was in power.

10) Don’t promise to build a bridge even when there’s no river.

That’s all. Oops, only 10 whereas I promised 11. Well, like a politician, I lied.

Driving home a message

2011-11-07T20:37:00.000+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

While on holiday in the Gold Coast of Australia, former Miss Malaysia finalist Leng Yein fell in love with a pink-coloured Hummer H3 limousine. She has acquired one for herself and turned it into an expression of girl power.

WHAT happens when a female model buys a masculine sport utility truck – a pink Hummer H3 – the only such vehicle in Malaysia?

Last month, Leng Yein, a former Miss Malaysia finalist famous for publicly admitting she had gone under the knife, bought a greyish blue Hummer.

And to celebrate Girl Power, the 26-year-old model turned the “manly” vehicle into a “girl’s car”.

It was – to borrow a cliche, love at first sight, when Leng Yein saw a pink-coloured Hummer H3 limousine in the Gold Coast in June.

“I went yeah! I can turn this manly vehicle into a girl’s car because no man will want to drive a pink car,” she recalled.

“The Hummer already stands out because of its bulk, and I told myself; ‘why don’t I turn it into a symbol of girl power to show that women can drive any car guys drive’.”

During her Australian holiday Leng Yein rented a white-coloured Hummer H3 as there were no pink-coloured ones available for rent.

She drove it for more than a week and liked its “steadiness. I felt like the Queen of the road.”

But when the model returned to Malaysia, she did not rush into buying a vehicle associated with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was among the first to own a Hummer.

“I knew General Motors in the US had stopped its production and I was worried that if the Hummer breaks down, it would be hard to get it running again,” she said.

Leng Yein dilly-dallied until Oct 9 when she flipped through a local car magazine and saw in the classifieds a brand-new full specs H3x, the only one in Malaysia, for sale.

She bought it and dressed up her spanking new Hummer H3 by giving it a “pink frock” with lots of chrome (rims, sidestep, bumper and tyre cover).

“I chose chrome because it looks like a mirror and girls love mirrors. And pink and mirrors go together. It is definitely girlish,” she added.

“But surely,” I asked, “you did not just buy the Hummer to make it girlish?”

She said: “No I got it because it is strong, outstanding, solid, fierce, steady, powerful, tough and rare.”

The model was reading a laundry list of reasons why she bought the Hummer which she listed on her Facebook page that has about 100,000 friends.

“It is about my identity. When people see a Hummer they go ‘wow!’ and want to see who is driving it. And it is sexy to see a girl driving one,” she said.

Leng Yein wouldn’t want to be caught dead driving her vehicle in its original greyish blue colour.

“If I drove a Hummer in any colour other than pink, it would be a guy’s car. And people would think that I was driving my father’s car,” she explained.

Driving the Hummer makes the model feel like she owns the road.

Even when she’s in a traffic jam in Kuala Lumpur, she does not feel like she’s stuck in traffic.

“Motorists will give way to my Hummer,” she said with a mischievous smile.

“Or maybe they give way because they would like to see who is the driver of the rare pink-coloured Hummer.”

Leng Yein also gets updates on her Facebook page from friends who spot her dream car.

“They will post ‘Jie (Leng Yein’s nickname) I saw your car parked in KL or I saw your car at a toll booth in Penang’,” she said.

Leng Yein’s Facebook address is prominently displayed on both sides of her Hummer’s exterior.

“I knew that many sponsors will be interested to contact the owner of this loud pink vehicle. So I put my Facebook address there so that sponsors will know who to contact,” she explained.

The pretty pink vehicle also displays her sponsors’ logos.

“There are many companies that want to advertise on my car. For example, there are six or seven car tinting companies that want to be my sponsor,” she revealed.

The model, who is currently hosting SEMA 2011 (the largest auto show in the world) in Las Vegas, has also received several calls inviting her to showcase her Hummer in events such as the Auto Fair.

Looks like the pink Hummer is getting to be as famous as Leng Yein.

Anti-climax in ‘Seks Islam’ book

2011-10-31T18:47:00.005+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The Obedient Wives Club (OWC) controversial pocket-sized Malay-language sex guide sold exclusively to its members is more of a mother’s labour of love for her son who was getting married.

IF I got RM50 for every time someone asked me a copy of Seks Islam, I would be as rich as Alex Comfort, the author of The Joy of Sex.

On Oct 21, in Petaling Jaya, at a press conference organised by Obedient Wives Club (OWC), the author of Seks Islam, Perangi Yahudi Untuk Kembalikan Seks Islam Kepada Dunia (Islamic Sex, Fighting Jews to Return Islamic Sex to the World), Hatijah Aam (pic) gifted the book to journalists.

Speaking via Skype from Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Hatijah, the OWC founder, told the club members: “Please present the book now to the media representatives.”

“We don’t want to hide it. We want to be transparent.

“We want to show that we are not hiding our (sex) knowledge,” she said.

And the dozen or so journalists became proud owners of the controversial pocket-sized Malay-language sex guide sold exclusively to OWC members for RM50.

Instantly, When I – @philipgolingai – “live” tweeted that I had a copy, I received several requests for a copy.

In my office, almost everybody I met was excited over my owning THE book except for this one guy who got aroused for the wrong reason. He thought I had a copy of the Auditor-General’s Report.

It seems everyone I knew lusted for the knowledge on how to graduate from kindergarten-level sex to PhD-level sex.

Who wouldn’t want to read a book advocating “spiritual sex” (a man could “come” spiritually to all his wives simultaneously even though they’re in Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Johor)?

And, by the day, the book is getting more notorious. Last week, the Sarawak government banned the distribution of Seks Islam in the state.

As my friends flipped through the book, their initial remarks were: “No picture ah?” or “No graphics ah? All words?”.

Sorry to disappoint, but the book isn’t the Comfort’s titillatingly illustrated Joy of Sex.

In fact, the 115-page booklet was a mother’s labour of love for her son who was getting married.

The preamble to Seks Islam – from its research – OWC found that what a woman sexually provided her husband was 10% of what his real sexual needs were.

“The wife thinks her 10% is 100%. She’s also dumb not to want to be taught about sex. She has a prejudiced perception that sex is obscene,” wrote Hatijah.

Chapter one explains why OWC was formed, chapter two talks about Hatijah’s husband, the late Al-Arqam founder Ashaari Muhammad, chapter three about giving 100% loyalty to your husband, chapter four is a guide for the future groom and chapter five is a letter to the bride.

Yawn. Yawn. Nothing that really makes me blush.

A friend, however, told me to check out page 75 as it contained "graphic description".

"Belum pun jemu, berhiburan di bibir mulut, tangan suamiku seperti tidak mampu dikawal-kawal untuk segara menangkap buah-buah dadaku dan diramas-ramaskan dan dimain-mainkan putingnya sepenuh hatinya. Aku pula mengalami rasa nikmat yang tidak terperi," Hatijah wrote in Malay.

Roughly translated: "I was not yet bored with oral 'entertainment' but my husband could not control his hands and they quickly caught my breasts and with his heart's content he squeezed and played with my nipples. And I experienced a pleasure which was not painful."

Hatijah also explained the difference between a man and a woman.

A man is held hostage by his desire. In order words, just like peeing, when a man has to go, he has to go.

A woman, however, can turn off and turn on her sexual desire as if it were a switch.

“If a wife loves her husband, she must instantly fulfil his sexual needs,” she advocated.

The climax of the book is in its conclusion.

Hatijah writes about her two-month training with Ashaari to become a heroic and angelic wife.

And she revealed her late husband could perform sex simultaneously with his wives, spiritually.

“Intimacy is much more pleasurable and ‘lighter’ through spiritual sex compared with physical sex,” she wrote.

Hatijah writes about seks serentak (simultaneous sex) but she does not reveal how to do it spiritually.

Perhaps, as she said in the press conference, what was taught in Seks Islam was just the tip of the iceberg (20%) of her sex knowledge.

So what has the book – as its title suggests – got to do with Jews?

From what I gather Jews have been propagating “extremely pornographic” illicit sex.

Am I missing something in life?

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the book. Techniques on how to please a Uranus chick with eight breasts?

For all its hype, reading the hyped book was an anti-climax.

Taking sex to the PhD-level

2011-10-24T20:49:00.000+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The Obedient Wives Club wanted to keep it under the covers but since it leaked out, interest for its sex-guide book has yet to reach a climax.

FRIDAY’S press conference by the Obedient Wives Club (OWC) reminded me of Salt-n-Pepa’s 1991 hit song Let’s Talk About Sex.

The hip-hop song goes: “Let’s talk about sex. Yo, I don’t think we should talk about this. C’mon, why not? People might misunderstand what we’re tryin’ to say, you know? No, but that’s a part of life.”

That about sums up the exasperation of the club embroiled in a controversy after it published a pocket-sized 115-page Malay-language book titled Seks Islam, Perangi Yahudi Untuk Kembalikan Seks Islam Kepada Dunia (Islamic Sex, Fighting Jews to Return Islamic Sex to the World).

To clarify media reports that the book encouraged a man to have an orgy with all of his wives, five OWC officials (including two men) met the press.

At the start of the 90-minute press conference in Petaling Jaya, OWC national chairman in Malaysia Fauziah Ariffin read a statement from Hatijah Aam, the club founder.

Hatijah, one of the wives of the late Al-Arqam founder Ashaari Muhammad, said the sex guide was only for OWC members who were married.

“We are disappointed with those who distributed the book without our knowledge until it created a misunderstanding,” she said.

Fauziah then tackled the controversial issue of “seks serentak (simultaneous sex)”.

“Simultaneous does not mean that on the bed there is one man and four women,” she said with a sarcastic laugh.

“When a man has reached a high level of spirituality, his wali (spiritual guardian) can come in contact with his wives wherever they are.

“Maybe one wife is in Ipoh, another in Kuala Lumpur, in Singapore or in Johor but he can ‘come’ to his wife simultaneously. That is the wonder of spiritual sex.”

Wow! I thought. Note to myself: evolve from missionary position. But was “spiritual sex” possible, I wondered.

As if reading my thoughts, Dr Azlina Jamaluddin, a dentist and OWC leader, said it was not something a common person could comprehend.

“To you there might be no logic to what we are saying,” Dr Azlina explained. “But when Prophet Noah built an ark on a mountain at that time there was no logic in what he was doing.”

Mohd Rasidi, a male member of the panel, claimed what was taught in the book was “high level” sex. “It is PhD-level,” he said.

“To understand the book,” said Fauziah, “the author of the book herself wants to talk to the media via Skype from Mecca.”

And Hatijah’s voice filled the conference room.

In an exasperated tone, the 57-year-old Malaysian woman based in Saudi Arabia said the club purposely did not sell the book to non-members because the public would not be able to comprehend it.

In other words, you and I are practising “kindergarten-level sex” as compared with “PhD-level sex”.

And, quoting the Quran, Hatijah went deep into the theory of “spiritual sex”.

Here are some of Hatijah’s insights on sex.

> If your spirit is pure you can have sex with your wife even though you are abroad fighting a war.

> God allows sex sports. And to be good in sex you need practice.

> Orgasm releases a pain killer and helps with fever. But don’t have affairs on the pretext of curing your fever.

> Orgasm prevents wrinkles.

> Sex can make you younger. Jogging can be replaced by “sexcercise”.

> Only animals have sex without mukadimah (foreplay).

> It is important for a woman’s breasts to be sucked in order to prevent breast cancer (quoting a BBC news report).

During the Q&A session, I asked: “I’m curious, has the panel experienced simultaneous sex? Have you reached the PhD-level of sex?”

And – I’m not sure whether I imagined this – the panel members lowered their heads as if they felt sexually inadequate.

After a hush-hush discussion among themselves, Mohd Rasidi said: “So far, it is a knowledge that we are still trying to understand.

“We have not experienced it as our roh (spirit) has not reached PhD-level,” he explained.

“How about Hatijah?” I asked.

And Azlina, the dentist, said: “We have not experienced it yet. We are still trying. The person who has experienced it is Hatijah Aam. Hopefully one day, God willing, we can reach that level.”

Hatijah also revealed that she was writing a second sex guide book.

“The first book revealed 20% (sex knowledge). But the second book will reveal 100%. But we will make sure the public will not get their hands on this book about heaven on earth,” she added.

Anyone for orang asli seafood?

2011-10-17T20:42:00.006+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The five wooden restaurants in Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Temon are perhaps the only orang asli seafood restaurants in the country. Not surprising is that the restaurants are run by the Orang Seletar, or the Orang Laut, who depend on the sea for a living.

CAN you image “orang asli” and “seafood restaurant” in the same sentence?

Last month when googling “seafood restaurant + Johor Baru” I was dumbfounded to discover there were several orang asli seafood restaurants along the coast of Johor.

I told myself I must check out an orang asli seafood restaurant when I’m in JB as I was curious to know the dishes it served. Garoupa steamed with petai? Prawn cooked in bamboo?

When I was in JB to write about the Orang Seletar, an orang asli community who used to be sea nomads, People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Johor chairman Datuk Dr Siva Kumar introduced his orang asli bureau chief Eddy anak Salim to me.

Eddy’s family owns Salim seafood restaurant in Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Temon, a fishing village at Danga Bay. The villagers are Orang Seletar (also called Orang Laut), who make a living from the sea.

As you enter the wooden restaurant on stilts, you’re greeted by a signboard written in Orang Seletar language: Salemat Kian Kaun. Man Kedai Kami (roughly translated: Welcome. Eat at our shop).

The open-air restaurant has a view of Johor Baru city and Singapore’s Woodlands.

And what we ate in the restaurant was ... surprise, surprise ... seafood dishes typically found in Chinese-owned seafood restaurants.

“Why Chinese-styled seafood dishes?” I asked Eddy, a 32-year-old Orang Seletar.

“My father (Salim anak Palun, the 50-year-old Tok Batin, or village head, of Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Temon) learned to cook Chinese food. And our customers (from Johor and Singapore) prefer this style of cooking,” he related.

Eddy then told the story of his forward-thinking father who probably started the first orang asli-owned seafood restaurant in Malaysia.

“My father was unlike other orang asli of his generation. He mixed with other races and he learnt from them,” he said.

Salim owned fish, prawn and clam farms in the fishing village founded by his father Palun anak Teton from a mangrove jungle.

“But 20 years ago my father knew his livelihood would not last forever as he saw that development would pollute the waters where we made a living,” Eddy said.

“So, my dad decided to fulfil my grandfather’s wish to turn his tuckshop into a seafood restaurant.”

When Salim seafood restaurant became popular, Eddy’s relatives living in Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Temon also opened their own restaurants. Now there are five wooden seafood restaurants in the fishing village.

But Eddy’s clan is an exception among the Orang Seletar community in Johor.

Perhaps their village’s proximity to Johor Baru played a role in them rising out of poverty.

Many Orang Seletar living in relatively remote coastal areas in Johor are finding it difficult to eke out a living.

“For example, at Sungai Tiram, they are not educated and not all of them want to work in a factory,” explained Eddy, who is an SPM graduate.

“They’d rather make a living out of nature just like our ancestors. But the oil palm plantations and sand mining companies are polluting the rivers and the sea where they usually fish.”

The villagers whom I met at Perkampungan Orang Asli Kampung Pasir Salam at Sungai Tiram are proud of their heritage.

They related how the Orang Laut used to command Tebrau Strait and the coasts of Johor and Singapore.

“As late as 1980s, some Orang Laut still lived in sampans. That was our way of life.

“We were born in sampans, we lived in sampans and we died in sampans,” said Eddy.

As I savoured the sweet and sour crab and buttered prawn during my 3pm lunch, primary school boys (Eddy’s cousins) were living the idyllic life – jumping into the sea from a stilted restaurant in Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Temon.

But development is rapidly encroaching into their life.

From the restaurant, you can hear the construction of the multi-million Danga Bay development.

The big question mark for the Orang Seletar, who have lived in the village for three generations, is whether Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Temon has to make way for a concrete seafront jungle.

Dr Siva believes an amiable solution can be found between the villagers and the developer.

Rapid development has also polluted the surrounding waters in the fishing village.

“Twenty years ago it was easy for us to make a living from the sea. In two weeks we could get RM1,000 worth of catch,” Eddy related.

“Now, you’re lucky if you can get RM20 worth of catch in a day. We cannot depend on the sea anymore.”

Now the seafood restaurant business is more dependable.

The many hats of a politician

2011-10-10T20:37:00.007+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Having to settle a broom fight between two 60-something neighbours, play private investigator and exorcise ghosts are but some of the more interesting tasks asked of an MP.

POLITICIANS tweet. They do it mostly to gain a point or two over their political rivals. But their tweets also give an insight into the life of a politician.

One politician whom I follow on Twitter is @limlipeng – Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng. Occasionally, Lim will tweet about the “innocent but ridiculous” requests he gets from his constituents.

@limlipeng tweeted: “A parent wants me to run background check on his soon(-to-be) daughter-in-law. Grr ...”

“These parents from Jinjang asked me to find out the marital status of their 20-something son’s future wife (who is 10 years older than him),” the DAP politician explained.

“They heard rumours that she was a divorcee or was staying with another boyfriend and they wanted me to do PI (private investigator) work for them.”

Lim told them that their son was an adult and they could not control him for the rest of his life.

Who do you call when you live in a condominium facing a stretch along busy Jalan Kuching that is accident-prone and believed to be haunted? Ghostbuster Lim.

“I’ve received at least three complaints from people living in that condominium.

“They told me that a particular spot is accident-prone because a ghost appears in the middle of the night to frighten motorists,” the Segambut MP said at his service centre facing Jalan Kuching.

“They told me to ‘cleanse’ the road but I’ve not done it yet.”

Lim also tweeted about settling a broom fight between two 60-something neighbours over a parking lot in front of their luxury homes in a gated community in Desa Park City.

“They quarrelled using vulgar words in Cantonese.

“One ‘auntie’ could not take the verbal abuse and she took a broom to whack the other ‘auntie’. And the son – who saw his mother being beaten – told the assailant that he would kill all her family members,” he said.

The assailant lodged a police report about the death threat and the man (a senior government officer) ended up in a Jinjang lock-up.

He called Lim to settle the case, who managed to get the case withdrawn by asking the man to apologise to his neighbour.

The Segambut MP’s job also involved negotiating a former VIP’s loan shark debt.

“I received a call from a Datuk who lives in Taman Tun Dr Ismail.

“When we met at a nearby coffeeshop, he showed me photographs of him with prominent leaders, including national and foreign dignitaries taken about 20 to 30 years ago,” he said.

“He said he helped a friend who was in deep financial trouble to borrow money from some Ah Long. However, his friend ran away and could not be traced.

“The Datuk gave me the names of five Ah Long and asked me to negotiate with them to delay payment of the debt (about RM80,000) for about two weeks.”

The Segambut MP tweeted: “Two of the five Ah Long agreed to extend payments owed by a Datuk in TTDI to end of the month. This is the best I can do for him.”

Once, Lim was approached by a 50-something woman who claimed to be a journalist with a “critical link” to a case involving a prominent Taiwanese politician who killed a political rival in Taiwan 10 years ago.

“I met her and she showed me photographs of her with Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, former Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian, Taiwanese Cabinet ministers and high-ranking bosses of Sin Chew Jit Poh (Chinese daily).

“She wanted me to organise a press conference to highlight that Taiwanese hitmen were pursuing her,” he said.

Lim told her that he would only organise a press conference if she lodged a police report. However, the woman refused, alleging that Malaysian police were in cahoots with the Taiwanese killers.

Twitter is also a medium for the MP to interact with his constituents.

@nizran77 tweeted: “@limlipeng: Besides looking for potholes in @ttdiTV, can you add: Remove Massage + Ah Long ads? Annoying!”

Lim replied: “It’s on my list.”

“Any weird request that you’ve not tweeted about?” I asked Lim. He grinned.

There are times when the happily-married MP has to entertain “dirty calls”. And it is not about dirty drains, but rather female admirers who want to vividly describe their sexual acts with their ex-boyfriends.

That and receiving life-threatening calls all seem to be part of a YB’s job.

All quiet on the border front

2011-09-26T20:34:00.005+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Malaysians flocking to the Thai town of Golok for cheap food and shopping are as much victims of bomb blasts that target sleazy entertainment joints that supporters of a militant movement frown upon.

So how’s Golok? I asked a supervisor at a parking lot in Rantau Panjang next to the Golok River that separates Kelantan and Thailand’s Narathiwat province.

“Look at the car park. It is practically empty. Usually it is filled with cars,” said Mie of the RM5 a day parking lot, about 100m from the Malaysian immigration check point.

Four days after the triple bombings at Golok in Narathiwat province that killed four Malaysians (including a three-year-old boy) and a Thai national, and injured 50 people, Malaysians are staying clear of the border town in Thailand’s restive deep south.

“Are you going in without a passport?” Mie asked as I negotiated for a motorcycle ride into Golok town about 2km away.

I raised my eyebrows.

“There are men who don’t use their passport so that their wives won’t know they’ve been to Golok,” he said.

I asked him if it was safe to venture into Thailand without using a passport.

“Actually can. It is just a matter of whether in your heart, you feel safe,” said Mie.

“If you want to be safe, the hotel to stay in Golok is Genting Hotel (which has no relation to the famous resort in Pahang).

“It (the hotel) is closer to the Malaysian border – therefore clearer Malaysian mobile phone reception – and further from central Golok,” my colleague Syed Azhar told me.

“Don’t stay in Marina (in central Golok). It is located next to the entertainment centres, and can be a target.”

Room 904 in Genting Hotel has stained carpets and the smell of stale cigarette smoke permeated the air.

It was as if the room represented Golok.

“Where did the bombs go off?” I asked the bellboy in Malay.

The bellboy, a Thai Malay Muslim, pointed towards central Golok, about 2km away.

“Toom toom there at Marina Hotel and Merlin Hotel,” he said. “Now Malaysians are afraid to come to Golok.”

Once I had unpacked and hidden my iPad and passport under the bed, I went to look for a motorcycle taxi.

“Pai toom toom,” I told the driver in the little Thai that I knew (in Thai, pai means “go”).

He smiled and nodded his head. And he drove me to YB Karaoke, a greenish-coloured joint. Seated outside were smiling female GROs (guest relations officers) with brownish tinted hair and slender bodies.

There was no sign of “toom toom”.

Oops, I realised it was a classic case of “lost in translation”. He thought I wanted “boom boom”.

Boom boom, I was told, is the main reason Malaysian men visit Golok.

But that night there weren’t any. There were no Malaysian men with sweet, young Thais hanging on to them in Sin City.

The other Malaysians drawn to the border town are families on the lookout for cheap food and shopping.

“Boom! boom!” I told the driver with a tone that sounded like a bomb blast. And he understood that he had taken me to the wrong place.

The three bombs hidden in two motorcycles and a car set off a few minutes apart on Sept 16 night targeted two karaoke joints and a popular eatery near the Merlin and Marina hotels.

The bomb that killed the Malaysians was hidden in a car parked near the eatery. The place had an eerie, abandoned atmosphere to it.

Across the eatery, in Merlin hotel, a shattered glass pane has still not been replaced.

The day before I visited Golok, I was in Universiti Utara Malaysia in Kedah to interview Duncan McCargo, an expert on Thailand’s Deep South conflict.

I asked him why Golok was targeted.

“I don’t know who did it. Or what their particular motive was,” he said.

“But clearly this kind of incident is very effective in harming trade, in reducing the income that these communities receive from people coming from Malaysia.

“Many of the people who sympathise with the militant movement don’t like the entertainment industry.

“They don’t like bars, they don’t like prostitution and they don’t like a lot of the things that they see as symbols of the activities in Sungai Golok.

“And they don’t like the tourists going across the border to patronise those kinds of services, which they can’t necessarily access in Malaysia.”

In case you’re curious, no, I did not have the time for an ancient Thai massage with a happy ending.

A new spin on the conflict

2011-09-25T20:23:00.002+08:00

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Thai police and the military are saying that drug dealers had a hand in orchestrating the deadly coordinated bombings in Golok last Friday.

ON Sunday morning, Thai expert Duncan McCargo was “slightly surprised” when he read in a Malaysian newspaper about the triple bombings in Golok, Thailand.

“What was very striking is the paper (not The Star) was quoting Thai security officials suggesting that it had something to do with drugs, (thus) giving credence to that line of argument,” McCargo, a University of Leeds professor specialising in Thailand, related in an interview at the Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) campus in Kedah.

“I was slightly surprised that the commentary in the newspaper did not in any way critique this sort of line of explanation.”

McCargo was referring to the three bomb blasts in Golok in Narathiwat province that killed four Malaysians (including a three-year-old boy) and a Thai national and injured 50 others on Sept 16.

In a statement, Thai authorities alleged that drug dealers had a hand in the deadly coordinated bombings in the Thai town about two kilometres from the Kelantan border.

“I don’t know what caused this particular incident because it has not been investigated yet. But the fact that it has not been investigated yet does not stop the Thai authorities from immediately speculating along a particular line,” noted the author of several books on Thailand including Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand and Rethinking Thailand’s Southern Violence.

Research by McCargo and Srisompob Jitpiromsri of Prince of Songkla University, Pattani in Thailand’s Deep South (Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani) has shown otherwise.

“We are very, very critical of a recent trend which is actually a revisitation of an earlier trend by authorities in Thailand to claim that a lot of the violence in the Deep South are basically crime-related incidents,” said the Briton who is also a distinguished professor at the School of International Studies in UUM.

Thai authorities, according to McCargo, talk about these attackers not as “terrorists” or “militants” but as “perpetrators of violence”.

“This generic phrase has crept into news reports because it has been fed to journalists by police and the military who have decided to keep on talking about ‘perpetrator of violence’. Srisompob and I are deeply sceptical that this is a very useful way of explaining most of these incidents,” he said.

“It is perfectly possible that people could be killed in relation to drug smuggling and other (crime-related) stories. But with the scale of the (Golok) incident – three bombs going off in a tourist area – the idea that it was to get revenge on the Thai police seems pretty far-fetched for me.”

According to the Bangkok Post, the first of three explosions went off at 6.40pm opposite the Teochew Association.

The blast, which came from a parked motorcycle, wounded a large number of passersby, both tourists and locals, and killed a Thai. About 15 minutes later, another motorcycle bomb went off in front of a bar about 300m from the first explosion. Several Thais and Malaysian tourists sustained shrapnel wounds. At about 7.20pm, a third bomb exploded from a car parked near a food stall opposite the Merlin Hotel.

There are undoubtedly, admitted McCargo, some incidents in the Deep South where there aren’t any political incidents.

“Some of them are your normal tit-for-tat killings. Southern Thailand, and Thailand as a whole, is a very violent society. It has the second highest murder rate in Asia,” he explained.

“Thais don’t like to be reminded of this fact but actually, they’ve got a very, very serious violence problem all over the country.”

But with 4,700 people killed since 2004, the Deep South conflict is the third-most intensive insurgency in the world after Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not a normal crime

This figure, argued McCargo, did not commensurate with normal crime.

“Some of them may be normal crime but something else is going on which is much bigger. When people are shooting at military vehicles, attacking army bases, you can’t explain these incidents by reference to ordinary crimes,” he said.

“But the Thai authorities are doing the very best to claim that everything is normal, everything is all right, that Thailand is safe, everything is okay.”

It is quite dangerous, according to McCargo, to keep on talking that way as the logical assumption when you have a large bomb going off is that it is in some ways related to a political motive – some kind of separatist ethnic conflict.

The Thai authorities are in denial of the nature of the conflict. They refuse to admit that it is politically motivated and are more interested in inventing other explanations.

“They don’t want the outside world to think of the conflict as a civil war. Once you admit that, then you admit you’ve got a real legitimacy problem inside the Thai state,” he explained.

“They don’t want to admit that some kind of political problem exists. They want to believe that everybody loves Thailand, all Thais are happy to be Thai, everybody in Thailand is happy, everybody who goes to Thailand loves it, Thais are smiling, and so on. Bits of those things are true. But not all the time and not everywhere.”

What’s happening in the Deep South, according to McCargo, is the 64 million dollar question.

“That is what we are trying to get to the bottom of. This is a multi-casual conflict. There’s no one simple explanation,” said the professor who in 2005/2006 – driving mostly by himself in an old Mercedes Benz – visited all the red zones in the three Thai Muslim-majority provinces to research the Deep South conflict.

“My belief is – while this does not account for every violent incident – at the core of the problem is the crisis of legitimacy. You have 1.3 million Malay Muslims within these three provinces who have the potential to not fully embrace a Thai identity,” he explained.

“Undoubtedly some of these people will say, ‘we are Thai, we are happy with the label of Thai’. But a large majority of them are less than 100% happy with the label Thai and would tell you that they are Malay or talk about their identity in some other way.

“There’s a historical explanation to it. Like most countries which are not an island, Thailand has a problem with borders. Thailand’s borders are extremely messy as most of them – with Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia – have changed over time. You’ve got people inside Thailand who might not necessarily think of themselves as 100% Thai.”

But that is not how the Thai state sees it.

“The Thai state believes that everybody is loyal to the basic principles – nation, religion and king. And everybody sees themselves as Thai,” McCargo noted.

In summary, the professor said there was violence in the Deep South because there was a militant movement.

“People leading this movement are radicalising mostly kids from 18 to 25 to carry out these attacks. They are able to do the radicalisation as there is an underlying legitimacy deficit and underlying political problem,” he said.

The Deep South conflict can be solved. But it needs to be solved with a political solution.

“That is the difficulty. The Thais don’t want to admit that it is a political problem, which is why they are talking about drugs and ‘perpetrator of violence’. If they can just admit that it is a political problem, that they have less legitimacy in that part of the country, then they can start to address it,” McCargo explained.

“Thais are in denial. This latest incident (in Golok) to me is an illustration of that. They are burying their head in the sand and they have been talking in this way for the last seven years.”

Is Malaysia's history all about semantics?

2011-09-19T20:11:00.008+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The debate over when is Malaysia Day, Aug 31 or Sept 16, will continue as there are still differing views. But one thing is certain – there are Malaysians who are very passionate about our history.

Last week I had my Zainal Kling moment. In case there are those who are clueless on the recent big issue concerning Malaysia, here’s a summary.

Datuk Prof Dr Zainal Kling of the National Professors Council stirred a historical controversy when he declared that Malaya was never a British colony but only a “protectorate”.

Last week, in this column, I wrote an article titled “A lesson on Sept 16”.

It was a history lesson that the Federation of Malaya, not Malaysia, was created in 1957. And that Sabah and Sarawak did not join Malaysia – they formed the country together with the then Malaya and Singapore on Sept 16, 1963.

That was that, I thought. Until I received brickbats mostly from my fellow Sabahans. Though most comments were good-hearted ribbing, I felt as if I was a snake that bit its own tail.

There were jocular warnings that Sabah will use its special immigration power to bar me from entering my state.

There were also warnings that went for the jugular. I was accused of living in Kuala Lumpur too long.
Factually correct, as I’ve been living in Greater Kuala Lumpur for more than 25 years. But parochially incorrect as you can take Philip out of Sabah, but you can’t take Sabah out of Philip.

And it was as if I did not live through Parti Bersatu Sabah’s ‘Sabah for Sabahans’ political era.

Factually, there was nothing incorrect about my article. It is just that I neglected to mention something that is close to the heart of many Sabahans.

The first brickbat was from a reader who may or may not be a Sabahan or a Sarawakian.

Sonny68mak emailed: “If I recall correctly my history lessons, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore declared independence on Aug 31, 1963.

“They could not form Malaysia on that day because they were waiting for the official referendum results to be declared by the United Nations which was delayed by Jakarta and Manila’s protests at the UN,” wrote the reader, who could even be a Singaporean.

“So therefore the Borneo states independence was effective Aug 31, 1963. They formed Malaysia on Sept 16 as two-weeks-old independent sovereign states.”

“Please ask your Prof friend to recheck the facts so that the public is not confused.”

Fair comment, I thought. As if I was debating the issue, I would have taken a similar stand.

However, just to show him that I was not a hack, I replied: “Yes, I did check that fact with the Prof.”

“I told him for example, North Borneo gained independence on Aug 31, 1963 so it must have been an independent country,” I wrote.

“He said ‘no’ as even though the British granted independence to North Borneo on that day, it still administrated Sabah.”

As soon as I sent that email, I received an SMS from a Sabahan who is a veteran journalist. Though the timing of his SMS was coincidental, it was as if he sensed my “betrayal” in cyberspace.

The 40-something journalist SMS-ed: “I beg to differ. On Aug 31, 1963, the Union Jack came down and the Sabah flag went up. Sabah and Sarawak were independent nations until Sept 16, 1963. You’re selling propaganda. Ha ha”.

Immediately I called him. And after 30 minutes we agreed that history is about semantics. And, quoting Winston Churchill, “History is written by the victors”.

Then I received a call from a Penangite who is more Sabahan than me. Well, he has lived in Sabah for more than 20 years.

“We can buang negeri (kick you out of Sabah) you!” he said.

“Your article missed the point. You should have written that Sabah was a country before it formed Malaysia! And you should have written that 1/3 of Sabahans wanted to form Malaysia, 1/3 did not want to and 1/3 were undecided.”

“You’ve also missed the point that it was four equal nations (Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore) forming the Federation of Malaysia.”

“But, but, but,” I replied. “The point of my article is just to discuss Sept 16.” “No, you missed the point!” he said.

“Do you know that Sept 16 is also Lee Kuan Yew’s birthday?” I said, just to change the topic.

However sharp the comments I received throughout the day, it was delightful to know that 48 years after the fact, Sabahans are still passionate about their history.

Still, it made me feel as if I had sold Labuan to the Feds. Wonder where’s Zainal Kling? I need a hug. And some historical semantics.

Ibans find niche in Johor

2011-09-16T19:58:00.015+08:00

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

A large number of Ibans have settled down in Johor, driven by economic necessity.

ABOUT 15 years ago, M.M. Samy noticed an unfamiliar chattering among a group of people in a coffee shop in Masai town, Johor.

“They were not speaking Malay or English. It sounded different. It was not a language that I’ve ever heard,” recalled Samy, MIC assemblyman for Permas Jaya in Masai, about 25km east of Johor Baru.

Later, when Samy stumbled on more of these “strange sounding” people, he found that they were Ibans from Sarawak.

“At that time, there were not many of them in the Pasir Gudang area. You could see one or two of them in coffee shops. Then I saw more of them in Masai town,” said Samy, whose state seat is part of the Pasir Gudang parliament constituency. “Now there are so many of them.”

What Samy probably did not realise at that time was that he was witnessing the gradual migration of Ibans across the South China Sea from Sarawak to Johor.

Arguably, Johor has the largest number of Ibans living outside of Sarawak. The number ranges from 10,000 (according to Samy) to 40,000 (Dr John Brian Anthony of www. dayakbaru.com).

One of the early Ibans to live and work in Masai is Gong Anak Sandah, who hails from Engkilili, about 156km from Kuching.

In 1990, Gong left Sarawak’s capital to look for greener pastures. In Kuching, he earned about RM7 a day fixing bulldozer engines, while in Pasir Gudang, he made about RM20 a day working in the electrical department of a shipyard.

“I felt it was rugi (a waste) to leave my hometown. But I had to do so as it was difficult to find a high-paying job in Sarawak,” recalled Gong, 52, his voice almost drowned out by Iban songs at a karaoke session at the coffee shop next door.

“When I found a job in Pasir Gudang, I could breathe easier as I was able to feed my family,” said Gong, who has 12 children aged seven to 30.

When Gong first moved to Masai, he felt like a foreigner. At that time, there were not many Ibans living in Masai.

“Back then, when you walked around Masai town at 6pm, you could spot about 10 Ibans. Now there are hundreds of them. If you want to see more Ibans, just go to the supermarkets,” smiled Gong.

Better economic opportunities in Johor drove hundreds of Ibans to abandon their home state.

According to John Brian of www.dayakbaru.com, his kinsmen started to migrate to Johor in big numbers in the late 1990s, when major construction in the booming oil and gas town of Bintulu in Sarawak was completed.

“We have a tradition called berjelai (an Iban word for journey). The purpose of berjelai is to seek knowledge and fortune,” he explained.

“When there were no jobs for skilled and semi-skilled workers in Bintulu, many headed for Pasir Gudang, a booming oil and gas town, and shipyard.”

These Ibans, noted John Brian, had no choice but to leave Sarawak as “there was nothing for them back home.”

The Ibans have made themselves felt in their adopted state. There are several Iban-owned shops in Taman Megah Ria in Masai. There you can find several Iban coffee shops selling kolo mee (a famous Sarawakian noodle dish), Apai Jamming Studio, Gereja Methodist Iban Johor, Gagasan Dayak Iban Malaysia Bersatu (GAIU or Iban Dayak United Malaysian Organisation) office and a shop selling CDs of singers from Sarawak.

On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, there is a Tamu Dayak (some call it Pasar Borneo) where popular Sarawakian products – fresh and salted terubok, live sago worms, midin (wild jungle fern) and wild boar – are sold.

Some of the churches in Johor have masses conducted in the Iban language.

The Ibans studying in Johor schools, according to Samy, contribute to national integration as they have introduced their culture to the other students.

“I’ve attended school functions where students danced the ngajat (a traditional Iban dance),” he related.

For these Ibans, Johor has become their home. Transplanted Sarawakians such as Gong have become Johorean. If before Gong spoke Malay like a Sarawakian, now he could pass off as a native speaker from Johor.

“I consider this place as my kampung halaman (village). We have made the surrounding jungle our own. We hunt for wildlife such as monitor lizard, anteater, wild boar and porcupine in the nearby jungle. We also look for vegetables which many locals are not aware are edible,” said Gong.

However, his heart belongs to Sarawak. “One day I will go back and live in Sarawak. I’m worried that if I don’t take care of the paddy fields and rubber plantation in Engkilili, someone will grab it,” he said.

According to GAIU Johor president Sai Malaka, the Ibans here can be divided into two categories.

Some like Gong plan to work in Johor (or Singapore) and save enough money (about RM100,000 to RM150,000) so that they can return home and invest in a business.

Others plan to live permanently in the adopted state as life in Johor can be pretty comfortable.

“Just take transportation; the journey from one Johor town to another is superfast because of the highway. In Sarawak, such journey may take a day,” explained Sai, 45, owner of Panggau Libau Paradise restaurant in Taman Megah Ria.

Back in Sarawak, it takes Sai nine hours to travel from his longhouse in Katibas to Sibu town. This includes a six-hour boat journey to Song, a small river station. From Song, it is another three hours on an express boat to Sibu.

“Unlike my house in Masai, my longhouse in Katibas has no piped water or electricity. The closest hospital is nine hours by boat,” said Sai.

However, there is no denying that Sai misses his longhouse.

“What I miss most is the community bond in the longhouse. Here (in Johor) it is difficult to trust anyone. Even though you think someone is your friend, he might steal your motorcycle. True friends – that’s what most Sarawakians living here miss most,” Sai lamented.

A lesson on Sept 16

2011-09-12T19:54:00.005+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The federation of Malaya, not Malaysia, was created in 1957. Sabah and Sarawak did not join Malaysia – they formed the country together with the then Malaya and Singapore on Sept 16, 1963.

ON AUG 31, I spent my Merdeka Day holiday tweeting history lessons. I found certain historical inaccuracies on my Twitter timeline as annoying as – to misquote a tweet from @ATM2U – seeing a straight man eat cupcake.

For example, one of Malaysia’s tycoons tweeted: “Independence day for Malaysia today.”

As a Sabahan, I just had to correct him even though he is worth a billion times more than me. So @PhilipGolingai admonished: “Sir, independence day for Malaya. Malaysia was formed on Sept 16, 1963.”

Then someone – not the billionaire – tweeted: “Why Singapore not celebrating Malaya’s Indepen-dence day?”

History was definitely not her favourite subject.

I replied: “When Malaya declared Merdeka, Singapore was under the British. On Sept 16, 1963, Singapore, Malaya, Sabah & Sarawak formed Malaysia.”

My colleague @ChiaYingTheStar (Lim Chia Ying) tweeted: “How can a tv station say Happy Birthday to M’sia on Aug 31?? My gosh, no wonder kids can never learn real facts?”

On Merdeka Day, Faridah Stephens, daughter of one of Malaysia’s founding fathers, Tun Fuad Stephens (Sabah Chief Minister), reminded her Peninsular Malaysian friends of our country’s history.

“(Some of) my friends wished Happy 54th Birthday Malaysia. They always say Malaysia. But it is not Malaysia’s independence but Malaya’s,” she lamented.

On Facebook, Faridah watched a video clip of Negaraku sung in Chinese. The rendition was “beautiful” but the ending of the video was a “dampener”.

“Alamak, I thought, when I saw ‘Happy 54th Birthday Malaysia’ at the end,” she said.

How did her friends’ respond to her reminder?

“Some people went quiet,” she said, laughing heartily.

Some Malaysians mistake Aug 31 for Malaysia’s birthday, according to Faridah, because “we tend to be West (Peninsular) Malaysia-centric”.

“Many forget that Malaysia did not exist until 1963. Malaysia was not created in 1957. Sabah and Sarawak did not join Malaysia, they formed the country,” she said, adding that “I’m just stating a historical fact.”

To get my historical facts right, I called my old classmate, then a history buff, at La Salle secondary school in Tanjung Aru, Sabah.

“Why are there Malaysians who confuse Hari Merdeka as Malay-sia’s birthday?” I asked Danny Wong Tze Ken, a history professor in Universiti Malaya.

Wong lectured me on the birth of Malaysia. Here’s a summary: On Aug 31, 1957, the Federation of Malaya was established. It was expanded into the Federation of Malaysia on Sept 16, 1963. The country became larger with the inclusion of Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah. And in 1965, Singapore left.

“If you think of the day for independence for Malaysia, then Sept 16, is logical for Sabahans and Sarawakians as that was when both states achieved independence, in 1963. But for the people of Peninsular Malaysia clearly it was Aug 31, 1957, as that was when Tunku Abdul Rahman declared Merdeka,” Wong explained.

“So when is Malaysia’s birthday?” I asked.

“The best answer is to take the case of the United States. Their independence day is July 4, 1776, even though at that time there were only 13 colonies. Although the rest of the United States was incorporated only later, all the 50 states observe July 4 as Indepen-dence Day,” he said.

“So when is Malaysia’s birthday?” I asked again.

“As a newly formed Federation of Malaysia the birthday of Malaysia will be Sept 16 whereas the Independence Day of the country remains on Aug 31,” he said.

Wong said over the years, Sept 16 was no longer celebrated as Malaysia Day.

“In Sabah it was celebrated as the TYT’s (Governor’s) birthday. And Sabahans wondered why that day was then celebrated as the TYT’s birthday and not as Malaysia Day,” he added.

“It was only last year that Sept 16 was declared a public holiday to commemorate the formation of Malaysia,” the historian said.

So, on Friday, if you are on Twitter, don’t forget to tweet “Happy 48th Birthday Malaysia!”

Ha! Ha! and Malaysian hrumph

2011-09-05T19:49:00.011+08:00

One Man's Meat
By Philip Golingai

We used to be able to make racist jokes and laugh at them because they were so shamelessly funny. But now people have become so sensitive that many things need to be taken into consideration before making a joke.

“WAIT! You don’t like hamburgers! Don’t you? You like ice cream! Ice-cream!” a woman shouted at a man about to take his first bite into a hamburger at a fast food joint.

“But I’m lactose intolerant,” the man protested.

“But it is Summertime!” the woman said in a sing-song manner and the camera focused on her exaggerated look – wide eyes and a gaping mouth.

Introducing “Summertime” (the Hamburger episode), a two-minute plus video clip that pokes fun at the controversial television advertisements which caused a public uproar last month.

It is a series of three video clips which you can view by searching for “Summertime 1tv” on YouTube.

The production of the video clips, according to Davina Goh who played the food police, was “a very casual thing”.

They were shot in about three hours in Petaling Jaya last month.

“My friend Colin Shafer (a Canadian social science lecturer based in Petaling Jaya) felt strongly about the TV advertisements.

“We (together with two actors) wanted a very abstract approach to responding to the controversy,” said the 28-year-old actor, who is currently rehearsing for Datin Seri Tiara Jacquelina’s contemporary spy caper The Secret Life Of Nora.

The video clips – with over-the-top acting – were too abstract for some viewers.

“A few of my friends told me ‘I don’t get it’.

“Most found the video clips just funny, but I don’t know whether they understand it or not,” she said.

Here are some of the comments she received on Twitter and Facebook: “love ur cross-eye pose on 1TV. Hahaha!”, “I like your insane twitching eyeball at around 0:58” and “wow ... that’s mean hahaha”.

In making the videos, Goh realised that Malaysia was a complex country.

“There was a scene where I wore a towel over my head, and I questioned myself whether it was appropriate to wear a towel over my head,” she explained.

“That made me realise how Malaysians have become so sensitive that we have lost our sense of humour.”

“No,” the actor corrected herself.

“We have not lost our sense of humour. We have just lost the concept of what is our humour. We don’t know what to laugh at anymore. We don’t know what is appropriate and what is inappropriate.”

“Everyone is just so highly strung that when we think it is appropriate to laugh at something, it is actually not.”

So what is the state of Ha Ha Ha in Malaysia?

“I find it fascinating,” she observed.

“We’re in a country which is a melting pot of everything – culture, race and religion. We used to be able to laugh at ourselves. We used to make racist jokes and laugh at it because it was so shameless (funny).”

“But now Malaysian humour has so much baggage.

“There are so many things you need to take into consideration before you make a joke.”

Here’s a “racist” joke Davina made. “An Indian, a Chinese and a Malay were stuck in a magical room where they could only escape by telling a lie about themselves.”

I’d better not publish the joke. Never know who I might offend. Anyway the punch line is “I think”.

Goh is a TV commercial model (such as for Dynamo, Whisper and DiGi). The Peranakan Chinese has also been on several “most gorgeous Malaysian” lists.

I asked her: “How come you are on FHM (one of 12 finalists for FHM Magazine’s ‘Girl Next Door’ Competition, 2009) as you are more wacky than sexy?”

“Many people have told me that. Why did you do it, you are too intelligent for FHM?” she said.

“I just like dipping my toes into everything.

“Yes, I’m wacky but strangely enough men find that sexy.

“The fact that I am really funny and cooky, men find that really attractive as not many girls know how to let their hair loose.”

One of the tweets on Goh’s “Summertime” video is: “if only I could let myself go like you! Master show me the way”.

Indeed, she’s the master of letting herself loose.

“People like hanging out with me as they say I am one of a kind. I don’t know what that means.

“But I know that I do a lot of things my friends will probably not do because there is a lot of social restraint about handling yourself in public and doing things on impulse,” she explained.

Too bad when it comes to racy jokes about Malaysians, Goh has to tie a bun and be prim and proper.

Making sense of swelling house prices

2011-08-29T19:45:00.002+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Where previously it took about two to three months for a house to be sold, now it is more like a week. And prices have shot through the roof.

LATELY, my favourite pastime is driving around USJ Subang Jaya to look for houses for sale. I’ve no intention of buying a house. I just like to know the market value of the property in my township, which is about 20km from Kuala Lumpur.

A week ago I saw a “For Sale” sign and I punched in the real estate agent’s number.

And I was pleasantly shocked to discover that a link house a few metres from mine was sold for RM390,000.

Yeah, I thought, I’m 39% a millionaire.

Well, maybe 33%, as my link house is at a T-Junction and faces west.

I was also shocked, because I assumed 20 x 60 link houses in USJ 13 were priced around RM250,000 to RM300,000 (depending on whether the owner had extended the unit).

My assumption was based on my immediate neighbour’s link house having been sold for RM218,000 last year.

I was told it went for a song as the market price was around RM250,000.

Yes, I regret not buying that house.

For the rest of my life I will be living next to a symbol of my lack of foresight.

Is my other neighbour’s house really worth RM390,000? Curious, I drove around USJ 13 looking for “For Sale” signs.

And my calls to real estate agents confirmed the RM390,000 price tag was not a fluke, or a “fake” like the RM14.5bil golden yacht.

Each time I call a real estate agent I get a “wow!” moment.

The prices are unbelievable in this award-winning township USJ (UEP Subang Jaya).

For example, an abandoned, dilapidated 3,000 sq ft corner house in USJ 3 went for RM715,000.

A basic one-and-a-half storey house in USJ 11 was sold for RM450,000.

I’ve been making so many calls to real estate agents that I’ve become an adept real estate agent of sorts. I can now size up a unit and correctly guess the asking price.

Now my favourite question is not “how much?” but “why is the price unbelievable?”

One real estate agent told me “the prices don’t make sense”. To make sense of the property market in USJ, I had a chat with M.L. Ho, Property Watch head of operations.

“How’s the market for USJ houses?” I asked the real estate agent with 15 years’ experience in the business.

“Very vibrant – in the sense that there are more buyers than sellers (10 genuine buyers to one seller). In terms of pick-up rate, there has been a sudden surge since the beginning of this year,” Ho said.

“So has the jump in prices. We have not seen this for a long, long time.

“In fact a price jump – some of them 60% – is very unprecedented in the property market.”

Usually, a house is sold around a week after the “For Sale” sign is put up.

Previously, it took about two to three months for a house to be sold.

The jump in prices was “so fantastic” that it caught many buyers as well as the experienced real estate agent himself by surprise.

His 29-year-old software engineer son was looking for a RM400,000 house early this year.

“We were stunned when we found out that the prices (for the size they were looking for) had shot up to 500K,” related Ho, who lives in USJ.

“Unfortunately for my son, the price of houses just keeps going up. There is a rush to buy property in USJ. Buyers are sort of panicking because there is a lack in supply.

“We thought the prices have gone haywire.But, the thing is, if you don’t buy, there are always people who are willing to buy.”

Until now, his son is still searching for a house.

“My advice to him is to slow down and wait for the scenario to change as I think the property price has reached a very, very dangerous level,” he said. However, some may disagree with me on this.”

The surge in house prices, according to Ho, is due to the fact that there is no more land around USJ for development.

It is also because developers are building expensive houses in USJ (a newly-launched link house in USJ Height costs about RM800,000).

The “fantastic” house prices in USJ are reflective of the property market in the Klang Valley.

“There is a surge in prices, especially for landed property,” Ho said.

The property market is so hot that I constantly receive flyers from real estate agents asking if I want to sell my house.

When I read the “invitation to sell” letters, I wonder whether I live in a bubble.

The kiasu and kiasi of being Singaporean

2011-08-22T18:38:00.001+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

According to former Singapore Miss World Ris Low, Singaporeans are always hustling and bustling. Life is very stressful, very ‘kiasu’ (overly-competitive) and very ‘kiasi’ (afraid of doing something wrong).

FOR someone who can’t wink, former Singapore Miss World contestant Ris Low sure can think.

Or that was the impression I got from the Singaporean who was named as one of Asia’s 25 most influential people by CNN’s affiliate website CNNGo in 2009.

The 21-year-old beauty queen sure had a lot of things on her mind when I interviewed her to get the low-down on her nation.

Singapore, a five-hour drive from Subang Jaya, has been my second home as I’ve got in-laws living there.

I enjoy my weekend stay in the island republic. But each time I’m in the Little Red Dot (as former Indonesian President B.J. Habibie described Singapore) I wondered what makes our southern neighbours tick.

Even though I’m on holiday, there’s always something stressful about the island republic. Is it because its parking space is narrower than in Malaysia or drivers love to honk when you’re a tad slow to respond to a green light or the “ticking” ERP (Electronic Road Pricing, an electronic system of road pricing based on a pay-as-you-use principle)?

And, I thought, who was better to explain Singapore than Miss Singapore World 2009. Low, according to CNNGo, is “singularly responsible for giving Singapore its catchphrase of the year (2009) – the infamous ‘Boomz!’”.

Life as a Singaporean, said Low, was “very competitive.”

“We are always hustling and bustling. Very fast pace. Very kiasu (overly-competitive). Very kiasi (afraid of doing something wrong). Very stressful,” noted the beauty queen in an interview at a McDonald’s in a suburb of Singapore.

An example of kiasu behaviour, according to Low, is Singaporeans will queue up when they see a long line.

“They don’t know what they are queuing up for but they assume if there is a queue there is something good at the end of the line,” she explained.

Low’s definition of kiasi is “everybody covering their own backside”.

“For example, Singaporeans like to talk about politics among themselves but they will not voice it out at another level (publicly),” she related.

Curious to go beyond the clichéd description of Singaporeans being kiasu and kiasi, I asked “What’s the big advantage of being a Singaporean?”

“Our passport is very good that we don’t need visa (to visit another country),” Low said, with a look that could be described as “Boomz”.

The disadvantage of being a Singaporean, according to Low, is “you can’t afford to have a past”.

“Once you have a past, Singaporeans are very unforgiving,” she revealed.

“My case is the perfect example,” she said, referring to her conviction for credit card fraud. Eventually, about two months after being crowned Miss Singapore World 2009, she had to give up her title.

Low continued: “I hope Singaporeans will stand up for their own people. Almost every beauty queen in Singapore has been put down by these cowards who sit behind their computer and bully us by saying we are ugly.

“It is very sad that they are stepping on us to make themselves taller,” she added.

“What’s a distinctive Singaporean character?” I asked.

“When you need help, everybody just stares at you,” she noted.

“For example, I witnessed an accident and I gave first aid to the victim. Then I asked the uncles and aunties who were watching to call 911 but nobody came forward to help. All they were interested in was to take down the car’s plate number.”

It was the same when a man pulled down Low’s strapless dress while she was in a taxi queue last year.

“I asked for help. But nobody helped me and the man managed to run away. I felt like a fool. I felt like digging a hole and burying myself so that I would just die,” she revealed.

“Singaporeans are too caught up in their own world – always vying for money and status. They have lost their heart.”

But Low also admitted there are Singaporeans who did not appreciate help.

“I once tried to help an old lady cross the street. I offered to carry her shopping bags because they looked heavy and she looked frail,” she related. “But she scolded me because she thought I wanted to steal her shopping bags. It was so embarrassing.”

Turning philosophical, Low noted: “In Singapore nobody has pure intention. Everybody has an agenda. So I understand why the older you are, the more you lose hope in life.”

At the end of the interview, the beauty queen attempted to wink and failed. Smiling, she apologised, saying “my facial muscles are not trained to wink”.

Lost in one’s own country

2011-08-15T22:48:00.007+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Despite the nation’s ‘mid-life crisis’ and often feeling like a stranger in his own land, Mr Brown and many of his fellow countrymen are still proud to call Singapore their home.

ON Tuesday afternoon, popular Singapore satirist Mr Brown reminded his wife not to lose sight of their kids in the MRT train.

“Our two kids were wearing red and white and I was worried we could not find them as everyone else’s children were wearing red and white, too” related Lee Kin Mun, whose childhood nickname is Mr Brown.

Like most Singaporeans on the MRT, the Lee family – minus nine-year-old Faith, their eldest child – was on their way to watch the National Day parade at Marina Bay waterfront in Singapore.

That evening, while his wife and kids watched from the stands, Mr Brown was working – taking photographs of the island republic’s 46th birthday celebration.

“Is Singapore facing a mid-life crisis?” I asked the 42-year-old blogger who describes himself as “the accidental author of popular Singapore website mrbrown.com that has been documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life since 1997”.

Fresh from his 10km bicycle ride from his Tampines HDB flat to his office in Kampong Glam, Mr Brown wryly said: “We are starting to want to look for other women. We just had five new members of parliament from the opposition. We are not so loyal anymore. We want some variety in our life.

“As a nation, we are looking for something more than just that one person, that one party. We want to party more.”

The “woman” Mr Brown is talking about is the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) which has won every general election since 1959.

How is Singapore 2011 compared with Singapore 2001?

“I don’t think people feel very well off. We are still well provided for, but the Singaporean dream of owning a car, a house and maybe private property is kind of out of reach for most people in the middle class. Wages have not kept up with the rising cost of living,” the satirist lamented.

“Ten years ago we did not have that many foreign workers here. And while most Singaporeans don’t have anything against foreigners, the rate at which they come in and their lack of integration are causing lots of friction in society.

“You walk into an MRT carriage and sometimes you are the only Singaporean surrounded by foreigners – you can tell by their accent.”

Foreigners, according to the blogger, need to change their behaviour and become more integrated into Singapore society.

For example, he said, workers from China must realise that the island republic is not “Little China”, and they should not assume the other races in multi-racial Singapore spoke Chinese.

“But the football team that whacked Malaysia are made of...” I started.

“Foreign talents. You must use the right term,” Mr Brown interjected with a mischievous grin.

Are you proud that Singapore kicked Malaysia out of the World Cup?

“It is with mixed feelings. On one hand, yeah, we won. But on the other hand, it is the same feeling as when we won an Olympic silver medal in table tennis. Most Singaporeans went ‘it would be nicer if somebody born and bred here had won it,’” he explained.

But aren’t they Singaporean?

“Yeah, right. They are...on paper. But maybe 10 years from now people will accept them as true Singaporeans,” he said.

“But still, that victory against the Malaysian football team was sweet.”

“When we beat Malaysia it was like we won the World Cup. That is the way we are, as we will never win the World Cup in my lifetime,” he explained.

“Are you the voice of dissent in Singapore?” I asked Mr Brown, who used to write a column in Today newspaper from 2003 to 2006 but was “suspended indefinitely” when the government did not find his comment – “the price of goods went up after the 2006 polls” – funny.

“Dissent is a strong word. I think I am the voice of satire,” said the blogger, who produces multimedia content for corporate and government clients.

“I am like most Singaporeans. We sit at home and we complain. We agree that there are good things about Singapore, but at the same time we are quite quick to point out where the gaps are. In my case, I just say it louder than most people.”

Where is Singapore heading?

“Hell knows. Everybody is giving me doom and gloom stories. I think it is going to be more competitive for us,” he said.

“But adversity is healthy. I think we will do okay, as we are not strangers to reinventing ourselves.”

Johor’s own Iban heartland

2011-08-08T22:34:00.001+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

There are thousands of them at Ground Zero' for Johor-based Ibans Taman Megah Ria in Masai. Six out of 10 of those patronising the shops there are Ibans.

ON Wednesday, I went headhunting for Ibans in Johor.

“Huh?” a peninsular Malaysian friend said, when told of my plan. “Ibans and Johor don't equate,” he said.

I told him arguably the largest number of Ibans living outside of Sarawak is in Johor.

The number depending on who you speak with ranges from 40,000 (Dr John Brian Anthony of www.dayakbaru.com) to 10,000 (Datuk M.M. Samy, the MIC assemblyman for Permas, a state seat under the Pasir Gudang parliament constituency).

The Ibans crossed the South China Sea to berjelai (an Iban word for journey) to Johor (and nearby Singapore) because of limited economic opportunities in their home state.

Ground Zero for the Johor-based Ibans is at Taman Megah Ria in Masai, Pasir Gudang.

Six out of 10 people patronising the 40-odd shops in the housing area about 22km from Johor Baru are Ibans.

If you walk around the four blocks of shops, you'll get a clue as to why the place attracts Ibans.

There's Panggau Libau Paradise restaurant (serving ayam pansoh, chicken cooked in bamboo, and kolo mee, a famous Sarawakian noodle dish), the Apai Jamming Studio, Gereja Methodist Iban Johor, the Gagasan Dayak Iban Malaysia Bersatu (GAIU or Iban Dayak United Malaysian Organisation) office and a shop selling CDs of singers from Sarawak and Sabah.

The main attraction is the Tamu Dayak (some call it Pasar Borneo) on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons.

At the wet market at the car park boxed in by the four shop blocks you can find popular Sarawakian products such as fresh and salted terubok fish, live sago worms, midin (wild jungle fern which is stir fried in belacan) and wild boar.

Tamu Dayak, according to GAIU Johor president Sai Malaka, started around 1998 when Sarawakians attending three churches, Calvary, Methodist and Sidang Injil Borneo, located at Taman Megah Ria town sold vegetables such as midin along the shops corridors.

Then in 2005 the Johor Baru City Council “chased away” the vegetable hawkers because they did not have permits.

“We needed local backing to obtain a licence to open a market,” recalled Sai, an Iban who is a Johor People's Progressive Party (PPP) exco member.

“And we approached PPP to help establish a farmers' market.”

In 2007, the Pasar Pagi PPP (PPP morning market) was born. It evolved into an afternoon market and became known as Tamu Dayak.

The wet market, noted Johor PPP chairman Datuk Dr Siva Kumar, offered a unique Borneo experience to Johoreans.

“When you go to a local market it is all business.

“The hawkers do not have time to speak to you.

“The guy selling the vegetable will say How much do you want? One kilo? You don't want? Ok, you can go',” Dr Siva related.

“With the Sarawakians, no doubt they are there to do business. but I find them to be humble and simple.

“When you ask them about a vegetable from the forest in Johor which I've never seen, they will tell you how it should be cooked.”

Interestingly, I thought the produce sold at the Tamu Dayak was indigenous to Sarawak.

But when I did my “marketing”, the Iban hawkers told me the bamboo shoot came from Batu Pahat, the sago worms from palm oil estates in Kulai and wildlife from the jungles in Pasir Gudang.

“The locals have limited knowledge of what they can harvest from the jungle,” noted Sai, the owner of Panggau Libau Paradise restaurant.

“However, the market has made many aware and interested in this produce.”

The back of Panngau Libau Paradise faces Tamu Dayak and next door is an Iban restaurant, Randau Ruai.

There, 25-year-old kindergarten teacher Elise Lapik, an Iban who could easily win a Kumang Gawai (Dayak Harvest Festival Queen) contest, together with her mother and aunt were ordering Sarawak laksa.

“We are here because of the market,” explained Elise, born in Kapit, a town in Sarawak only accessible by boat via Malaysia's longest river, the Rajang, or by helicopter.

When she was eight, her family moved to the greener pasture of Johor. For her, Taman Megah Ria is like a mini Sarawak.

“I love this place. So many Sarawakians here. Whatever we want from Sarawak we can get here,” she enthused.

From ‘so what’ to instant fan

2011-08-01T23:21:00.001+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Soulful singer Amy Winehouse has joined the exclusive “forever 27 club” – troubled musicians who die at that age – ending her struggle with substance abuse.

AMY Winehouse is dead. And I’m now a fan. I found out via Twitter that Winehouse died at about 12.23am (Malaysian time) on July 24.

@asianbeaver retweeted: “Police sources have confirmed that Amy Winehouse is dead. Found at her North London home at 3.54pm. Drink and drugs overdose suspected.”

So what? I thought. Another singer dead. What’s new? I was clueless about Winehouse’s reputation.

She was a name and face that I was hazily aware of. When she was alive, I had little curiosity about a singer whose trademarks were her beehive, heavy eyeliner, tattoos, six-inch stilettos and micro-dresses.

After reading www.dailychilli.com (a Malaysian website designed to add sizzle and spice to your life), I knew that she was a troubled young woman.

Her trouble had something to do with substance abuse.

I was also clueless about her music. I assumed that with her druggie image she was a punk rock or an emo artist (emo is a style of rock music typically characterised by melodic musicianship and expressive, often confessional, lyrics).

Now, don’t give me that dirty look. I’ve been ignorant of contemporary music since I got tired of watching MTV about a decade ago.

Probably the last music video I ever watched on MTV was Madonna’s Music.

Minutes after her death, my Twitter timeline (a real-time list of tweets on Twitter) was swamped with tweets about Winehouse’s tragic death.

The one tweet which changed me from “So what?” to “Who is she?” was from @imfionaho: (Winehouse) is the singer who sang “They tried to make me go to rehab. I said no, no, no.”

(According to bbc.co.uk, the song Rehab – about her refusal to attend an alcohol rehabilitation centre – generated huge publicity with Winehouse frequently being photographed drinking on stage and in pubs.)

And – because I am now part of the generation that doesn’t watch CNN or BBC on TV – with a quick tap of my right middle finger on the iPad I googled “Amy Winehouse”.

I watched a BBC breaking news video clip.

The announcer said the singer was found dead by ambulance crews at her London flat. He continued: “In an era of synthetic music, she was a singer-songwriter. The stuff that she sang was her own.”

Winehouse, was also described in the BBC report as one of the most talented and soulful artists of her age. That was a ‘huh’ moment for me. Talented? Soulful?

Curious, I clicked YouTube to watch her video Back To Black. And I became an instant fan.

The lyrics were so sorrowful: “We only said goodbye with words. I died a hundred times. You go back to her. And I go back to black.”

Her voice was so soulful.

It was her break-up with boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil (a former video production assistant and fellow drug user) that inspired Back To Black, a single in her million-selling album of the same title which was released in October 2006.

“One of the secrets of the singer’s success,” according to Fiona Sturges of British newspaper The Independent, “was that her pain was real, born from her much-publicised drug abuse and heartache.”

Her out-of-control personal life made her the Lindsay Lohan of soul music.

Winehouse shocked a journalist from Spin (a US magazine) when she carved Fielder-Civil’s name on her abdomen with a shard from a mirror during the interview.

In May 2007, she secretly married Fielder-Civil in Florida, United States. They divorced in 2009.

You can watch YouTube clips of her disastrous final performance in Belgrade last month.

Winehouse cancelled her Euro-pean comeback tour after she – in the words of Sturges – “appeared drunk, mumbling into the microphone, clutching members of her band and at one point, sitting on the floor and removing her shoes.”

She was booed off stage.

Winehouse died at the age of 27. The soulful singer joins an exclusive club – “forever 27” – of troubled musicians to die at that age.

Musical legends such as Janis Joplin (Queen of Rock and Roll and the Queen of Psychedelic Soul), Jimi Hendrix (one of the greatest electric guitarists in musical history), Jim Morrison (The Doors frontman) and Kurt Cobain (lead singer in grunge band Nirvana).

When you do the math, Lady Gaga (born March 28, 1986) has two more years to go, while 17-year-old Justin Bieber will be luckier, as his singing career will probably be dead before he reaches the “forever 27” mark.

Winehouse may have died, but her music lives on.

Faking it for real beauty

2011-07-25T22:48:00.003+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Former Miss Malaysia finalist Leng Yein thinks nothing about going under the knife as long as it enhances her looks. And she says she may have a fake face and fake boobs but ‘I have a real personality’.

THE first time model Leng Yein thought of going for plastic surgery was in 2003 when she was 18.

At that time she was Miss Pahang and a Miss Malaysia 2003 finalist and her boyfriend had betrayed her with a pretty girl.

“I was quite heartbroken, so I told myself if one day I could afford it, I would make myself look pretty,” recalled the 26-year-old model who grew up in Kuantan.

Three years later, her wish became a reality. In an act which she described as “random”, she went under the knife in Beijing.

Leng Yein was in China to participate in Miss Tourism International 2006. After the pageant she extended her stay in Beijing.

“I went to a massage parlour because I was so bored.

“There was this girl with a red nose and I asked her, “Do you have a running nose?”

She replied, “No, I just did my nose.”

And I asked myself: “How come I did not notice she had a nose job” .

They became friends.

The next day the Beijing girl took her shopping.

“While shopping, she told Leng Yein that she wanted to say “hello” to her plastic surgeon.

“There were so many people lying down (at the clinic) cutting their nose. I could see that it was a dodgy place.

I asked, “How long to do the whole thing?”

I was told it took an half hour to 40 minutes.

“And there and then I did it (to make her flat nose sharper),” she said.

A few months later, while visiting Miss Thailand (whom she befriended during the Miss Tourism International pageant) in Bangkok, in another random act, Leng Yein went under the knife again. This time to stitch dimples on her cheeks and a boob job.

“Actually I have big breasts but they were just not that firm. I wanted them to be perky.

“And also I wanted them balanced (as one was slightly smaller than the other),” said the model who went from BC bra size to CD (one cup size bigger).

The boob job was painful. She could not jiggle them for two months or carry heavy stuff.

In 2008, she redid her nose (Her nose had an unnatural L-shape) in Kuala Lumpur. Plus the nose job was free as she was the ambassador of a plastic surgery company.

In Sept 2010, in Kuala Lumpur she made her lips (“they were really, really thin that when I smiled I couldn’t see them”) thicker.

Unlike most Malaysians who have undergone plastic surgery, Leng Yein has gone public about hers.

“I’m probably the only person in Malaysia who dares tell everyone that I went for plastic surgery. Maybe it is because I’m an Aries. I will write about it in my blog (lengyein.blogspot.com) or Facebook (facebook.com/lengyein),” said the businesswoman, who owns a boutique, fashion accessories shop, nail & beauty salon, tattoo parlour and a mamak restaurant.

Her blog and Facebook followers’ response to her “confession” has been 65% negative (for example, do you want ending up like Michael Jackson?). But 99% of the private messages she received have been positive.

“Many are girls who want to go for plastic surgery but are afraid that people will think of them differently,” she noted.

So what does her hubby – who is quite a romantic (he proposed to her via a billboard in Petaling Jaya on 9-9-09) – think?

“He hates plastic surgery. But it (plastic surgery) was a random thing for me.

“When I did it and came home with stitches, he would ask ‘why do you keep cutting yourself?’ But he would respect my decision,” she said.

On Thursday, Leng Yein will fly to Seoul for probably her last plastic surgery as she doesn’t want to end up like Michael Jackson (who allegedly had a botched nose job).

She couldn’t resist the offer of free plastic surgery performed by South Korea’s top plastic surgeons.

In exchange of getting big eyes like Japan’s pop princess Ayumi Hamasaki, dimples (fake dimple last for a year), a new nose, she has agreed to be the poster girl of a Kuala Lumpur-based plastic surgery company.

At the end of the interview, the bubbly Leng Yein confided: “I might have a fake face and fake boobs but I have a real personality.”

Local celebs blur on Twitter

2011-07-18T02:18:00.002+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Tweet addict Adam Tuan Mukriz finds reading has never been this fun. On Twitter less is definitely more, and summing up one’s ideas in fewer than 140 characters is a challenge.

IT was a Wednesday night and Twitterer @ATM2U was very, very bored in his Kuala Lumpur apartment and he decided to be playful.

He remembered how a friend used reverse psychology on unfollowers (those who cease to follow a Twitter user) by thanking them for unfollowing.

@ATM2U thought it would be cool to pretend a celebrity had just unfollowed him.

Iman, a Somalian ex-supermodel and David Bowie’s wife, came to his mind, naturally.

@ATM2U explained in an e-mail: “Iman has always intrigued me as the epitome of a successful juxtaposition of cultures.

“Iman has a je ne sais quoi (French for “something that cannot be adequately described”). She is one of the earliest Black models who proved that beauty has no race, breaking many taboos.”

So he tweeted: “Thanks @The_Real_IMAN for unfollowing. Have a pleasant day filled with keimanan (faith)”.

“Unbeknownst to me, Iman was online,” recalled the man who speaks Malay, English and French fluently. “And she responded by saying: ‘ok, ok, ok.... i’m following! happy?”

“Hehehe! Cemas ni (I’m anxious) ... I am one step closer to Heaven!” was one of @ATM2U’s instant tweets.

Immediately, a few of his followers responded.

“Someone asked if we went to school together and another asked me to swear to prove I was not lying,” he revealed.

@ATM2U is clueless on why Iman – who follows 159 twitters including @KimKardashian (Kim Kardashian), @EvaLongoria (Eva Longoria) and @maryjblige (Mary J. Blige) – followed him.

“I prefer not to know. As superficial as it may sound, Iman following me on Twitter is as magical as a child watching a circus for the first time: the exuberant colours, the cacophonic sound, the earthy smell of animals,” he bubbled.

I asked @aimanurrahman (Aiman Abdul Rahman) why he is following @ATM2U. His reply via Twitter was: “... because his tweets are inspiring and funny”.

For me (@philipgolingai), I follow @ATM2U because he’s witty. For instance, @AkmalHisyam7 (Akmal Hisyam) tweeted: “My next client is a datin. How to entertain?”

And @ATM2U’s reply was: “Read 69 Ways To Entertain A Datin by Rico Tajuddin”.

Thinking I was funny, I tweeted: “Bring to kfc. Finger Lickin’ Good.”

@ATM2U is YM Adam Tuan Mukriz, the nom de plume of a “soon-to-be quadragenarian”, from Teluk Intan in Perak.

As he describes himself, “the only thing supreme about Adam Tuan Mukriz is that he loves The Supremes and Diana Ross. No ketuanan (supremacy) whatsoever.” He hates bourgeoisie.

Daily, Adam posts a minimum of 100 tweets on various topics.

“It is hard to pigeonhole my tweets as my interests vary from politics to entertainment and the arts. My tweets depend a lot on news appearing on my timeline (a real-time list of tweets on Twitter),” he said.

“Twitter’s fluidity is simply amazing. It is almost like a game trying to follow all the news – retweeting (the act of forwarding another user’s Tweet to all of your followers) and commenting if need be.”

He finds Twitter addictive and informative.

“Reading has never been this fun. Less is definitely more on Twitter. Summing up your ideas in fewer than 140 characters is a challenge,” says the Twitterer who does not do abbreviations.

Now that @The_Real_IMAN is following, what’s next?

“This is when it gets tricky. When someone follows you on Twitter, it gives you the impression that both of you are now friends,” noted @ATM2U.

“Wrong. Things get even trickier when a celebrity follows you based on several cute and lovely tweets you wrote about him/her – only to notice later that you are one boring person. And like a failed relationship, you get dumped – or aptly termed ‘unfollowed’.”

What’s @ATM2U’s take on Malaysian celebs who tweet?

“Local celebrities are clueless when it comes to Twitter. They are either too nice or too stuck-up, with zero interaction. Too nice when they feel obliged to respond to every ‘hi’ and ‘hello’ - and too stuck-up when their tweets are just one-way communication,” he observed.

“They have to find a balance. The recent Bersih rally has somehow triggered more ‘mainstream’ local celebrities to tweet their two cents (worth) but unfortunately most of them were predictable.”

@ATM2U’s other 15 minutes of fame in Twittersphere is that a prominent mall in KL has blocked him. (To block someone on Twitter means they will be unable to follow you or add you to their lists).

“I was vocal in questioning its national language policy,” he said.

“I must have made an impact to be blocked. I am Erin Brockovich. LOL (laughing out loud.)”

Refreshing new change

2011-07-11T23:06:00.001+08:00

One Man's Meat

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

A French chef at Bangkok’s Le Normandie restaurant, says the Thai Prime Minister-designate’s victory in the recent elections was making Thais come out to celebrate.

“IF Yingluck Shinawatra (the Thai Prime Minister-designate) was a French dish, what kind of dish would she be?” I asked Norbert A. Kostner, the executive chef of Bangkok’s Le Normandie, arguably the best French restaurant in Asia.

“Oui...I only know her from photographs. She looks like she does not wear too much makeup. She dresses well. She is always smiling,” noted Kostner, as he sat on a white rattan lounge – at the colonial-styled Author’s Lounge in the Mandarin Oriental, a luxury hotel along the Chao Phraya River.

It was four days after the Thai polls that saw Yingluck’s Pheu Thai party winning a decisive majority and I thought it was an appropriate question to ask the chef of Bangkok’s award-winning French restaurant.

It took chef Kostner a second to whip up a dish.

“I think she is a sort of a nice spring salad with some river lobster – something refreshing,” he said. “You take nice tender miniature lettuce, some red clawed river lobster, some good olive oil that has been aged since winter, then lemon and a bit of salt.”

The 66-year-old chef, who is Italian, continued: “The olive must not be too strong if not it would suck out the flavour. As to me she looks sort of innocent. She’s got beautiful eyes and yet she is strong. But she is ladylike and not like men who are always fighting. Women have a different way of speaking than men.”

Will the dish be arooy mak mak (Thai for very, very delicious)?

“Of course. Full of nutrition. It will be a beautiful dish. It will not be the sort where you go ‘urgh’,” he said, and making a gesture of person who had too much to eat.

“It will be very refreshing. The sort that will make you want to do things – go dancing, do work or want to be a lumberjack and cut wood.”

Like the refreshing spring salad, Kostner noted that Yingluck’s victory in the Thai poll was making Thais come out to celebrate.

The Mandarin Oriental’s Le Normandie has seen a 10 to 15% increase in clientele immediately after the pro-Thaksin Shinawatra Pheu Thai swept into power.

“I can see that people want to come out to celebrate. At least there is no uncertainty (in Thailand). People have accepted the election result and they are saying let’s get back to business,” he noted.

“Now we have a new government – whether good or bad – and the people want to see the end of the time of the last six years were we had Reds, Yellows, Blues and whatever colours.”

After the 2006 coup which ousted Thaksin as prime minister, business at the French restaurant was slow.

During the coup Le Normandie was forced to close down several times as there was no guests because of the curfew.

In 2008, when the Yellow Shirts seized Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang airports, the restaurant’s pantry was wiped out of imported produce.

“We just had to improvise with local chicken, beef and seafood. Everybody understood that we could not get foie gras and veal because the airports were closed,” Kostner related.

The chef added that the restaurant’s worst years were also during the SARs epidemic (no imported poultry allowed) and the Mad Cow Disease scare (“we still can’t get Black Angus out of Scotland or Irish beef”).

In 1958, the Oriental established Le Normandie to replace a restaurant that offered a menu comprising “80 dishes from around the world”.

The French restaurant, according to the chef who worked in the establishment since 1974, made a name in 1981 after the Oriental was voted number one hotel in the world by Institutional Investor magazine (an essential reading for the world’s movers and shakers).

It was an honour which the Oriental retained for 10 consecutive years, in 1994-1995 and 2000.

The secret recipe to Le Normadie’s success is its “software”.

“What has made the Oriental is its staff like Ankana (Kalantananda, a semi-retired 89-year-old guest relations consultant). I am very junior here compared to her,” said Kostner who has been with the hotel for 37 years.

“We have a pastry chef who is called Apollo because he joined us at age 14 or 15 on the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon (on July 20, 1969).”

The rest, hoped chef Kostner, – like the Thai violent six-year conflict – is history.

Thaksin still looms large in Thai politics

2011-07-04T10:53:00.002+08:00

One Man's Meat

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

The former prime minister was not on yesterday’s ballot paper, yet the election was seen as some kind of referendum on his divisive legacy.

IN the just-concluded Thai polls, the one figure who loomed large in the minds of voters was the politician whose name was not even on the ballot paper.

Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted as prime minister in a coup on Sept 19, 2006, is not even in Thailand. And yet the election was seen as a sort of referendum on his divisive legacy.

“No one haunts and hovers over the Thai landscape like Thaksin Shinawatra,” declared Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of Chulalongkorn University’s Institute of Security and International Studies, in a talk on Thailand at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT) in Bangkok on Tuesday.

“What is it about Thaksin? I know that even evoking his name elicits divisive reaction – some people really like him, some people really hate him.”

To give the audience – who were mostly farang (Thai for Westerners) – an understanding of the “indestructible” appeal of Thaksin, Thitinan brought them on a nostalgic trip to an era in Thai politics when elections did not matter much.

“In the past decades, people would vote. They would sell their vote and after that they would never see their MP.

“Their MP would come to Bangkok and enter Cabinet to gain position, so that they could exploit pork (appropriations by the government for political reasons rather than for public benefit) and commit graft,” the academician explained.

“They would lose legitimacy, the military would step in and there will be a coup.

“Eventually, we would have some kind of a (new) constitution and then we would have an election. And the electorate would sell their votes again.”

That was the story of Thai elections during the period when the country did not have outright military dictatorship from 1947 to 1973.

Politicians and political parties (except for the Democrat, Thailand’s oldest party which was established in 1946) came and went.

But something changed when Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais love Thais) party came in the picture in 1998.

“TRT came in with scientific methods in the elections. They paid for expensive polling (using expertise from abroad).

“They were very methodical in what was to be advertised and how to cater to the demands of the electorate.”

In the 2001 polls, TRT won 248 out of the 500 seats. And in the 2005 polls, the party won by a thumping 376 out of 500 seats.

In 2001, Thitinan said there was an opportunity to oust the telecommunications billionaire.

However, in an 8-7 decision, the Constitutional Court, citing insufficient evidence, acquitted the then prime minister of concealing assets (allegedly under the names of his cook, gardener and driver).

“In those days, the puu yai (senior elders) of Thai society gave Thaksin a chance,” related Thitinan.

“He was going to rescue Thailand from the IMF (International Monetary Fund), restore Thai competitiveness and usher in economic recovery from 1997 to 1998.”

Thaksin, according to the academician, did many things that were seen as revolutionary in Thailand.

For example, reforming the bloated bureaucracy and envisioning a bold foreign policy.

The downside of Thaksin’s rule were allegations of corruption. He hawked the economic pie (his family and friends won government contracts), human rights violations (his brutal war on drugs, which saw summary executions) and many other sins of misrule.

“Thaksin’s legacy is a mixed one,” Thitinan summarised.

Eventually, Thaksin was ousted in a coup in 2006.

The main justification was corruption allegations centred on the Shinawatra family’s decision to sell telecom company Shin Corp to Singapore’s state-owned Temasek Holdings for a tax-free US$1.9bil (about RM4.7bil).

“What needed to happen after the coup was the adoption of the positive legacies of Thaksin.

“But it did not happen,” said the academician.

“And I asked myself many times – and it is not rocket science (to follow Thaksin’s populist policies) – why they couldn’t just concede that Thaksin did some good things for Thailand?

“But if they conceded this point, it would mean admitting that behind the hospitable and smiling kingdom of Thailand, most people are poor who have been marginalised.

“Disaffected, the poor found a huge appeal to Thaksin’s populist policies.”

In 2007, Thaksin’s People Power Party (the reincarnation of TRT) won the elections. However, with the military and puu yai behind them, the Democrats led by Abhisit Vejjajiva managed to overthrow the PPP coalition government in 2008.

It was extraordinary, noted Thitinan, that Yingluck Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai party – which was dissolved twice (TRT and then PPP) – and its top politicians banned – would win the election.

Thitinan added: “His supporters and many Thais who are not enamoured with Thaksin are going to vote for Pheu Thai because they are not happy with what has happened (the interference of the puu yai) in Thailand in the past five years.

Is a coup on the cards?

2011-07-03T02:13:00.002+08:00

By Philip Golingai

The Yingluck Shinawatra-led Pheu Thai party is expected to win the polls. Whether it gets to govern successfully is another matter.

THREE days before today’s polls, Thai Army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha had to go on record to state that the military would not stage a coup if the Yingluck Shinawatra-led Pheu Thai party wins and forms a coalition government. “The rumours are merely rumours. There’ll be no coup. I have said so several times,” said Prayuth, one of the masterminds of the coup that ousted Yingluck’s brother Thaksin as Prime Minister on Sept 19, 2006.

Most Thais do not share the general’s optimism that the military would stick to its word of not interfering in politics again. Most are pessimistic about post-election Thailand. And Thai political analysts agree that the election will not magically solve the country’s sixyear political conflict.

So what’s the political pundits’ prediction of the outcome of the elections? “It should be a Pheu Thai victory,” said Kevin Hewison, director of the Carolina Asia Center at the University of North Carolina, United States.

“The margin is unclear. All polls say it will be a huge victory. I will be surprised if it is as large as some of the polls have suggested. But it will be a convincing win.”

Hewison, a Thai watcher since the 1970s, added: “If not, there will be a lot of explaining to do.” He was, of course, alluding to the much whispered talk that this election is very “dirty”.

“If the opinion polls are right,” wrote Suranand Vejjajiva in Bangkok Post on Friday, “for the fourth election in a row over the past decade, the political party led in person or in absentia by Thaksin will prevail.”

Suranand, a political analyst who served in the Thaksin government, and Hewison basically voiced what most people (even politicians from Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s Democrat party quietly admit) take as a given: Pheu Thai will win most of the 500 MP seats up for grabs. It is all a matter of margin.

What can’t be agreed is whether Pheu Thai can form the next government. Conventional wisdom will dictate that it should be a walk-in-the- park for a party with the most seats to form a government.

But this is Thailand. The main player in Thai politics can’t even be mentioned and there is an invisible hand manipulating events behind the scene.

“If it is a normal election, Pheu Thai will form the government and Yingluck will be Thailand’s first female Prime Minister,” opined Kan Yuenyong, executive director of Siam intelligence Unit, a think tank specialising on politics, economics, public policy and foreign affairs.

“But I would like to make a bet that the Democrat party will form the next government,” he said. He, however, qualified his bet with “unless Pheu Thai can win a landslide victory.”

In this election, Kan explained, Pheu Thai was not only fighting the Democrat party and its coalition partners such as Bhum Jai Thai (Pride of Thailand Party). It is Pheu Thai, Thaksin and the Red Shirts supporters vs the rest of Thailand minus the neutrals (who, based on some estimates, comprise about 50% of the population).

To pigeon-hole Thai politics, it is: New Force vs Old Force. New Capital vs Old Capital. Progressive vs Conservative. “But it is not as simple as that,” explained Kan. “For example, there are people in the New Force who are in the Old Force.”

What the Thaksin forces are facing, said Hewison , is the power that be. In a nutshell, he said, the power that be are: military (which has either been in government or has had considerable influence over the government for many decades); big businesses (particularly Sino-Thai businessmen who control big banks and conglomerates and have a relatively easy relationship with the military); aristocratic elite (those who see themselves as born to hold position in the military, businesses and government and who consider Thailand as theirs); and the palace (a term used for people around the monarchy).

And Thaksin is the figure the power that be fears the most. “... in 2005, Thaksin grew to be a threat to the so-called establishment, as his influence at the time undeniably wielded itself across the board – in politics, business, bureaucracy and through his classmates in the military,” wrote Suranand in his column Let It Be.

(Thaksin is a former police officer who studied at the Armed Forces Academies Preparatory School.) Hewison said Thailand was facing political turmoil because, for many years, it had an unspoken agreement on how politics was organised.

“Before the 1997 Constitution (described as Thailand’s most liberal), weak coalition governments rose and fell but there was a power structure that organised the way Thailand operated,” the academic explained.

Then came Thaksin, who has never lost in a Thai election and is the only Prime Minister to complete a full elected term. He “usurped” the elite’s power.

“The power that be decided they would not give up their power without a fight,” Hewison said. “In the last two or three elections (Thailand’s April 2006 election was declared invalid by the Constitutional Court), the people who lost did not accept the result and worked to overthrow the result through a coup and judicial intervention,” Hewison said.

The odds are stacked against a victorious Pheu Thai. Even if it wins the most seats, it might not be able to persuade other parties to join it to form a coalition government. The power that be can always stage a “silent coup” by persuading other parties to decline the Pheu Thai invitation.

This happened in 2009 when the prime minister’s post landed on Abhisit’s lap. Chumpol Silpaarcha, leader of Abhisit’s coalition partner, the Chart Thai Pattana Party, has admitted that his party had a “forced marriage” with the Democrats and three other junior parties, Bhum Jai Thai, Puea Pandin and Social Action, and that it was cobbled together by the military.

Even if the Pheu Thai managed to form a government its rule might be short-lived. And the playbook for the downfall of two pro-Thaksin Prime Ministers– Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wong sawat – could be played out again.

“Yellow Shirts will make a mass street protest. Yingluck will face a legal charge (allegedly for giving false testimony during an asset concealment case involving Thaksin), Pheu Thai (is the reincarnation of the People Power Party which is the reincarnation of Thai Rak Thai) will face a legal charge to dissolve,” Kan predicted.

In short, it will be déjà vu again. And if Abhisit and the Democrats returned to power, the country will revisit the bloody conflict of 2010- 2011. The Red Shirts will return to the streets and Abhisit’s government will deal with them with live bullets. When will it end?

“Whatever we call them – power that be, the elite, the royalists, they have to make the historic compromise,” Hewison opined. “In other countries, the ruling class has done this in the past. They made the compromise and recognised that a democratic form of government is in fact another way of controlling the people.”

How about a coup, which will be Thailand’s 19th since the 1932 revolution that saw the overthrow of the absolute monarchy? “You can’t rule it out. The military would like that to be a sort of a fallback option. General Prayuth has shown himself to be anti-Thaksin, anti-Pheu Thai and anti-Yingluck,” Hewison said.

“If things do not go according to his desires, a coup is on the cards.”

Coup maker’s party in the race for Thai polls

2011-07-01T14:38:00.000+08:00

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

IT was a scene reminiscent of the Happy Coup in 2006 where elated Bangkokians showered the soldiers with roses.

Arriving at a makeshift stage in a Buddhist temple in Samut Prakan, about 20km from Bangkok, retired General Sonthi Boonyaratkalin was mobbed by about 100 Thais – mostly women – who excitedly presented him with red roses on Wednesday night.

It was a warm reception for coup maker-turned-politician at his campaign stump in Samut Prakan, a town located at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River to the Gulf of Thailand.

It is typical of Thai politicians to be showered with roses by adoring fans.

In 2006, Army Commander Sonthi launched a coup which brought down the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Sept 19, 2006.

The 64-year-old former general, who retired in October 2007, is now the head of Matabhum Party (Motherland Party).

His party is targeting Malay Muslim voters living in Thailand’s deep south provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani.

After his campaign speech, in an interview held behind the stage, Sonthi, speaking through a translator, said in Thai that he was in politics because he did not want Thailand to be politically divided.

“I don’t want my country to be separated by Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts,” he explained.

“If you are not red and yellow, then what’s your colour?” I asked the smiling general.

“If you mix red and yellow what you get is ....” he said, pointing to his orange-coloured Matabhum t-shirt.

Kevin Hewison, the director of the Carolina Asia Centre in the University of North Carolina, said Sonthi had always claimed not to be interested in politics.

“But after the coup – I’m not sure if he was the major player running the coup but he became the head of it – he kind of liked the power he had,” said the Australian who is an expert on Thai politics.

“And it looks like the changes made in the 2007 Thai constitution give small parties more (bargaining) power.

“Sonthi is the head of a very, very small party which might win four or five MP seats and he might get a minister post out of that.”

Sonthi does not regret launching the 2006 coup.

“It was the people who wanted to coup. And it is the duty of the army to protect the county,” the soldier, who is economical in his answers, said.

Asked if he was afraid that Thaksin would return to Thailand and take revenge on him, Sonthi smiled and said: “Not at all. It all depends on the population.

“If they love me they will protect me.”

There was no indication the former general feared for his life as he was lightly protected during his visit to Samut Prakan.

Unlike the Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who has complained he was hounded by the pro-Thaksin Red Shirts during his campaigning, Sonthi said he was warmly received wherever he went.

Sonthi said he formed Matabhum as his mission was to solve the violent conflict in the three restive provinces.

“A big party would not fully focus on these provinces,” he said.

“Just allow the locals to solve their own problem as they know who the masterminds behind the (killings and bombings) are.

“They can report to their village heads on who these people are.”

The retired general, who is a Muslim, added that he did not agree with the government’s policy of sending soldiers to quell the violence in the three provinces.

Sonthi believes the Malaysian Government fully supported Thailand in solving the bloody conflict in the Muslim-dominated provinces bordering Malaysia.

“Kuala Lumpur wants it solved as soon as possible as they know the violence can affect them along the border,” he explained.

The former general expects his party to win about 15 out of the 500 MP seats up for grabs.

Asked which party he would support once the votes were counted, Sonthi said, “I will join (the coalition government) which has the same mission and vision as my party.”

In Thailand politics, that is the code phrase for: “Regardless of political ideology, I will join whichever party that forms a coalition government.”

Interestingly, the coup maker is willing to support Pheu Thai headed by Yingluck, Thaksin’s youngest sister.

A political analyst said, “Not a surprise as this is Thailand.”

Sonthi is gunning for a minister post which complements his job experience – Defence Minister.

“If not, then maybe a minister post where I can help to build up society,” he revealed.

On Sunday, Sonthi hopes Thais living in Malaysia will return to their homeland to vote him back to the seat of power.

Chitpas aiming to make a change for Thailand’s poor

2011-06-30T16:25:00.000+08:00

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Under the broiling morning sun, at a lane where hawkers sell grilled pork and live chickens in a working class area in Bangkok, the 26-year-old Singha beer heiress was door-to-door campaigning.

The heiress, wearing pink sneakers, tight jeans and a white T-shirt with the Democrat party logo, pressed her palms together and bowed to a middle-aged hawker.

“Hello! My name is Chitpas Bhirombhakdi. I am the Democrat candidate for this district. Please don’t forget to vote for No. 10,” said the heiress in Thai, referring to the number the ruling Democrat got for party list candidacy.

The woman returned the wai (a respectful Thai greeting) while clutching a campaign brochure with Chitpas’ photograph and said, “You look more suay (beautiful) in person”.

The rookie politician is contesting in Bangkok’s Dusit-Ratchathewi constituency.

Located in the old part of the Thai capital, Dusit is a prestigious neighbourhood with Chitralda Palace (the official residence of King Bhumibol), Government House (the office of the Prime Minister), Parliament, Dusit Zoo and Boon Rawd Brewery (where Singha and Leo beer are produced).

Ratchethawi is a high-rise building area famous for Pratunam Market (one of Thailand’s largest clothing markets) and Pantip Plaza (Thailand’s Low Yat Plaza).

Chitpas is a scion from one of Thailand’s wealthiest business families.

“Does your surname carry weight in making the people vote for you?” I asked the heiress while she was taking a break next to a smelly railroad track from her campaigning.

“I don’t think it is going to help with votes. But it helps me in terms of recognition. People recognise my surname. They will say, ‘you are Singha brand’,” she related.

It has always been Chitpas’ dream to be a politician.

“My parents have always told me I was fortunate to be born in a family which can fully support me in my education.

“I was lucky they could send me to boarding school (Godstowe school, Buckinghamshire) in England when I was nine years old. I decided after I graduated that I wanted to help in the development of my country,” said the woman with a bachelor’s degree in Geography from King’s College.

“Isn’t politics too low brow for a hi-so (Thai slang for high society) like you?”

Chitpas said: “I grew up in a society where we like to complain about politics and corruption. And we don’t really do anything about it because we are fortunate enough to get away from all that.”

“But if you let the corrupt politicians run the country, eventually it would affect you – maybe not now but definitely it would affect your children or grandchildren.”

“But,” I said, “wouldn’t it be easier ...” And Chitpas laughed and said “... not to do anything?”

“I have tried to explain to people that you can’t really pick what you are born into but you can pick the life that you want to have and this is the life that I have chosen,” explained the politician, who once told Tattler magazine that she wanted to be Thailand’s first female Prime Minister.

“I am not thinking of myself but the 90% of the population who are not hi-so. If I was going to have a child in the future, I want my child to grow up in a society where there was equality in the quality of life. And I want to close the gap between the rich and poor.”

Chitpas said she was “happy” that she was campaigning in the poorer part of Bangkok .

“Today I am not just walk, walk, walk, introduce myself, hello! hello! hello! When I go home I will write and think what can be done here,” she explained.

On that day, Chitpas said she saw that the community lived in a compact area where there was no room to breathe.

“You have a little room where 10 people sleep and yet everyone has a dog,” she related.

“They have a dog for security. And we are planning to install 200,000 CCTVs around Bangkok and that will improve security and cut down the number of dogs so that the kids can live in a hygienic place.”

In December 2009, Chitpas, a staff member of Thai Prime Minister’s secretariat, was embroiled in a Calendar girl controversy.

She had to resign from her post because she gave away sexy Leo beer calendars at the Government House.

“The lesson I learnt is not to trust people. And that I need to be more careful,” she said, adding it would have been okay if she distributed the calendars outside the August Government House.

In the race to be MP for the Dusit-Ratchathewi constituency, Chitpas is neck-and-neck with the pro-Thaksin Shinawatra Pheu Thai party candidate Leelawadee Watcharobol, a former Miss Thailand and TV star.

And in the ballot boxes, the heiress is hoping she will be as popular as the iconic Singha beer.

Democrats treading on eggshells as they lose support

2011-06-29T22:23:00.000+08:00

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

IF the ruling Democrat party wants to know why it is losing support of Bangkokians who usually vote for the party, it should conduct its forensic investigation at the supermarket.

Better still, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva could whip out a frying pan and fry an egg while pondering why loyal voters in the Thai capital would abandon his party on the July 3rd polls.

“Never in my life have I gone to a supermarket looking for cooking oil and found none on the shelf,” related Pimrapaat Dusadeeisariyakul, a programme manager with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Bangkok.

Last year, even if cooking oil was available, a family could only buy one bottle each at a price that had tripled. Some families opted to buy the more expensive olive oil.

The fact that cooking oil is produced from oil palm plantations in the Democrat's stronghold in the south aggravated Bangkokian anger towards the party.

The price of cooking oil went down just after Abhisit dissolved parliament.

Last year Abhisit also had an egg crisis. The price of eggs was soaring.

“Eggs used to be cheap. And the (urban) poor could at least buy an egg for his meal,” related Pimra-paat.

The government of the Democrats (which has been stereotyped as elite technocrats who do not understand the plight of the common people) decided that eggs should be sold by weight.

“People made a joke that never in their life they had to by eggs by the kilo,” Pimrapaat said.

Before the price went up, an average-sized egg cost about 3 baht (RM0.30). Now it is about to 4 baht (RM0.40).

After many protests, Abhisit's government abandoned its unpopular egg policy.

The two economic boo-boos will cause the Democrats to lose votes among its supporters.

“The way they handled the cooking oil and egg situations reflects how insensible they are in seeing the people's everyday problems,” explained Pitch Pongsawat, who teaches political science in Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

“People on the streets regardless whether they are (pro-Thaksin Shinawatra) Red Shirts are fed up with the Democrats' handling of the economy,”

Democrat spokesperson Buranaj Smutharaks admitted that his party might lose votes from its handling of the cooking oil and egg problems.

“But the price of goods is rising everywhere in the world. Even Malaysia is facing that situation,” he ex-plained.

Although the rising cost of living is a big issue among Democrat supporters, Pitch says the other reason it is losing support is its clash with the Yellow Shirts.

“Upfront, the Democrats and the Yellow Shirts are bickering over the Thai/Cambodia border issue,” he said. “But some of the Yellow Shirt leaders are angry they were not rewarded for bringing down the government of Somchai (Wongsawat, the brother-in-law of Thaksin) in 2009.”

The Yellow Shirts are campaigning for a “Vote No”. Its posters have the heads of monkey, buffalo, dog, tiger and monitor lizard wearing suits and its message is: “Mark no' so that animals do not enter parliament”.

In the 2007 Thai elections, the Democrats won 30 out of the 33 constituency seats in Bangkok.

Opinion polls show that pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai, which is led by his youngest sister Yingluck, will win 18 seats in Bangkok, Democrats six seat, and the remaining nine seats still undecided.

“My guess is the vote for the Democrat party will go to a smaller party,” opined Pimrapaat.

Among the favourite is Chuvit Kamolvisit, Thailand's angriest politician.

The chatter among Bangkokians aged 18 to 35 on Facebook and Twitter is they are fed up with politics as they perceive politicians to be corrupt.

“When you ask them who they would vote for they would say Chuvit because he is anti-corruption,” noted Pimrapaat.

“It is also because of his appealing campaign message, which echoes the young's anti-politician sentiment.”

The young, according to her, perceive the Democrats as “slow and non-performers” and the Red Shirts (Pheu Thai) as “trouble-makers”.

Last year's bloody political chaos in the Thai capital, which saw 91 people killed and several buildings razed, will play in the mind of the voters.

“People born in Bangkok will remember the tragedy (and vote against Pheu Thai),” related Pimrapaat. “But not those who come from different parts of the country to work (in Bangkok).

Translation: It is a political divide between the Bangkok middle class and the working class from Thailand's poverty-stricken northeast.

Bangkokians red at heart, according to Pitch, will vote for Pheu Thai.

There is no need to convince them that the elitist Abhisit has never fried an egg in his life. If he did, he probably used olive oil.

Ex-massage parlour king sends out angry message

2011-06-28T19:48:00.000+08:00

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

THE most striking election posters on the streets of Bangkok are that of an angry politician clasping his aching head. A message in Thai states: “Bored with politics but have to vote. Let me be in opposition to fight corruption.”

Another poster shows the angry politician with his left eyebrow raised and his right index finger pointing accusingly.

Another poster shows him carrying a baby with the message: “Politicians are like diapers, the more you change them, the better.” There’s even one with him shaking hands with a bull terrier (which looks angrier than him).

Introducing Chuvit Kamolvisit, Thailand’s angriest politician.

The 50-year-old former massage parlour king is the leader of a one-man show political party Rak Thailand (Love Thailand). Rak Thailand’s core message is: Chuvit is against corruption.

And voters, disillusioned with politics-as-usual politicians, are expected to vote in the maverick Chuvit as one of the 500 MPs on July 3.

The millionaire with an MBA from the United States is a colourful character. He dared to campaign at where “angelic” politicians fear to tread. His campaign trail includes Soi Thaniya, a lane which houses nightspots exclusively for Japanese, in Bangkok’s famous Patpong. In Facebook, there are photographs of him being kissed by scantily-dressed women of pleasure.

Chuvit also did planking. He had to do “something strange” to get publicity in a race dominated by Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and latest media darling Yingluck Shinawatra.

“You can talk all day and all night but nobody can hear you unless you are in the newspaper and television,” he explained.

In an interview at Chuvit Park (which is as controversial as the owner who allegedly forcibly evicted tenants to make way for the park) along the Thai capital’s congested Sukhumvit road, Chuvit said he looked angry in his campaign posters because he wanted to show Thais that their country’s problem was serious.

“I get a headache thinking that there is no way out (of Thailand’s violent political conflict). And then I get angry thinking about politicians who talk about reconciliation but are not honest about it.

“If they really wanted reconciliation they could have done it before the city was on fire,” he explained, referring to last year’s bloody conflict which saw 91 people killed and several buildings razed.

“Now that there is an election they are talking about reconciliation again.”

Is he an angry person in real life?

“I have to admit that I have a hot temper,” said the politician, whose punchline for the 2008 Bangkok governor elections was: “I’m crazy enough to hit a TV news host three days before the Bangkok governor election, so I hope you will be crazy enough to vote for me.”

Recalling the incident, Chuvit said: “That guy had no manners. He was not polite and he should not be in the media.”

The angry politician is running in this polls so that he could sit on the opposition bench.

“I want to show Thailand has a problem because politicians (from both ends of the political spectrum) refuse to compromise,” he said.

Chuvit believes voters will vote him in as they are bored with Thai politics.

“They want someone who will speak the truth,” he explained. (In the Thai party list seats, he needs about 250,000 votes to make his way to Parliament.)

The Thai 2011 polls, observed Chuvit, was “just a little hole to release the air” in the country’s political pressure cooker.

“We are waiting for the next storm. After this election you will either see a Pheu Thai or a Democrat government. If it is Pheu Thai, then someone will say the party was a nominee of Thaksin Shinawatra and someone will launch the Yellow Shirts to kick it out of government.

“If it is a Democrat government, the Red Shirts will be in the street to protest,” explained the politician, who like many Bangkokian Chinese is a Teochew.

“The Yellow Shirts and Red Shirts are political machines that can be turned on and off anytime.”

What does Chuvit think of the two leading candidates for Thai Prime Minister?

Abhisit, he opined, is a good liar.

“All politicians are liars. But some are bad liars. If Abhisit spoke the truth, nobody will vote for him,” he said.

Yingluck was 100% a Thaksin nominee.

“You can see that Thaksin does not trust anyone except his family,” he said.

However, he concedes that Yingluck – other than being Thaksin’s youngest sister – is a “good politician”.

“Like a new diaper she is still fresh. You will only know after a couple of months or years whether you need to change her,” he said with a big grin.

What with the poster of him shaking hands with his bull terrier?

Dog, explained Chuvit, is a symbol of honesty as it served its master regardless whether he is rich or poor.

“Politicians should emulate the honesty of a dog,” he growled.

(Photograph courtesy of The Nation)

Abhisit out to ‘de-thaksi-cate’

2011-06-27T11:34:00.001+08:00

One Man's Meat
By Philip Golingai

‘De-thaksi-cate’ is the latest Tweet word in Thai politics as parties step up their campaigning in the final run-up to the general election this weekend.

FOR a man said to have lost his political mojo, the reception for Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva at Bangkok’s Central World shopping mall was nothing less than that for a rock star.

It was 8.10pm on a damp Thursday and with the middle-class crowd near the main entrance of the shopping mall in such a state of near frenzy, one would think U2’s Bono was in the building.

It must have been a Beautiful Day (U2’s hit song) for Abhisit, whose campaign trails were usually disrupted by pro-Thaksin Shinawatra Red Shirts supporters with jeering and egg-pelting.

In Central World, a couple of titillated hi-so (high society) ladies were clutching yellow roses.

Animated teenagers were ready to snap a picture of the Prime Minis ter with their smartphone cameras.

Civil-servant looking males were waiting to shake hands with the handsome politician (though Abhisit looked as if he had gained weight and his worried face had seen one too many bloody protests).

“Abhisit! Abhisit! Abhisit! Go sip! Go sip! Go sip!” the crowd chanted. (In Thai, sip is “10” and the ruling Democrat Party got the number in the lot drawing for registration of party-list candidacy.)

Security personnel protecting Abhisit had to push through the crowd.

The Democrat party leader was on his way to rescue his party’s faltering election campaign.

Opinion polls show Yingluck Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai party will thump the Democrats come July 3.

Outside Central World, near the Ratchaprasong Intersection, the focal point of last year’s bloody clash between Abhisit’s government and the Red Shirt protesters that ended with 91 people dead, former Thai Prime Minister and a respected Democrat leader Chuan Leekpai laced his plea to the voters to return his party to power with subtle humour.

The Democrat had promised to reveal undisclosed truths about last year’s bloodshed.

A choking Suthep Thaugsuban, the Democrat secretary-general, was tasked to explain what had happened. Nothing new came out of his mouth.

To strengthen his argument that “men in black hurt both soldiers and protesters”, deputy Prime Minister Suthep provided video evidence.

And if you wanted to know how politically divided Thailand was, just watch the response of the Democrat supporters whenever photographs and video of dead Red Shirts were shown. They cheered.

For the Red Shirts and neutrals, the Democrat’s decision to hold a rally in Ratchaprasong was like rubbing salt into the wounds of those killed in the April - May 2010 violent conflict.

Whether or not it was an insensitive decision, a political analyst said that the Abhisit’s party did not have any choice.

“The party is famous for its attack-style campaigning. But this time, they decided to be more ‘prime ministerial’ in its approach.

“However, that is not working and the party has to attack Thaksin to win back voters,” she said.

And attack the Democrat did at the rally in front of Central World where construction was still ongoing after it was partially torched during last year’s riot.

On stage, with a huge Thai flag as backdrop, Abhisit told the converted (the audience was mostly Democrat die-hard supporters) that the election was an opportunity for voters to “detoxify” the Thaksin poison from the country.

Probably a new word was created when someone tweeted: “De-thaksi-cate”.

Abhisit then went emotional. Teary-eyed Abhisit revealed his life had utterly changed after last year’s April 10 clash when 25 people – including five soldiers – died.

“I cried for a long time on April 10. And I knew that no matter what I decided, people would still be infuriated,” he said.

If Abhisit wanted to know whether the people were still infuriated, he could walk to the nearby Wat Pathum Wanaram, a Buddhist temple where six civilians were mysteriously killed on May 19, 2010.

To protest against the Democrat’s rally, Red Shirts staged a planking (a prank that involves lying face down in a public place with photos posted on social networking sites).

In this Thai polls, planking is a craze, with maverick politician Chuvit Kamolvisit making waves with his planking pose.

On stage, at the finale of the Democrat rally, standing on the right of Abhisit was 26-year-old Singha Beer heiress, Chitpas Bhirombhakdi.

If the beautiful young Democrat politician plays her cards right, she will be the future rock star of Thai politics.

Thailand’s Luck-y charm

2011-06-26T20:21:00.000+08:00

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva may have been the poster boy of ‘political freshness’ in the 2007 polls but this time around, it is Yingluck Shinawatra, youngest sister of his fugitive predecessor Thaksin who is stealing the thunder with her natural charm.

IN the streets of Bangkok, on her campaign posters, Yingluck Shinawatra is dressed in a white shirt and black jacket.

The collar of the shirt worn by Thaksin’s youngest sister and the opposition Pheu Thai No. 1 party-list candidate is – in the words of Chris Baker, a Thai politics expert, – “plain and the lapel of the jacket is unnotched”.

“The outfit is more that of a lawyer than a businesswoman. The makeup is unobtrusive. She has no insignia and virtually no jewellery. There is a trace of an earring on her left ear but it is scarcely visible,’ wrote Baker in New Mandala, an online site devoted to the politics and societies of Thailand and Burma.

“The message of the costuming is simplicity and seriousness.”

Baker, who has authored several books on Thailand including Thaksin: The Business of Politics in Thailand, opined that Yingluck’s image has been “sex-down rather than the opposite.”

Yingluck’s poster, according to Baker, was a reminder that Thaksin “has always understood the importance of communication and especially of visual communication.”

In all major opinion polls, Yingluck’s Pheu Thai is leading against the ruling party Democrat led by Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the poster boy of “political freshness” in the 2007 polls.

This year, the fresh face of Thai politics is 44-year-old Yingluck. The businesswoman has never run for political office. But since she was revealed as Pheu Thai’s prime minister candidate last month, she has replaced 47-year-old Abhisit as the national darling.

To get an understanding on how a political rookie like Yingluck could rise to rock star status in a short period, I spoke to Suranand Vejjajiva, who served in the Thaksin cabinet. I was also curious to know whether her success was due to political marketing.

“The two factors that you have to consider with Yingluck are the candidate herself and the political machinery behind her,” explained Suranand, who is now a political analyst and the first cousin of Abhisit.

“There is no question about (the effectiveness) of the Pheu Thai machinery. It is the same machinery which Thaksin built 10 years ago – we were there building it. It is a machinery which has won the past three elections – two under Thai Rak Thai (TRT) and one under People Power Party (PPP),” he said.

(After the 2006 coup which ousted Thaksin, TRT was dissolved and 111 party leaders including Thaksin and Suranand were banned from politics for five years by the constitutional court. TRT was re-incarnated as PPP, which was dissolved in 2009 by the constitutional court. The Thaksinites politicians regrouped under Pheu Thai party.)

Suranand points out that the effectiveness of the Pheu Thai political machinery was evident in the party’s campaign posters.

“If you walk on the street and you don’t have any biasness, you will see that the Pheu Thai posters stand out,” he explained.

The message of TRT/PPP/Pheu Thai, according to the political analyst, has always been about hope and opportunity.

“Thaksin has always been keen to convey the message that if you vote for his party, you will have economic opportunity,” he said.

The party’s machinery was also effective in mobilising the masses to its rallies. Pheu Thai’s rallies have more people than other parties, observed the political analyst.

But having a well-oiled political machinery backing Yingluck would not have been enough if she was not a natural campaigner.

“She has got her brother’s charm. She is a natural. She can blend with the common people,” he explained.

This is evident from the photographs of Yingluck in her campaign trail. Take the example of a Reuters photograph of her in Yala, Thailand’s restive deep south. Wearing a red scarf (of course red as Pheu Thai and the Red shirts are the same) she looks so gorgeous and natural as her head leans on a tudung-clad Muslim woman who was taking their picture on her mobile phone.

“She can do whatever a politician can do and . . . she looks better,” said Suranand.

“Being good looking helps but it does not mean you are a natural campaigner. There are many movie stars who ran unsuccessfully for public office in Thailand.”

“You have to give credit to Yingluck as she is able to reach out and touch the voters. The two combinations – Pheu Thai’s machinery and Yingluck’s charm – seem to work and that is why her polls are skyrocketing,” he said.

Suranand shook his head when asked how the political newbie became a natural campaigner.

“I don’t think Yingluck is trained to be that way. She is one of those people who are like Bill Clinton. Clinton can meet anyone and make him feel comfortable. Yingluck has that same quality,” he explained.

“I’ve worked with Thaksin before and he has that quality too. But for his other brothers and sisters, they don’t have that. They (Thaksin’s other siblings) have good personal relationships but not the charisma to draw the crowd.”

I asked Suranand about his personal impression of Yingluck.

“I might be a little biased as I know Thaksin very well. I’ve met Yingluck from time to time, even after the coup. She is always a nice lady – courteous, talks well, lively and very smart,” he said.

Is there a political script that Yingluck is following?

“They (her campaign managers) have analysed that the people are bored with the usual bickering in Thai politics. She is careful not to antagonise anyone or engage in mudslinging,” Suranand said.

“If she starts attacking the Democrats (who are good at counter-attack), it will make the frontpages and she will just be a normal politician. So they (her campaign managers) are trying to keep her away from all this bickering so that she can talk about the future (reconciliation in politically-divided Thailand) without being caught in a shouting match with the Democrats.”

The other advantage Yingluck has over Abhisit is freshness.

“I have a feeling that the people want change and they want to work with a new face rather than stay with a group of old politicians,” Suranand said.

“It is a short campaign (about six weeks) and if she was running in an American-style one-year presidential elections, it might be tough for her.”

Yingluck also benefits from good press relationship.

“Business reporters who covered her as a businesswoman liked her very much and that helps in terms of word of mouth,” said Suranand.

“When political reporters asked about her, the business reporters told them that she is a nice lady and she is down to earth.”

The cable TV and radio talk show host added: “I have not heard anything bad about her from the media covering the campaign trail. I am told she is always nice.”

Going back to the Pheu Thai campaign message, Suranand said the party wanted to reinforce the Thaksin brand.

“Thais – whether they hate or love Thaksin – acknowledge that he is a capable and competent manager and he has been very successful in managing the country. And they (Pheu Thai think tank) have done their surveys and found that Thaksin is still very popular. So they have come up with a campaign slogan – ‘Thaksin thinks, Pheu Thai implements’,” he said.

“And when Yingluck (was picked to be Pheu Thai’s No. 1 candidate), the message of the slogan become stronger as Yingluck is Thaksin definitely. If you picked another Pheu Thai leader (to be the party’s prime minister candidate), he would not have been the real thing.”

Comparing Abhisit and Yingluck to a mobile phone, Suranand said Abhisit was the first generation of BlackBerry phones whereas Yingluck was the new version of the smartphone.

Colour still defines

2011-06-20T10:09:00.001+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Yellow-hearted Bangkokians have turned red with opinion polls predicting Yingluck, Thaksin’s gorgeous younger sister, will beat the handsome Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s Democrat party.

ON Saturday morning, rushing for my meeting with contacts in Bangkok, I put on a red shirt. Then I had second thoughts.

In Thailand’s colour-coded and divided politics, it might be politically incorrect to wear red.

I took it off and put on a grey T-shirt instead.

It is election time in the country where Red means you are pro-Thaksin Shinawatra (former Thai prime minister), and yellow shows that you are anti-Thaksin.

If the opinion polls are to be trusted, Pheu Thai, the party led by the gorgeous Yingluck, Thaksin’s younger sister, will thump the handsome Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s Democrat party in the Thai capital on July 3.

It seems that most yellow-hearted Bangkokians (who in 2009 voted for a Democrat as governor of Bangkok) have turned red.

“Bangkok’s middle class who voted for Democrats have had a change of heart,” said Worapol Promigabutr, a sociologist at Bangkok’s Thammasat University.

“They thought the coup (which ousted Thaksin) in 2006 would make the country better. But now they realise the situation has not changed and in fact had become worse,” he said.

At a fast food joint in Tesco Lotus hypermart at the Bangkok suburb of Chaengwattana, I asked Worapol about a political killing on Khao San Road, Bangkok’s backpacker Mecca.

I had a personal interest in political violence in the city of Angels (in Thai, Krung Thep) as friends have asked me whether it was safe to visit Bangkok during the Thai polls.

I assured Malaysians that it was safe, Bangkok Dangerous (the title of a Nicholas Cage movie shot in Bangkok during the 2006 coup), notwithstanding.

The only thing they should worry about was getting conned into visiting a “tiger show” in Patpong.

On Thursday, Suban Jiraphanwanich, an influential politician from the province of Lop Buri (about 130km from Bangkok), was shot dead in – to quote the Bangkok police chief – “a well-planned attack by a hit team of possibly career assassins”.

Suban’s wife and an aide were also injured during the incident in which five rounds were fired.

“Don’t worry,” assured Worapol, who had been detained by the police for seven days for alleged involvement with Red Shirt activities during last year’s bloody protest.

“Political killing is not extraordinary during a Thai election,” he said.

Worapol also gave me the lowdown on the Thai polls – it is Pheu Thai/Red Shirts vs the rest of Thailand.

After the sociologist explained to me why the oligarchy could not kill Thaksin politically, a man at the next table eating fried chicken with his daughter interrupted our discussion.

“Are you saying that Thaksin also helped the poor when he was prime minister?” asked Thanee, a 51-year-old civil engineer, in a typically polite Thai manner.

Surprise, surprise. I thought in English-deficient Thailand, someone was eavesdropping on our conversation in English.

“I voted for Thai Rak Thai (Thaksin’s party banned since 2006).

“I have read from both sides – mainstream media and alternative media.

“And now I don’t support Thaksin,” continued the civil engineer, adding that he saw what Thaksin said on the Internet.

“What did Thaksin say?” Worapol ventured.

“I can’t say. But I know what I read. I will go to jail if I say what Thaksin said,” said Thanee.

“Are you saying that Thaksin is not loyal to the King?” asked the academician, who is a royalist.

“Although it (a Time magazine issue which carried the interview with Thaksin) was banned in Thai-land, my daughter printed it from the Internet,” said the civil engineer.

The argument whether Thaksin allegedly committed lese majeste (a French phrase for “insulting the monarchy”) became too hot that I was a bit concerned it would turn physical.

In politically divided Thailand it is still not “safe” to wear your political belief on your sleeve in public.

Eve-n Adam needed it

2011-06-13T22:34:00.002+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

DO you know why God created a woman for Adam?” asked Obedient Wives Club international vice-president Dr Rohaya Mohamad.

“Eve was created because Adam had needs. Men have (sexual) needs which they can’t control. And if the needs are not fulfilled, men will find another woman. God created them like that.”

The 46-year-old bespectacled, tudung-clad mother of eight continued: “One of the reasons we started the club is because not all women are trained to be good in bed. We want to teach them how to perform better than a first-class prostitute.”

Dr Rohaya is not your typical Stone Age housewife. She’s a high-flying businesswoman with Global Ikhwan Sdn Bhd, a multi-million-ringgit company with businesses spanning Australia, South-East Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

She studied medicine at the University of Wales in Cardiff. She is the third wife of Mohamad Ikram Ashaari, the 45-year-old son of the late Al-Arqam founder Ashaari Mohamad.

“So, how does a woman become a sex goddess?” I asked Dr Rohaya at the Perangsang Templer Golf Club in Rawang, where the obedient wives were preparing for their club’s launch on June 4.

“We will teach them techniques,” said Dr Rohaya without blushing.

Blushing, I asked, “What sex tips?”

“You ask him first what he likes, then you ask yourself what you like. You can’t have two heads in the house,” she said.

Tudung-clad Fauziah Ariffin, Ikhwan Catering & Restaurant director, chipped in: “Our sifu (mentor) Ashaari told us that a wife’s (sexual performance) must be better than that of a first-class prostitute.”

“What is happening now (the Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger sex scandals),” explained the 48-year-old businesswoman with an accountancy degree from New South Wales University in Sydney, “is the consequence of the wife not performing her obligation (sexually satisfying her husband).

“But why did Brad Pitt ditch Jennifer Aniston – who I assume is pretty good in bed – for Angelina Jolie?” I asked.

“Actually if Brad Pitt had a choice, he would have wanted to have both of them as his wives,” said Dr Rohaya, who is Ikhwan Polygamy Club deputy president. “Unfortunately, Western society can’t accept (polygamy).”

“What do you think of (Perkasa president Datuk) Ibrahim Ali’s statement that when a man has the need and his wife is cooking, she has to stop cooking?” I asked.

“I agree with him as God created Eve for the needs of a man,” explained Fauziah, who is a third wife and proud of it.

“What do you think of the Monica Lewinsky scandal?” I asked.

“(Former US president) Bill Clinton is being a man,” Dr Rohaya said.

Fauziah added: “As a world leader, you are stressed up and one way to release your stress is by having sex.”

“Do you think Hilary Clinton should have stood by her man?” I asked.

“It would have been better if she allowed Monica to be Bill’s second wife,” said Fauziah.

Then both women laughed heartily as if they were sharing a personal joke.

“Most women’s group will say that your club is bringing women back to the Stone Age,” I prodded.

“We expect that as there is always two schools of thought. But what we want to say is: there’s an alternative. We believe one of the core reasons for what is happening in the world – prostitution, rape and whatnot – is because a man is not satisfied at home. So why don’t we give it a try,” Dr Rohaya said.

How about starting an Obedient Husbands Club?

“I will ask my husband if he wants to start one,” she said.

Talking to the obedient wives made me feel as if God had not banished man from the Garden of Eden.

What’s with NY maids?

2011-06-06T23:50:00.001+08:00

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Sexual harassment of chambermaids does not only happen in RM9,000 a night penthouse suites in the Big Apple. It happens everywhere.

WHAT’S with maids in New York City’s luxury hotels? Last week, another hotel maid was sexually assaulted. This time by Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar, the former head of one of Egypt’s biggest banks.

The 72-year-old Egyptian allegedly assaulted a 44-year-old maid as she delivered tissues he had requested to his room in a posh Manhattan hotel.

The banker’s arrest came two weeks after International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sex scandal. The 62-year-old Frenchman was accused of trying to rape a 32-year-old chambermaid in a luxurious Manhattan hotel.

Why were the maids sexually assaulted? Are maids downright irresistible? I don’t think so.

As I’m writing this article, I’m home alone with two part-time Indonesian maids cleaning my USJ Subang Jaya house. The two sweaty teenagers are on their knees, scrubbing the floor and I did not feel like doing a Strauss-Kahn on them.

Back to the question: What’s with maids in New York City’s luxury hotels?

Perhaps it is the chambermaids uniform (think French maid’s outfit)? Or perhaps hotel maids in New York City resemble Jennifer Lopez in the romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan.

According to twitterer@ATM2U, yeah they look like J Lo – only 100kg heavier.

Sexual harassment of chambermaids does not only happen in US$3,000 (RM9,000) a night penthouse suites in New York City. It happens everywhere.

A recent article by AP news service revealed the daily danger faced by hotel maids.

“Hotel housekeepers say they often feel a twinge of fear when they slide the keycard, turn the door handle and step into a room to clean it. What will they find?” AP reported.

At a luxury hotel in Toronto, housekeepers especially hated doing “turn-down” service (preparing beds for the night).

Some men would put money on the pillow, ask for sexual favours and tell the women they could take the money after they have left, according to the report.

“Others took a more circuitous route to the same end: they would inquire about a housekeeper’s home country and how many family members they were supporting,” it added.

“Then would come some sympathetic-sounding questions about how much the hotel paid them – followed by an offer of money for sex.”

Coincidentally, when I read about the Egyptian banker, I had just downloaded the May 30 issue of Time magazine on my iPad. The cover story was “Sex. Lies. Arrogance. What Makes Powerful Men Act Like Pigs”.

Now I know why I did not behave so badly with the two maids in my house. I’m not a powerful man.

It seems with power comes confidence. And with confidence comes a sense of sexual entitlement.

“If fame and power make sex more constantly available,” according to a study set to be published in Psychological Science, “it may weaken the mechanisms of self-restraint and erode the layers of socialisation that we impose on teenage boys and hope they eventually internalise.”

In the Time cover story, Nancy Gibbs wrote: “We know that powerful men can be powerfully reckless, particularly when, like DSK (Dominique Strauss-Kahn), they stand at the brink of their grandest achievement.

“They tend to be risk takers, or at least assess risk differently, as do narcissists who come to believe that ordinary rules don’t apply. They are often surrounded by enablers with a personal or political interest in protecting them to the point of covering up their follies, indiscretions and crimes.”

How do you stop powerful men from preying on hotel maids?

Female staff at the hotel where Strauss-Kahn allegedly sexually assaulted a chambermaid are now being allowed to wear trousers instead of skirts.

But that’s like faulting a woman for getting herself sexually assaulted. Plus Strauss-Kahn allegedly sexually attacked his second wife’s goddaughter even though she was wearing jeans.

The solution I favour is providing maids with portable emergency communication devices. If dirty old men try to be funny, just press the “panic button”.

Needing a feminine touch

2011-05-30T23:43:00.002+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

As the latest political buzzword in TwitterJaya is anak jantan, perhaps we need more women leaders to make politics more ladylike.

WOULD the world be a better place if it were ruled by women? I had this thought when the machismo in Malaysia politics came to mind.

Last week, Umno vice-president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi challenged DAP, saying that if it was an anak jantan (a macho man), it would leave Pakatan and contest on its own in the 13th General Election.

Soon after the quotemeister’s statement was reported in local news websites, the phrase anak jantan was buzzing in Twittersphere. There were even counter challenges from opposition politicians.

On Wednesday, anak jantan became the buzzword of the day in TwitterJaya.

@philipgolingai (that’s me on Twitter) tweeted: “PAS Erdogans – to use Zahid’s fav word – must be Jantan @wansaiful.”

That was in response to Wan Saiful Wan Jan’s tweet (who is CEO of Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs Malaysia and The Star iPad columnist): “PAS Erdogans must not be impotent.”
@philipgolingai also tweeted: “I’m bored with this jantan macho talk. Let’s talk about betina.”

On hindsight, betina is not a politically-correct word. A check with AK57’s Weblog (http://ak57.wordpress.com) revealed that “Betina is used to refer to promiscuous women (sluts) and also, I believe, to unmarried women who are pregnant. The reason is that these women behaved like animals by having illegitimate sex.”

Anyway, the point of my tweet is there’s too much testosterone (i.e. Perkasa president Datuk Ibrahim Ali) in Malaysian politics that women politician would give a gentler, kinder touch.

Would a woman politician make politics more ladylike?

Perhaps sexier? (Think Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s gorgeous sister who is running for Thai premiership.) Homelier? (Think Corazon Aquino, the homemaker who was thrust into the macho Philippines politics when her husband Ninoy was assassinated.)

Let’s look at American politics.

Sarah Palin? Not a good example. She is more macho than former California governor and Hollywood action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger (who did the most jantan thing a politician can do – fathering a child with a former housekeeper).

Palin, whose nickname is Sarah Barracuda, is into moose hunting in the Alaskan wilderness. Not only can she hunt, she can skin, cube and cure a whole moose.

She is so jantan. But sexy with her Kazuo Kawasaki glasses.

Britain’s Margaret Thatcher is also very jantan. She is not known as the Iron Lady for nothing.

Our own Iron Lady Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz is not your typical masak-masak (cooking) politician. She can outwit most of her former colleagues in the Cabinet. And she is not the type to mince her words; Rafidah allegedly called a rival female politician jantan.

How about Jelapang assemblyman Hee Yit Foong?

In June 2009, Aulong assemblyman Yew Tian Hoe sued his former DAP comrade for allegedly assaulting him with pepper spray during a chaotic Perak assembly sitting.

On Wednesday, @philipgolingai tweeted: “Zahid says DAP (is an) anak jantan if it leaves Pakatan. If Zahid had a fist fight with @teresakok, who would win?”

And @drshikin (Dr Wan Norashikin, Puteri Umno treasurer) replied: “Karaoke je.”

See, that’s a ladylike answer.

Such a tweet would have raised the blood pressure of some male politicians. YouTube is filled with video clips of male dignitaries shouting mari lawan (come and fight).

My personal favourite is the one where a YB kneed another YB in the groin in the Kelantan Legislative Assembly. Ouch!

Yes, we need more feminine politicians. Someone like DAP’s Sri Serdang assemblyman Teoh Nie Ching who sleeps with her Ubah doll (DAP’s hornbill mascot in the recent Sarawak polls), as revealed on her Twitter @teonieching.

The world indeed would be a better place if we had less anak jantan politicians.

You don’t think so? If you are anak jantan, mari lawan!

Sexing up the race for PM

2011-05-29T23:32:00.001+08:00

By Philip Golingai

IT is the Puppet versus the Clone in the coming Thai elections.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is seen by critics as a politician manipulated by puppet masters – the oligarchy, the military and the hidden hand. The Democrat Party leader who has been prime minister since December 2008 is hoping voters will return him to power on July 3.

Exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra described his younger sister Yingluck as his “clone” after his party Pheu Thai nominated her as lead candidate on May 16. Yingluck is Thaksin’s hope in returning to power after the courts dissolved the pro-Thaksin ruling party in 2008.

With her telegenic good looks and Shinawatra DNA, the 43-year-old CEO is sexing up the rather tense elections in a country where 92 people – including soldiers – were killed and about 2,000 were injured during the two month-long pro-Thaksin Red Shirt protest last year.

On May 22, in the Bangkok Post, Voranai Vanijaka wrote: “Check out the news, surf web forums, eavesdrop on conversations, have discussions with friends and colleagues, and you might find that, perhaps not all, perhaps not even the majority, but a good number of people are excited.

“They are afflicted with Yingluck fever. She’s a woman and she’s hot, and the surname is also quite relevant.”

The Prime Minister is also equally good-looking. At 46, Abhisit is young and photogenic.
“There are a good many women, including some trapped in men’s bodies – and there are countless of them in this kingdom – who melt at the sight of PM Abhisit,” wrote Voranai.

Bangkok Pundit, who blogs on Thai politics, observed that Thais’ reaction to Yingluck has been more positive than negative.

“Most people didn’t know what to expect of Yingluck as she has not had a prominent public role. She doesn’t have a powerful voice for giving speeches but she is very good at interacting with voters at the market,” he noted.

“She is also quite different from Thaksin. Thaksin was known to be abrasive whereas she is very feminine.”

Abhisit was born in Newcastle, England. He studied in Eton College (which has produced 18 British prime ministers in the past 400 years). He earned a politics, philosophy and economics degree and a master’s degree in economics at Oxford University.

Yingluck holds a master’s degree in political science from Kentucky State University, USA. She has run SC Asset Corp, a Thaksin-owned property company. She was also on the board of Manchester City Football Club until Thaksin sold it in 2008.

“If the Thai polls was a beauty contest, who would win?” I asked Suranand Vejjajiva, Abhisit’s first cousin who is with the opposite political camp (he served in Thaksin’s cabinet).

Suranand, now a political analyst after he was banned from politics together with 110 Thaksinites for five years after Thaksin was ousted in a bloodless coup in 2006, chuckled. “You are talking to a man, (Yingluck wins) as I prefer a woman.”

Turning serious, he added: “This time, Thais are looking at a woman to run the country.”
Suranand observed that Abhisit and Yingluck are “quite an interesting pair” who possess different strengths and weaknesses.

“Abhisit is a veteran politician who has been an MP for 20 years. He is the most eloquent speaker who is second to none. But he has no experience in the private sector. He doesn’t understand how the business sector works and that is reflected in his two years as PM.

“He has baggage with the bloody crackdown against the Reds. And he has to explain the country’s economic problems – price increase and inflation,” he said in a telephone interview.

“Yingluck is fresh and she doesn’t have any baggage. She’s got the back-up of her brother (Thaksin, 61) and the Pheu Thai machinery. She has business experience.

“The Democrats have attacked her for not having political experience. She can be the one who can bring the people together (the great political and social divide in Thailand between the pro-Thaksin Reds and anti-Thaksin Yellows).”

“Is Yingluck sexing up the elections?” I asked Suranand.

“She is. Yingluck is not the most beautiful woman in Thailand but she has Thaksin’s charm. She is able to attract the attention of the common people. She has made herself accessible to them,” he answered.

The distinctly upper-class Abhisit, in Suranand’s eyes, is aloof.

However, Abhisit’s good looks will always win him votes, he said.

“There are many Thai women who love him. He is still popular among his supporters. A question in this election is whether Yingluck can steal those female voters from Abhisit.”

Worapol Promigabutr, an academic, said Thais perceived Yingluck as a modern CEO who is not a professional politician.

“She is not a ‘dirty politician’ whom Thais despise. Abhisit looks clean but he uses his power in favour of corrupt businessmen,” he said, adding that the same accusation had been levelled against Thaksin.

Pitch Pongsawat, who teaches political science in Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, opined that many women who went gaga over Abhisit no longer think he is the national Prince Charming. Thais, he said, were unhappy with the Prime Minister’s action in the past two years.

But Pitch is positive about Yingluck, saying “she has a good profile as a successful businesswoman.”

“People believe that her femininity will not create big confrontation or tension. In Thai culture, in our concept of manliness, it is difficult for a tough guy (for example, the military) to talk tough with a young woman.”

ML Nattakorn Devakula, host of the English-language news show The Daily Dose, said Red Shirt supporters and hardcore Thaksin loyalists supported Yingluck because she is a Shinawatra and a nominee of Thaksin.

“Yet many others simply feel that Abhisit had his shot for two and half years and despite strong support from the establishment and military, he was unable to pursue effective reform and handle the country’s deepening political divide,” explained Nattakorn via e-mail.

“Many just feel: let the Pheu Thai/Red faction have a shot at returning to power and see whether they can do better. Some are also nostalgic of the 2000 to 2006 Thai Rak Thai (Thaksin’s ruling party) days when the economy was shooting sky-high.”

On whether looks mattered in Thai politics, Bangkok Pundit said being telegenic does help in garnering attention.

“Yingluck is clearly an extrovert and she comes across as friendly and open when talking to people.”

In the past, noted Pitch, looks were important as there was no big conflict in Thai society.
“You can present yourself as a well-educated fresh faced candidate. But now what matters is ‘Are you with me or against me?’”

So who will win, the Puppet or the Clone? Pheu Thai or the Democrats?

According to Worapol, the opposition party Pheu Thai will win about 300 of the 500 seats up for grabs.

“It will be a landslide if there is no interference from the Interior Ministry and other institutions,” he said. “If you believe the opinion polls, Thais are coming to a point of getting to be bored or disillusioned with Abhisit. A fresh face like Yingluck is making them excited,” Suranand said.

“Of course, in the next 30 days or so a lot can happen. Bangkokians do not trust Thaksin but because of the incompetency of this present government, they will throw their weight behind Yingluck if the polls were held now.”

Nattakorn echoed Suranand’s sentiment. “The Bangkok business community prefer Yingluck’s business experience to Abhisit’s lacklustre level of experience in management,” he said.

“However, it is still very early in the race. We still have six weeks to go before elections. We’ll see whether Yingluck flames out.”

World Tweet world

2011-05-23T23:23:00.001+08:00

One Man's Meat
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

From breaking news on Osama’s death to resignation bombshells, Twitter has become a first source of information for some 200 million Twitterers around the world.

SOONER or later an obituary will read: Tan Sri X leaves a wife, five children and 110,017 Twitter followers.

I got the epiphany from a cartoon in The New Yorker, a weekly magazine. The cartoon hammered home the growing popularity of the social networking and microblogging service. There are about 200 million accounts on Twitter, approximately a third of Facebook’s user base.
I use to be disdainful of Twitter, thinking it was the briefer (140 characters) version of the lying blog.

When I was based in Bangkok last year, I received a SMS from a friend in Kuala Lumpur asking whether Malaysians were killed in the Thai capital. I replied: “Not that I know of as right now I’m near Siam Paragon shopping mall and there’s no blood on the street. Who told you?”

She replied: “I read it on Twitter.”

What a twit, I thought. Plus I thought Twitter was a stupid place where people just talked about what they had for breakfast.

Despite my negativity towards the social media, I decided early this year to be a “lurker” (someone listening, reading and following others on Twitter). And Twitter proved to be a vital tool as a news source.

On the morning of March 21, I got a whiff of a sex video scandal when @niknazmi (PKR communications director Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad) tweeted: “A little bird informed me that a doctored video of DSAI having sex is being shown to top editors right now. #fitnah2 not effective?”

(DSAI is the acronym of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and interestingly, Anwar has used his tweets as an alibi to prove his innocence.)

Twitter has become my first source of information. And also for most Twitterers.

Don’t believe me? On May 3, David Pogue @pogue (David Pogue, New York Times tech columnist) tweeted: “Where did the news break about Osama’s death? On Twitter, of course!”

On May 2, @PhilipGolingai (that’s me on Twitter) tweeted: “Sohaib Athar live-tweeted the deadly raid on Osama in Pakistan about seven hours before Obama announced it in a live telecast.”

Twitter rules the world!

Now, I’m a Twitter addict. The first thing I do when I wake up is to fire up Gravity (a Twitter client) on my Nokia N8.

Two Twitterers whom I keenly follow are @Ngobalakrishnan (Padang Serai MP N. Gobalakrishnan) and @firdauschris (Parti Kita central committee member Muhammad Firdaus Christopher).

Months before he ditched PKR to become an independent MP, Gobalakrishnan agitated a sacking with Incredible Hulk-like tweets like “The problem with Anwar is he thinks that he is a godsend because when he does wrong all around him applaud him.”

Probably @Ngobalakrishnan is the first Malaysian politician to engineer a political sacking through Twitter. However, PKR ignored him.

Gobalakrishnan had to announce his resignation in Twittersphere. On Jan 29, the Padang Serai MP tweeted: “Good morning to all Malaysians. I hereby resign from all PKR party posts. I will continue my work through a new NGO.”

I enjoy the tick tock, tick tock tweets from @firdauschris that a bombshell will be dropped. Firdaus recently tweeted: “OMG! Get ready for the unleashing... I bet they will be too speechless to utter a single word when it is out for everyone’s viewing pleasure.”

I’m not sure what @firdauschris was twittering about, but I guess it had something to do with the fitnah (slander) which @niknazmi tweeted.

There are Twitterers whom I’ve unfollowed because they bored me. For instance, I used to follow a NGO operative who tweeted inside stories on the fight between PKR and SNAP. After the Sarawak polls, he then tweeted mostly about food that it made me feel fat.

I’ve also unfollowed politicians who have become inactive in TwitterJaya. Inactive followers might kill this addictive social media. Like all trends (remember Friendster?) Twitter might die a natural death.

I wonder how its obit will be written. Perhaps: Twitter leaves 1.5 billion inactive followers.

Tanks in the night spark coup talk

2010-01-30T10:19:00.001+08:00

Thai Takes

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

TWENTY-TWO V-150 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) rumbled into the streets of Bangkok on Monday night. And – not surprising for politically-jittery Thailand – the immediate assumption was the military had launched a coup.

It turned out that the APCs were decommissioned from an operation in the country’s restive southern provinces and were on their way via Bangkok to Pathum Thani (a town north of the Thai capital) for maintenance.

The next day the military apologised for causing panic and for not informing the public about the movement of the APCs.

It also denied that the army would stage a coup.

“It is out of fashion to talk about a coup,” said army spokesman Colonel Sansern Kaewkamnerd.

On the contrary – thanks to recent events (such as the crack in the Abhisit Vejjajiva-led coalition government and the mysterious slap-in-the-face grenade attack on the office of the Army Chief General Anupong Paojinda) and conjectures (involving surprise, surprise Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai Prime Minister who was ousted in a 2006 coup) – it is once again fashionable to talk about an imminent coup.

This week Thai English-language newspapers ran coup-related news articles (No impending coup, Anupong insists) and opinion pieces (Coup, what coup? and Full circle to another military coup?).

The Nation also Tweeted: “Here’s one for 2day: A 14-yr-old nephew of Pojaman’s told his school friends to ‘get out of Bkk’ on Feb 26. (Translated: Here’s a rumour for today – A 14-year-old nephew of (Thaksin’s former wife) Pojaman told his schoolmates to “get out of Bangkok” on Feb 26 (which is the day the Supreme Court decides on the 76bil baht (RM7.6bil) that was seized from Thaksin after the 2006 coup).

But a coup by an Abhisit-friendly military against the Abhisit-led coalition government? Mind boggling.

But this is Thailand. And there is such a thing as a “friendly” coup.

In his Friday column in the Bangkok Post, Abhisit’s cousin Suranand Vejjajiva, who served in the Thaksin Shinawatra Cabinet and is now a political analyst, wrote:

“The general analysis among political pundits is that, with pressure over the verdict on Thaksin’s 76bil-baht assets case to be handed down on Feb 26, the Red Shirts (a pro-Thaksin movement) could escalate their rallies and become uncontrollable.

“Riots could turn violent and there would be sabotage. The top brass have been dissatisfied with PM Abhisit and the Democrats in controlling the situation. There have been signs lately that they are distancing themselves from the government.

“Given the circumstances, if another putsch is to be carried out, it could be the first one in history with the intent of getting rid of the opposition rather than to overthrow the government. It is Thaksin who is the target, not Abhisit.

“Thaksin is viewed as a nuisance, and definitely a threat to the military’s security if he ever manages to stage a comeback. In addition, Thaksin is still widely popular, with polls indicating that if an election were held today, Thaksin’s Puea Thai Party would win more than 200 seats, if not an absolute majority in Parliament.”

The anticipation of a coup is the thing that I will miss the most when I end my stint in Bangkok as The Star’s Thailand correspondent (which began a month before the Sept 19, 2006 coup). Almost every other month since I’ve lived in Thailand, tongues have wagged that a coup was imminent.

Though the political pundits and fortune tellers have been wrong on their coup predictions, Thailand has seen:

a) A judicial coup (the court removed Pro-Thaksin Samak Sundaravej as Prime Minister for moonlighting as a chef in a television cooking show).

b) A TV coup (army chief General Anupong – flanked by the navy chief, the air force chief and the police chief – appeared on television to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, Thaksin’s brother-in-law and Samak’s successor).

c) Several “silent” coups (including the Abhisit-led government declaring a state of emergency to allow the military to crack down on the Red Shirts protest during Songkran, the Thai new year, in April 2009).

Today as I fly back to Kuala Lumpur, I wonder whether there will be a coup in Bangkok tonight.

(Published in The Star on January 30, 2010)

Explosive rumour is true after all

2010-01-23T10:58:00.001+08:00

Thai Takes

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

AT AROUND 3am on Jan 15, an M79 grenade was fired into the compound of the Thai Army headquarters in Bangkok, landing near the office of Army chief General Anupong Paochinda.

The Thai authorities kept silent about the attack until the media broke the story a week later. In fact, as late as Thursday, Defence spokesman Thanathip Sawangsaeng had claimed that ill-intentioned people were trying to create chaos by circulating such a rumour.

Later that day, Army spokesman Colonel Sansern Kaewkamnerd acknowledged that the “rumour” was indeed true.

However, he said the army was not trying to cover up the attack but that nobody had asked about it.

According to Sansern, as reported by the Bangkok Post, a grenade was fired from an M79 grenade launcher into the sixth floor of the headquarters building, damaging a kitchen next to a fitness room.

“The grenade was likely launched at night because no one heard the sound of the explosion,” he said. He, however, denied that the blast occurred near the office of the Army chief.

Sansern said the army believed the attacker was not trying to injure or kill anyone but was trying to seek publicity.

“I talked to Gen Anupong, and he was not worried about the situation, nor did he feel humiliated. But he insisted that action must be taken under the law.”

The M79 grenade launcher, according to a report in The Nation, is the weapon of choice in recent attacks on political enemies.

In 2008, seven M79 grenades were fired (on different occasions) at supporters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD or Yellow Shirts as the anti-Thaksin movement is popularly known) who were camped at the office of the Prime Minister in Bangkok.

And in November 2009, PAD co-leader Sondhi Limthongkul was also targeted in an M79 attack. But it missed the target.

The usual suspect for M79 grenade attacks is Major General Khattiya Sawasdipol, a 59-year-old military specialist.

In 2008, Khattiya, who despises the Yellow Shirts, warned that if they continued their siege of the Prime Minister’s office, they would be doing it at their own risk.

Soon, grenades were launched at them, killing and injuring several Yellow Shirts supporters.

In November 2009, he made headlines when he slipped into Cambodia to meet up with former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the number one enemy of the Abhisit Vejjajiva-led coalition government.

On Thursday, the military authorised the police to raid Khattiya’s residence in the compound of the 4th Cavalry Battalion in Bangkok. They found an M26 grenade and a 38-calibre pistol with a number of bullets.

Later, police raided the home of Khattiya’s driver, Sergeant Natsit Suwannarat, and discovered more weapons – 32 grenades, 700 rounds of M16 ammunition, three packs of C4 explosives and 13 sticks of TNT, as well as some spent shells.

Khattiya denied that he was involved in the M79 grenade attack as he was not in the Thai capital at the time of the attack. In a telephone interview with The Nation, he said: “Many people dislike Anupong, or maybe some ‘third hand’ wants to create chaos.

“Don’t blame me. You have no evidence to pin it on me. If I had done it, he’d be dead, but I would not do such a thing, because he’s my friend.”

Previously, Khattiya had warned that if he was suspended (over the trip to visit Thaksin in Cambodia and for insubordination in publicly criticising Anupong), he would see to it that Anupong “could not go out on the streets”.

He has since been in conflict with Anupong over the army chief’s role in suspending him from active duty. On Thursday, in a scathing opinion piece in the Bangkok Post, its former editor Veera Prateepchaikul wrote:

“The tightened guard around the army chief following the recent grenade attack may give him a sense of security, but for the public at large the big question remains: how can we feel safe when the army chief himself is unsafe and needs more protection?

“This outrageous incident is a direct challenge to the authority of General Anupong in his capacity as the army commander-in-chief, not to mention a huge slap in the face.”

(Published in The Star on January 23, 2009)

Thai food everywhere

2010-01-16T11:35:00.001+08:00

THAI TAKES

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

THE other day I was eating Thai food in a restaurant in a Bangkok suburb with a Malaysian tourist and my guest was surprised that the dishes did not taste like the ones in her favourite Thai restaurant in Kuala Lumpur.

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“Well, now that I’ve tasted this,” the 30-something woman said, pointing at her Tom Yam Kung, “the one in KL tasted very Malaysian”.

Me, being me, I had to gloat over why I brought her to Kratip restaurant in Bang Kapi Mall, about 30km away from the heart of Bangkok’s tourist traps.

“The food here is authentic Thai. If you look around, there’s not a single farang (Thai for ‘westerners’) in this restaurant,” I said.

And then exaggerated, “See, everybody is drinking SangSom (a popular brand of Thai whisky).”

“What’s authentic Thai food?” she asked.

I was stumped. An unsophisticated foodie would say “spicy”. But that would be incorrect as Thai cuisine can’t be boxed in; it varies from region to region.

For example, Kaeng Matsaman Neua (Massaman Curry with beef), a popular southern Thai dish, is similar to the beef curry found in Kelantan, which was part of the Pattani kingdom.

Her question was food for thought. And a few days later, I headed to Bo.lan, a one-year-old fine dining Bangkok restaurant with the catch phrase “Thai food as it ought to be”.

Bo.lan does not dumb down its dishes to cater for the non-Thai palate as it believes that the food it is cooking must be prepared correctly.

A customer insisting on prawn instead of beef for its Green Curry with Beef will be told: “We are sorry sir/madam, unfortunately we are not able to do that today because our green curry paste is made specifically for beef and to use prawn will be incorrect.”

The restaurant’s name is inspired from the name of the co-owners – Bo (the nickname of 29-year-old Thai Duangporn Songvisava) and Dylan Jones, a 28-year-old Australian.

Both chefs previously worked at Nahm (the only Thai restaurant to be awarded a Michelin star) in London.

“What’s authentic Thai food?” I asked Bo and Dylan.

“We were discussing this the other day, trying to pin down what Thai food really is,” said Dylan. “And I believe there are many factors that influence what real Thai food is.

“But it comes down to one thing, and that is the final product. The flavour of the dish dictates whether it is really authentic.

“For example, a real Green Curry is slightly salty, sweet (obviously from the coconut cream) and quite hot (as there is a lot of chilli in the paste). And it is non-authentic if it is salty and sweet but not that hot,” he explained.

“It is done that way (less spicy) because customers don’t want it hot.”

Bo added: “Tom Yam should be spicy. And if a customer comes here and says ‘I want a Tom Yam, but I don’t want it hot (with chilli)’, you can’t call it Tom Yam, you have to call it something else.”

Nodding, Dylan said: “You can’t put a Ferrari badge on a Toyota and call it a Ferrari.”

However, Bo conceded that there were Thai dishes that could be different in terms of spiciness. “Take Som Tam (papaya salad), you can have it with or without chilli.”

As I was curious to know why my friend thought that the Thai food in her favourite restaurant tasted “very Malaysian”, I asked Bo and Dylan for their take on the authenticity of Thai food in restaurants outside Thailand.

“That’s a tricky question,” said Bo. “In general, Thai restaurants abroad cater for the local palate.

“However, I believe that there are restaurants (overseas) such as Nahm which serve authentic Thai dishes.

“And in some restaurants, if you say you are Thai and you want to eat authentic Thai food, they will do it for you.”

But Bo said: “There are also Thai restaurants in Thailand that dumb down their flavour as they cater to tourists or foreigners.

“When a customer asks for the dish to be less spicy, they are more than willing to do so because they don’t want to lose that customer.” But how about the food?”

Dylan answered, “… to the determent of authenticity.”

(Published in The Star on January 16, 2010)

A peep into Thailand's future

2010-01-09T13:43:00.003+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

A THAI fortune-teller predicted that “after a coup the country would have a new prime minister whose name begins with the Thai letter pronounced “Awe”.

In response to that prediction, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said: “There are people who want to bring about violence but it is my and the government’s duty not to let that happen. I reiterate that whoever thinks violence is an answer to this society is thinking wrong.”

Probably Abhisit could dismiss the prediction as it came from a fortune teller. But perhaps he should also read an article suggesting Thailand was in the early stages of a civil war that appeared in Naew Na daily (a Thai journal) on Dec 28.

It is a must-read because Prem Tinsulanonda, the 88-year-old adviser to the Thai King, says it is a must-read. And General Prem, a former unelected Prime Minister and army chief, is a puu yai (Thai for “senior elder”) whose words and action are taken seriously.

For example, when General Prem donned military attire to meet military leaders in his Bangkok residence on Dec 28, Thai political watchers speculated why the retired army chief was in uniform.

And then … the Sept 19, 2006, coup which ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra happened.

However, Admiral Phajun Tamprateep, personal secretary to Gen Prem, insisted that “there is nothing to interpret”, as reported by the Bangkok Post.

“Gen Prem is a soldier and he loves the military profession. He likes to wear the uniform on occasion, and he does so when he deems it appropriate,” Phajun explained.

On the day Gen Prem was in military uniform he told military leaders that an article published in Naew Na daily was “important and a must-read”.

The article, headlined We are in a period of civil war, was written by Chirmsak Pinthong, a critic of Thaksin.

Chirmsak contended that Thailand was in the initial stages of civil war. “On one side is the ‘legitimate government’ of the kingdom of Thailand and on the other side there are the Thaksin forces,” he said, as translated by thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com (a blog on Thai politics).

“They aim not just to overthrow the Abhisit government but to also radically change the system of government, eventually establishing a republic and a dictatorship.”

Chirmsak painted a scenario on how Thaksin would ignite a civil war.

The Thaksin forces, according to Chirmsak, would reject the authority of the Abhisit-led government (which it accused of being illegitimate). For example, ministers could not perform their duties in certain part of Thailand due to hostilities from the pro-Thaksin Red Shirts.

He wrote about the soldiers for hire in the Thaksin forces, referring to Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyudh (a former army chief and Prime Minister who recently joined the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai party) and the Class 10 army officers (who are Chavalit’s classmates).

“They are a minority, unlike the police who remain loyal to Thaksin, as evidenced by their failure to investigate the attacks on ‘peaceful PAD rallies, causing several deaths’,” said Chirmsak, a diehard supporter of the PAD (People’s Alliance for Democracy, an anti-Thaksin movement popularly colour-coded as the Yellow Shirts).

Chirmsak, as thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com colourfully translated, forecast: “The ‘big boss’ is firing off the ‘intercontinental missiles’ that ‘drop from the skies on the Kingdom of Thailand’. Some Red Shirts are the ‘infantry’ creating all the problems in the country.

“Others are the ‘artillery’, using television as their weapon. The Pheu Thai Party in parliament are the ‘cavalry in tanks’, protected by their parliamentary position but causing confusion. The ‘spies’ are the senior government officials who provide secret information, impede and disrupt.

“The civil war has begun but the outcome is not certain, so what can be done?," Chirmsak wrote. "The government is not going to be able to administer the country in any normal manner.

“The government needs to be more aggressive in maintaining the state’s power. The constitution has to be maintained. The power of the judiciary has to be protected so that it can enforce the law.”

(Published in The Star on January 9, 2009)

Thailand 2009: Take the quiz

2010-01-02T12:49:00.002+08:00

Thai Takes

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

1) WHO is the most adored in Thailand?

a) Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva

b) Ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra

c) Lin Ping, the baby Panda

2) What fever swept Thailand?

a) H1N1 fever

b) Panda fever

c) Liverpool fever

d) All the above

3) Who shot Sondhi Limthongkul, co-leader of the Yellow Shirts, an anti-Thaksin movement?

a) The military

b) The police

c) Gunmen hired by Thaksin Shinawatra

d) Insurgents from Thailand’s Deep South

e) “a” and “b”

4) Who is Suvanant Kongying (according to CNNGo.com)?

a) Thailand’s most searched for celebrity on Google in 2009

b) Her lavish January wedding was aired on a Thai TV channel

c) She and her husband are tabloid fodder, enjoying a lengthy 10-year courtship after meeting on a soap opera set and dealing with some subsequent mother/daughter-in-law drama.

d) She’s the Thai actress who was misquoted by a Cambodian tabloid in 2003 as saying that Angkor Wat belonged to Thailand, leading to riots in Phnom Penh and destruction of the Thai embassy in Cambodia

e) All the above

5) What does Keigo Sato (nine years old), Narumi Hamada (18), Masami Hayashi (eight), Nobuhiro Nakyai (11) and Nujarin Tsuchiya (13) have in common?

a) They are Thai/Japanese

b) They are looking for their Japanese fathers who abandoned them

c) Their plight inspired a Japanese to form a Thai-based support group for them

d) All the above

6) Who did Thaksin finger as the invisible hand that masterminded the September 2006 coup?

a) Saranrat “Lydia” Wisutthithada, a Thai R&B singer

b) Gen Prem Tinsulanonda, the adviser to the Thai King

c) Sondhi Limthongkul, co-leader of the Yellow Shirts

7) Who said, “I am in charge of security affairs and I have heard of nobody planning a coup. If there is a coup, I will walk naked (as I) step down. I believe no groups (in the military) want to stage a coup now.”?

a) Army chief Anupong Paojinda

b) Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban

c) Police chief Gen Patcharawat Wongsuwan

8) What was Thaksin’s “big surprise” announcement on his birthday?

a) The self-exiled politician promised to return to Thailand to face justice

b) He appeared in a hologram for his birthday party in Bangkok

c) He vowed to become a monk

d) He launched a 100-channel TV station to connect Thailand with the world

e) He quit politics

9) Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has ...

a) Accused Thailand of preparing a coup against his government

b) Contended that Abhisit “stole somebody’s chair” to seat himself in the prime minister’s chair

c) Appointed Thaksin as economic adviser to Cambodia

d) Maintained that the soured relationship between Bangkok and Phnom Penh will continue as long as Abhisit is Prime Minister

e) All the above

10) Gen Prem Tinsulanonda appeared publicly in full military uniform at his Bangkok residence on Dec 28. To pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai Party spokesman Prompong Nopparit this means:

a) The former army chief was hosting chiefs of the three armed forces and senior military officers who visited him to wish him Happy New Year

b) The 88-year-old puu yai (Thai for “senior elder”) wanted to feel healthy and strong

c) A sign another military coup is in the making

d) The confirmed bachelor simply loves donning a military uniform

11) What did young Abhisit do – as imagined by French cartoonist Stephff – at Oxford University during a human rights lecture?

a) Furiously take notes

b) Sleep through a lecture on “the oppression of ethnic minorities”

c) Eye a cute farang (Thai for “Westerner”) woman

12) Where in Thailand – as described by International Herald Tribune – does “the well water smell of solvents and when left in a glass overnight turns rust-coloured with algae”?

a) Nana Plaza, a three-storey building, which is home to a dozen go go bars, in Bangkok

b) Babylon, a Bangkok gay spa which TimeOut City Guide to Bangkok lauded as the “most beautiful sauna in the world”

c) Map Ta Phut, an industrial zone along the Gulf of Thailand

Answers:

1) c – since the unexpected birth of Lin Ping in Chiang Mai Zoo on May 27, Thais have been infected with panda fever. The cute baby panda even has a 24-hour “live” TV programme showing its daily activities

2) d

3) e – Since the April morning Bangkok shooting – where gunmen sprayed more than 100 bullets at Sondhi – arrest warrants have been issued against a policeman and two soldiers

4) e

5) d

6) b

7) b

8) d

9) e

10) c – Prompong said: “Gen Prem appeared in a military uniform shortly before the Sept 19, 2006 coup, and history could repeat itself again.”

11) b – on Dec 28, the Abhisit government repatriated thousands of ethnic Hmong asylum-seekers to Laos despite international objections that they could face persecution back home

12) c – 27 villagers from Map Ta Phut won a lawsuit (a landmark for Thailand’s environmental movement) which led to a slew of decisions that stopped US$9bil (RM31.1bil) worth of industrial projects

(Published in The Star on January 2, 2010)

Stir over girly calendar

2009-12-19T13:26:00.004+08:00

Thai Takes

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

WHAT’s Thailand’s 365 days of lust?

It is a controversial 2010 calendar featuring nude models whose bodies are painted to cover their assets. The titillating calendar was produced to promote Leo beer, a low-end alcoholic beverage manufactured by Singha Corporation (owner of iconic Thai beer, Singha).

The Leo calendar has attracted uproar from the Thai Public Health Ministry, Alcohol Beverage and Tobacco Consumption Control Committee, the Friends of Women Foundation and feminists. It also led to the resignation of a Singha heiress.

So, what so controversial about a beer calendar featuring photographs of women, whose modesty is virtually covered up by paint?

Well, Section 32 of Thailand’s Alcohol Beverage Control Act 2008 prohibits the advertising of alcohol drinks, their brands and trademarks in a way that encourages consumption, directly or indirectly.

Deputy Public Health Minister Manit Nopamornbodee, as reported by Bangkok Post on Thursday, criticised claims by the brewer and the calendar publisher that the calendar was for sale, not for distribution.

“It is against the law whether it is for sale or for distribution. The calendar carries a logo of the alcohol product and people understand that message,” he roared.

Outside the Prime Minister’s office in Bangkok on Thursday, the Friends of Women Foundation protested against the distribution of the calendar it labeled “Nude Calendar”, “Sin Calendar” and “Lust Calendar”.

Its manager Chadet Chaowilai said many brewers exploited women as sex objects for the sake of their business.

“Such negative tendencies have contributed to the problem of sexual violence against women,” he said, adding that “companies, including Singha, should give up their old marketing strategies and move towards more creative ways to promote their products and adopt a sense of corporate social responsibility”.

Yesterday, the Bangkok Post editorialised: “The argument by the calendar publisher, former supermodel Methinee ‘Lukked’ Kingpayom, that the calendar was made for sale, not for free distribution, is for fools.

“The use of girly calendars as a promotional tool for alcoholic beverages has been around long enough that people understand exactly what is going on without any need for spurious explanations.”

The hot, hot, hot Leo calendar brought heat to the Bhirombhakdi family that controls Singha Corporation when a Singha heiress brought them to work – the Government House (Thai Prime Minister’s office).

On Wednesday, Chitpas Bhirombhakdi, a 23-year-old daughter of the executive vice-president of Singha Corporation, took out two boxes of calendars from the trunk of her BMW and distributed them at the Government House in Bangkok.

Government House officials (including deputy government spokesmen Phumin Leetheeraprasert and Supachai Jaisamut), MPs, police and journalists (covering the Government House beat) lined up to accept Chitpas’ generosity and within a few minutes, about 200 copies were snapped up.

(For the record: the two spokesmen denied taking the calendars, claiming they were only passing by.)

The next day, to accept responsibility for distributing the calendars inside the August compound of the Government House, Chitpas resigned as a political appointee at the PM’s secretariat office.

In her resignation letter, the heiress explained that she did not intend to distribute them.

“I brought along the calendars because some friends want to have them,” she said, as quoted by The Nation.

“Many reporters saw the calendars and wanted them. So, I gave them to everyone. I admit that I did not think that this would turn out to be a big deal. This happened because of my recklessness.”

“I’m upset that the incident affected not only my family and me but also many senior people whom I respect. I myself will take full responsibility for this by resigning from position in the PM’s secretariat.”

Chitpas said she would take the incident as a lesson, and hoped that in the future, she would be given another opportunity in politics.

Democrat MP for Songkhla Sirichok Sopha, a personal secretary to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, according to the Bangkok Post, said “the stir over the nude calendar had affected the reputation of the government as it was distributed at the Government House”.

He, however, denied the Democrat-led coalition government pressured Chitpas to resign, saying she made her own decision.

Probably the only good thing coming out from Chitpas’ generosity is the recipients have something to look forward to when they peek at the Leo calendar.

(Published in The Star on Dec 19. Photograph courtesy of The Nation)

A pawn in the vicious political ball game

2009-12-12T20:04:00.001+08:00

THAI TAKES

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

IF you are a pawn caught in the middle of a political dogfight between the Abhisit Vejjajiva-led government and the double team of Thaksin Shinawatra-Hun Sen, what will happen if you are caught in Cambodia passing Thaksin’s flight schedule to a Phnom Penh-based Thai diplomat?

Answer: The Phnom Penh Municipal Court will sentence you to seven years in jail and a fine of 10 million riels (about RM8,200).

Siwarak Chotipong, a 31-year-old Thai engineer working for the Thai-owned Cambodia Air Traffic Ser vices (Cats), was found guilty on Tuesday by a Cambodian court for espionage (stealing information relevant to Thaksin’s flight plan to Cambodia).

“Obtaining the flight schedule was very important for the Thai government, but it severely endangered Thaksin,” Judge Ke Sakhan said, reading the verdict against Siwarak. “It also affected the national security of Cambodia.”

Thaksin’s flight schedule was “sensitive information” as Thaksin is now a high-ranking Cambodian government adviser, said Phnom Penh court deputy prosecutor Sok Roeun.

“His flight schedule is not a simple document like a wedding invitation,” he said.

The court hearing was held as relations between the two neigbouring countries hit an all-time low.

Thailand withdrew its ambassador in Phnom Penh after Cambodia appointed Thaksin as economic adviser. And in retaliation, Cambodia recalled its ambassador in Bangkok.

The “sad truth” of the court verdict, according to the Bangkok Post in an editorial on Thursday, is Siwarak is “a mere pawn caught in the middle of a vicious political ball game between the Democrat-led government and Thaksin, with Hun Sen openly taking the latter’s side”.

“Therefore, it should not be surprising if the victim’s mother, Simarak na Nakhon Phanom, has opted to seek help from (Thaksin) and (the pro-Thaksin political party) Pheu Thai chairman General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, instead of the Thai Foreign Ministry in seeking a royal pardon from Cambodia for her convicted son,” editorialised the English-language Thai newspaper.

According to The Phnom Penh Post, a royal pardon was a likely scenario in the intensely politicised case.

It quoted Cambodian Centre for Human Rights president Ou Virak as saying that there were likely “politics being played behind the scenes” for Siwarak’s release.

Ou Virak said the case was a “major embarrassment” for Thai Prime Minister Vejjajiva and “it presented the opportunity for Hun Sen to either seek rapprochement with Abhisit or lend further support to Thaksin and Pheu Thai”.

“The question is: what message does the Cambodian side want to send, and which side are they going to pick?” Ou Virak said.

However, the Bangkok Post editorialised: “For now, it does not really matter which side will eventually get the credit for resolving this unfortunate human drama so long as the victim is brought home. What really matters and is indeed very disturbing, is that the ongoing political feud has become regionalised and gone many steps too far.”

But tell that to the Democrat, the backbone of Abhisit’s coalition government.

Democrat Party spokesman Thepthai Senpong was surprised that Simarak was seeking a royal pardon for her son through the opposition party Pheu Thai.

“I’m surprised by Simarak’s decision to help her son without asking for the Foreign Ministry’s assistance, because this is not in line with international practice,” he told the media. “I wonder if Thaksin, Chavalit and Hun Sen have more prominent roles than the Cambodian king.”

In politically-divided Thailand, Sirivak’s role in the diplomatic row, unsurprisingly, has taken a political dimension.

In a column called “Ask The Editors” in The Nation, an English-language Thai newspaper, Tulsathit Taptim wrote about the far-fetched theory that Siwarak was “in fact a (pro-Thaksin) red-shirted agent who was ‘planted’ as a Thai government spy so that he could be arrested on charges of espionage in order to embarrass Bangkok and allow Thaksin play a heroic saviour”.

“Those believing this theory have forgotten one key factor: Siwarak was allegedly acting in liaison with the Thai Embassy, which, appropriate or not, wanted him to find out what Thaksin was up to on his controversial arrival in Phnom Penh.

Without this embassy connection, it might have been plausible that Siwarak was a double-agent on a mission to humiliate the Thai government,” Tulsathit wrote.

Spy or not, Siwarak is clearly a pawn.

(Published in The Star on Dec 12, 2009)

Languishing with hope

2009-12-05T23:55:00.001+08:00

THAI TAKES

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

LATELY I have been receiving letters via e-mail from “Bangkok Hilton” – the nickname for Bang Kwang Central Prison in Thailand, one of the most notorious prisons in the world.

The e-mail contained a scanned letter stamped “Censored” (by the Bang Kwang authority). The letter – which I call “love letters from Bang Kwang” – was written cursively in a polite but firm tone.

“Greeting, how are U doing? It’s been a while since UR last reply. Hope U are o.k. Actually I don’t want to bother U but as I said, U are the only one we have for media,” wrote Dennis Ooi in a letter dated Nov 13.

I met the 30-year-old Penangite in Bang Kwang late last year.

He was charged with importing drugs in 2003 after selling 700 Ecstasy pills to a Thai contact who turned out to be an undercover policeman. Not knowing how to read and write the Thai language, Ooi claimed that he was made to sign an admission so that a death sentence would be reduced to a life term.

He said that although his brother paid a Thai lawyer 1.5mil baht (about RM150,000) to represent him in court, the lawyer did not turn up.

Ooi felt it was unfair for him to languish in prison for 50 years for signing a sheet that stated he imported drugs. He also said that the Thai prisoners and prison wardens did not like Malaysian prisoners.

Malaysian prisoners, according to him, got the idea for a prisoner transfer treaty from Nigerians who serve a minimum time in Thailand and return home to serve their remaining term.

“We feel sad when we see them go home. We are serving the same sentence but they get to go back because their government has a transfer treaty with Thailand,” he said.

His plea – to be incarcerated in a Malaysian prison – was a front-page story in The Star on Dec 29.

Ooi wrote the letter because a Malaysian embassy official visited some Muslim inmates before Hari Raya and told them last December that Malaysia will negotiate with Thailand a transfer treaty to enable prisoners to finish their jail term in their homeland.

“We ask you again to write an article about our wish to go back before the meeting in December,” he appealed.

In his second letter, which I received on Nov 25, Ooi asked if I knew when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak would visit Thailand.

“Wow!” I thought, “Even though he is incarcerated he even knows that his Prime Minister is visiting Thailand.”

I e-mailed that Najib would be visiting Bangkok on Dec 7 and then Narathiwat in southern Thailand on Dec 8 and 9.

I also told him that I would only be able to visit him the second or third week of December as I was off for a Manila trip.

I received on Dec 2 via e-mail a letter from Ooi. And he was worried that my article on his and other Malaysian inmates’ wish for Malaysia to sign a prisoner exchange treaty with Thailand would only see print after Najib’s Thai tour.

Ooi is not the only Malaysian in a Thai prison hoping Najib will discuss with Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva a treaty that will see them return home.

Last year, I visited a 40-something Malaysian woman in a Bangkok women’s prison as both she and her husband were convicted for credit card fraud.

She enthused that she and her husband – who is jailed in the nearby men’s prison – was excited as they could celebrate Hari Raya in a prison in Malaysia.

“A Malaysian embassy official told us that he had read in a Malaysian newspaper that Malaysia and Thailand had signed a prisoner exchange treaty.

“And because our crime is not serious, we will be one of the first to be sent home,” she said in a posh accent which betrayed her high society background.

She was crestfallen when told the report was inaccurate.

Perhaps Najib’s visit – which Bernama described as “four years after hitting the lowest point in their otherwise excellent bilateral ties, Malaysia and Thailand are on the brink of a historic milestone as their top leaders meet in the kingdom” – will change the prisoners’ lives.

(Published from The Star on Dec 5, 2009)

Name change and man of mystery

2009-11-28T19:48:00.002+08:00

Thai Takes

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

IS TAKKI Shinegra, a globetrotting man of mystery, Thaksin Shinawatra?

The Thai vice Foreign Minister Panich Vikitsreth thinks so.

On Wednesday, he alleged that Thaksin’s name on passports issued by Montenegro, Nicaragua and Uganda was “Takki Shinegra”. And the name change, according to Panich, is making his ministry’s attempts to extradite the self-exiled former Thai prime minister — who fled Thailand in 2008 to avoid a two-year jail term for corruption passed in absentia — difficult.

However, Thaksin, who is arguably Thailand’s Twitter king, tweeted in Thai that “it’s useless for me to change my name since many people know me. I walk in department stores in any country and many people come to greet me”.

“I still use my old name but don’t say I’ve done a sex change. It can’t be helped as you guys are so stupid to revoke my Thai passport that you have no way to trace me through non-Thai documents,” added the billionaire politician, referring to the revocation of his diplomatic passport by the Abhisit Vejjajiva-led government.

This week — which is the first anniversary of the anti-Thaksin Yellow Shirts’ seizure of two Bangkok airports — Takki Shinegra was just a sideshow to two political dramas in Thailand.

Today, the pro-Thaksin Red Shirts were supposed to launch street protests — which they proclaimed to be the biggest show of force — in the Thai capital to force the collapse of the Abhisit government.

Anti-Thaksin forces criticised the planned rally as inappropriate as it was too close to King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 82nd birthday on Dec 5. Ironically, these critics were silent when the Yellow Shirts seized Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport from Nov 25 to Dec 3 last year.

The seizure not only crippled the Thai tourism industry but was also “inappropriate” as it was held too close to the King’s birthday.

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban, who is also the Democrat Party’s secretary-general, alleged that the Red Shirts were recruiting foreign workers to participate in their street rally. And Thepthai Senpong, a democrat party spokesman, had a noteworthy method of sifting non-Thais among the Red Shirt protesters.

The authorities, according to him, will check the protesters’ national ID and those without one would be detained and asked to sing the Thai national anthem.

The Abhisit government also imposed the tough Internal Security Act (which allows the military to impose curfews, operate checkpoints, restrict movements of protesters and act fast if the rally turn violent) from Nov 28 to Dec 14 in Bangkok as it claimed it feared a repeat of the April violence.

In April, the Red Shirts (or, according to the Red Shirts leaders, agent provocateurs masquerading as Red Shirts supporters) turned Bangkok into a battlefield (i.e. hijacking military tanks and petrol tankers and torching public buses).

Two people were killed in the mayhem which was Thailand’s worst political violence since the bloody Black May uprising in 1992.

Facing pressure, the Red Shirts backtracked. “We Red Shirts want to express our loyalty to the king by postponing the rally indefinitely. We will meet to map out our stance after the middle of December,” Veera Musikapong, a Red Shirt leader, told reporters.

If Bangkok was a no-go zone for the Red Shirts, Chiang Mai, the stronghold of the Red Shirts and hometown of Thaksin, was a Thai city that Prime Minister Abhisit could not visit.

The Prime Minister cancelled his plan to preside over the closing ceremony of the Thai Chamber of Commerce annual conference because a pro-Thaksin protest leader made an indirect threat against his life on a community radio station.

“I am sure I will be safe if I go but others including the protesters, security officers and seminar participants may have problems because some protesters want to cause problems,” said Abhisit, who recently returned from Qatar.

After Abhisit’s Qatar visit, worried Thaksin loyalists tweeted to the self-exiled politician based in Dubai their concern that Abhisit had asked Middle East countries to extradite him.

Takki Shinegra, ermm, Thaksin, responded: “I would like to invite Abhisit to eat camel meat here so that he will have a better understanding about things.”

“The government should stop bothering other countries (about me),” he added. “Abhisit should also find time to visit all other member countries of the Asean because it’s a tradition.”

(Published in The Star on November 28, 2009)

The invisible elephant

2009-11-21T12:49:00.002+08:00

THAI TAKES
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

SO what is really happening (politically) in Thailand?” a visiting American academician specialising in South-East Asian politics asked me.

Instinctively, I glanced to my left and then to my right. It was a habit I picked up whenever I was about to discuss the most taboo subject in Thailand.

On my right in the hip Bangkok cafe was a farang (Thai for “Westerner”) in a business suit with a cliched sexy Thai girl, while on my left were two Thais deep in conversation.

Looks like the coast is clear, I thought. And in a hushed tone I told her what was whispered among Thai political watchers but not discussed publicly, as they did not want to risk charges of lese majeste (a French phrase for “insulting the monarchy”). In the past two years, several people have been jailed for lese majeste.

In 2007, Oliver Jufer, a 57-year-old Swiss, was found to have spray-painted photographs of the King while drunk. He was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison, but subsequently he was pardoned by King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

In 2009, Harry Nicolaides, a 41-year-old Australian writer, was charged with lese majeste for a passage in his novel which briefly mentioned the “romantic entanglements and intrigues” of a fictional Crown Prince.

He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in jail. Eventually, he received a royal pardon and was released.

In August this year, 46-year-old activist Daranee Chancheonsilapakul (nicknamed “Da Torpedo” for her fiery oratory) was jailed for 18 years for making a series of inflammatory speeches at pro-Thaksin Shinawatra “Red Shirt” rallies. Her remarks, according to The Nation, a Thai English-language newspaper, “were against the 2006 coup but laced with offensive references to the monarchy”.

I also discussed with the academician the recent controversial interview that self-exiled billionaire politician Thaksin gave to The Times (of London). The Times published the text of the interview on Times Online after Thaksin issued a statement saying that the newspaper’s report was “distorted” and “untrue”.

The Abhisit Vejjajiva-led government had banned the Thaksin interview, warning it would take “appropriate action” against media organisations that reported the content of the ousted prime minister’s interview which was “offensive to the royal institution”.

Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya told the media in Bangkok: “I would like to say that Thaksin’s interview violates the monarchy, which is the country’s main institution.”

“I wonder what the hidden agenda was that caused him to make this inappropriate move,” Kasit said, adding that the Justice Ministry would consider whether to charge Thaksin with lese majeste.

On the day I had a chat with the American academician, the police arrested Thatsaporn Rattanawongsa, a 42-year-old Thai radiologist, for allegedly spreading rumours about the King’s health which resulted in a plunge in the Thai stock market in October.

Last month, the stock market plummeted (at one point by 8.22% on Oct 15) over speculation about the health of King Bhumibol, who will be celebrating his 82nd birthday next month. The revered king, who is regarded by most Thais as a demi-god, has been hospitalised for two months for various ailments.

Thatsaporn was the fourth person arrested for damaging national security by posting false information online. In early November, three other Internet users were arrested on the same charge.

One of them was Teeranun Wipuchanin, a former UBS employee. Teeranun had translated a Bloomberg story and then posted it on Prachatai, a popular Thai-language online forum.

“Everybody on that day wanted to know what caused the market to fall. The stock market had already dropped and we did the translation in the evening,” she said.

Interestingly, as Bangkok Pundit in asiancorrespondent.com/bangkok-pundit-blog (a Thai political blog) pointed out, the Bloomberg story merely reported that the stock market dropped on speculation over the King’s health.

“Umm, there is a difference between reporting a rumour and reporting an analyst’s opinion that rumours are making the SET (Stock Exchange of Thailand) fall – most people don’t even dispute the fact that the rumours were making the SET fall, but simply reporting this as opposed to the rumour is verboten (forbidden),” he blogged.

There’s an elephant in the room, but either Thais can’t see it or they are afraid to talk about it publicly.

(Published in The Star on November 21, 2009)

A method in Hun Sen’s madness?

2009-11-14T11:12:00.002+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

POP quiz: Why did Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen poke Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in the eye by hosting the latter’s arch-rival Thaksin Shinawatra in Phnom Penh and rejecting Thailand’s request for extraditing his guest who faces a two-year jail term back home?

(a) Hun Sen was already in politics when Abhisit was still a child.

(b) Hun Sen is not worried about the Abhisit government shutting the Thai-Cambodian border as Cambodia would reciprocate by not allowing even one pig to cross the border.

(c) In 2008, Thailand’s exports to Cambodia were worth about US$2bil (RM6.75bil) while Cambodia’s export to Thailand was only US$90mil (RM303.8mil).

(d) Abhisit should not fear if Thaksin resides in Cambodia, as Hun Sen had appointed other foreigners (for example, Lee Myung-bak before he was elected South Korean president) as economic advisers.

(e) The self-exiled Thaksin has been travelling around the world, and Abhisit has not taken any action against countries the billionaire visited.

(f) The Red Shirts (a pro-Thaksin movement) support Thaksin’s appointment as Cambodia’s economic adviser, but the Yellow Shirts (an anti-Thaksin movement) don’t, while the other Thais are indifferent.

(g) Although Abhisit warned Hun Sen not to become a pawn in Thaksin’s game, the Cambodian premier is nobody’s tool.

(h) Thaksin is not Cambodia’s tool. Hun Sen really wants to employ Thaksin’s experience to help in Cambodia’s economic affairs.

(i) Hun Sen wants to tackle the origin of the Thai-Cambodian spat, which started when Thaksin was ousted as Prime Minister in a coup on Sept 19, 2006.

(j) Thailand has obstructed Cambodia’s bid (to declare Preah Vihear, a border temple which both Cambodia and Thailand claim is within their territory) and has the nerve to say that it has nothing to do with Cambodia.

(k) Hun Sen received two-thirds of the vote in the Cambodian parliament, whereas Abhisit “stole somebody’s chair” to seat himself in the prime minister’s chair. And Cambodia cannot respect someone who claims other people’s property as his own.

(l) Abhisit is so buried in problems himself that he may not survive politically. He has problems with all the neighbouring countries (Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia and Myanmar); in southern Thailand; and Yellow Shirts, Red Shirts, Blue Shirts, White Shirts and Pheu Thai (the pro-Thaksin opposition party).

(m) Thaksin is Hun Sen’s friend and a friend “cannot feed friends to the tiger”.

(n) In the past, Khieu Samphan and Noun Chea (of the Khmer Rouge) were allowed to live (given refuge) even though Thailand had signed a pact not to support the Khmer Rouge.

(o) All the above.

The answer is (o), all of the above. That’s what Hun Sen told journalists on Nov 8 at Phnom Penh airport, after returning from the Mekong-Japan summit in Tokyo.

At an official dinner there, Abhisit said he did not speak to his Cambodian counterpart because they were seated at quite a distance and there was a vase between them obstructing his view.

What did the Thai media think of Hun Sen’s explanation of the diplomatic spat which has brought relations between the two countries to an all-time low, since the 2003 burning of the Thai embassy and other Thai properties in Phnom Penh after a Thai actress was falsely reported as saying the Angkor Wat temple complex belonged to Thailand?

According to Ploenpote Atthakor, a Bangkok Post journalist, “Hun Sen, playing the Thaksin card, can take a break from questions he has been facing at home about border issues with Vietnam.”

“The arrival of Thaksin (in Phnom Penh last Tuesday) also deflects the attention of Cambodians from the ongoing trial of former Khmer Rouge cadres. After all, Hun Sen knows fully well that without a strong political opponent, his PM’s seat is more secure compared to the shaky one Abhisit is sitting on,” she opined yesterday.

In an editorial on Thursday, the Bangkok Post said there was method in Hun Sen’s madness (to some Thais, Hun Sen is mad to provoke Thailand by appointing a Thai fugitive as his economic adviser).

“As a shrewd politician and the longest-serving prime minister in this region, Hun Sen must have carefully calculated the positive and negative consequences of this game of brinkmanship he is playing with Thailand,” the newspaper editorialised.

(Published in The Star on November 14, 2009)

Roxanne walks on the wild side

2009-11-07T10:04:00.005+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

NO. 10, Roxanne Fonseka, Malaysia, the announcer said, and the 20-year-old Malaysian strutted his stuff during a rehearsal of the Miss International Queen 2009 at the Thai beach resort of Pattaya.

Roxanne (not his real name) was among 21 contestants, from countries like Brazil, China, Japan, Philippines, Nepal and the United States, competing to be the world’s most beautiful transvestite/transsexual at Tiffany’s Show in Pattaya (reputedly the world’s largest transsexual cabaret) on Halloween night.

The Penangite was in Pattaya because he wanted to end his cross-dressing fetish with a bang. “Next year I plan to end my life as a drag queen – which means a guy who turns into a woman for just one night,” he revealed.

Pulling down his blouse to expose his scrawny arms, he said, “I plan to go to a fitness centre, build up my body so that I have a male body and then work as a flight attendant.”

Life as an occasional drag queen can be a drag, Roxanne said.

“Malaysia – unlike Thailand and the Philippines – is not open to transvestites, and they tend to look down on pondan and Ah Kua (Malaysian slang for transvestite).

“It will be very difficult for me to make a living,” said the only son of a rich businessman. “I know, as (at the age of 17) I’ve opened a gay massage centre (in Penang).”

“Next year when you become a ‘guy’, will you be a heterosexual or homosexual guy?” I asked.

“I will be a bisexual guy,” revealed the Malaysian, who lives in Thailand as he’s learning Thai from his sleeping dictionary (a 29-year-old closeted gay Thai man who wants to be a politician).

When he was 12 years old, Roxanne, who was studying in a boys’ school in Penang, found out that he was attracted to his handsome classmate.

“And I was thinking, ‘Do I like him, or do I want to be like him as he was handsome’.

“After much thought, I found out that I liked him,” he recalled, adding “I’ve had girlfriends too.”

When he registered for the Miss International Queen pageant, the 182-cm “twink” (which Urban Dictionary defines as an attractive, boyish-looking, young gay man) thought he had a shot at the title, as he was “tall” and “a natural beauty.”

“But when I saw the competition I found out that I couldn’t compete with them, as almost all had plastic surgery, hormone injection and undergone a sex change operation, whereas I am just a guy with make-up,” he explained.

Roxanne has not gone for plastic surgery or hormone injections, as in the future he does not want to face the ugly consequences of transforming into a woman.

“Most of my sisters (slang for transvestite) who are in their 40s regret changing their sex. Yes, you look sexy and beautiful when you are in your 20s, but not in your 40s,” he explained.

To prepare for Miss International Queen, Roxanne competed in three katoey (Thai for transvestites) beauty pageants in Bangkok.

He budgeted RM10,000 (for make-up artist, hair dresser, national costume, evening gown, shoes, accessories and RM1,000 for registration fee) for the pageant.

Where did he get the money?

“I lied. I got it from my parents who told me not to cross-dress in Thailand,” he revealed with an apologetic smile.

On the eve of the pageant I asked Roxanne, who had been participating in Miss International Queen activities for five days, how the experience was.

“It is quite pressured as everybody is beautiful. At first I was enjoying it, but then some contestants tried to sabotage me,” he said.

For example, Roxanne was told that his RM800 evening gown was ugly and its colour (yellow) was not suitable.

“Everybody who enters a pageant knows that yellow and red are the most attractive colour on stage.

“Miss Venezuela wore yellow and she won Miss Universe 2008, and she has the same skin colour as me,” griped Roxanne.

“Don’t you think that jealousy is the reason for such statements?”

On Halloween night, he failed to make the cut for the top 10 finalists. Haruna Ai, a 37-year-old Japanese television host who competed in Miss International Queen 2007, was crowned the world’s most beautiful katoey.

“Perhaps I should compete again next year. And I’m planning to bring a TV crew just like Haruna,” emailed Roxanne.

(Published in The Star on November 7, 2009)

Hun Sen’s jibes raise speculation

2009-10-31T19:19:00.002+08:00

Thai Takes

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

IN an editorial cartoon, The Nation’s cartoonist Stephff answers a question that has recently been bugging Thais – What is really wrong with Hun Sen?

Last week, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen offered political asylum to Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai prime minister ousted in a bloodless coup in 2006.

Thaksin has been in self-exile after fleeing Thailand in 2008 to avoid a two-year jail term on corruption charges.

Two days later, after arriving in Thailand to attend the Asean Summit, Hun Sen embarrassed Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva again when he announced that he would offer Thaksin a job as economic adviser.

On Thursday, Stephff’s cartoon showed an “alien” resembling the square face of Thaksin bursting out of the guts of a grimacing Hun Sen, with the “alien” holding a foot-clapper (the symbol of red-shirted pro-Thaksin supporters) confronting a terrified Abhisit.

The why as to Hun Sen’s recent Thaksin lovefest, according to the French cartoonist, is: “The horrible truth: Hun Sen was only a host body ….”

Stephff’s take is ha-ha funny. But it is a bit too far-fetched. I prefer The Nation’s military expert Avudh Panananda’s take. “It was a hoax perpetrated by Thaksin and Hun Sen to overshadow Abhisit’s Asean Summit,” he said.

Avudh does not believe the Cambodian’s declaration that the former telecommunications tycoon is his “eternal friend”.

“It is a myth that Thaksin-Hun Sen ties go back decades. The two were never close before Thaksin came to power in 2001,” he said.

In an article in The Nation, the writer gives a historical perspective of the two leaders' relationship.

“At the peak of Thaksin’s popularity in 2003, Hun Sen wanted to lessen Thai domination in the wireless communications business.

“He pushed for the granting of a licence to a Japanese operator,” Avudh writes.

“This led to a failed coup in Phnom Penh. Cambodian leaders, particularly those in the Hun Sen camp, had lingering (suspicions) about the involvement of certain Thai figures.

“Soon after, Hun Sen fanned the Cambodian backlash on a Thai television actress. This in turn led to riots and the torching of the Thai Embassy,” Avudh says.

“To this day Thaksin and Hun Sen still cast suspicions on one another, although they have been boasting about their buddy-buddy ties for mutual gains.”

After the Asean Summit that ended on Oct 25, Thaksin again stole the limelight from Abhisit, who badly wanted to use the meeting of Asean leaders to atone for the abandoned summit in Pattaya in April.

On Tuesday, Surapong Towijakchaikul, an MP from the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai Party claimed that during the summit, Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah stayed in Thaksin’s seaside home instead of the official accommodation provided by Abhisit’s government.

Surapong, however, did not provide any evidence to back up his claim, which was intended to show that the Sultan was close to Thaksin and not to Abhisit.

Was the claim another hoax to embarrass Abhisit? Probably. The following day Kongkiart Natthavong, the head of security in charge of protection for the Sultan of Brunei, denied that the Sultan stayed in Thaksin’s home.

“It was my duty to accompany him and I had to go everywhere with him. I must know if he goes to other places,” Kongkiart said.

Then came the Abhisit government’s revenge.

On Wednesday, the government announced it would strip Thaksin of his royal awards (the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant and the Most Illustrious Order of King Chula Chonklao) and police rank (lieutenant-colonel, from his days in the police force from 1973 to 1987).

Though the Abhisit government is denying it, many political pundits see the government’s latest campaign against its arch-rival as tit for tat for Thaksin’s recent publicity stunts.

The billionaire politician’s response was classic Thaksin.

He Twittered: “This can be expected of this government ... If they could use the law to kill me, they would have done so a long time ago.”

“Theoretically, the law-enforcement side is created to maintain peace and justice. Law must be enforced fairly and equally, but the government opts to exercise the law to serve a political goal,” he wrote.

It would not take long for the “alien” resembling the square face of Thaksin to strike back.

(Published in The Star on October 31, 2009)

Between friendship and politics

2009-10-24T10:00:00.001+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

WHAT can an eternal friend, who happens to be the Cambodian Prime Minister, do to help his self-exiled billionaire politician buddy?

If you were Hun Sen, you would offer to build a beautiful home in Cambodia for Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai prime minister who was ousted in a 2006 coup.

In Phnom Penh on Wednesday the Cambodian premier told Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, the puu yai (Thai for “senior elder”) of the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai Party, that he was prepared to host Thaksin, who fled Thailand in August 2008 to avoid a two-year jail term on charges of corruption and abuse of power.

“I consider Thaksin as my eternal friend. Cambodia will welcome him to stay here for anytime.

“I make the house available for him at any time if he decides to visit Cambodia,” Hun Sen told reporters after meeting Chavalit.

“Though I’m not Thai, I’m hurt by what has happened to him. My wife even cried on knowing about it and has the idea of building a home for Thaksin to come and stay honourably,” he said.

“We have been great friends since Thaksin was a businessman, and the relationship has remained the same since he entered politics,” Hun Sen said.

In Thaksinlive, Thaksin tweeted in Thai: “I have to express deepest thanks to Prime Minister Hun Sen for saying in public that I am his friend.

“I also would like to thank him for arranging me a house.”

However, Thaksin — who is currently staying in Dubai — did not say whether he would accept Hun Sen’s offer.

In an article yesterday, The Nation reported that relations between Hun Sen and Thaksin go back nearly two decades when the Thai was “an up-and-coming businessman trying to align himself with important people.”

“It started with lucrative business contracts in the area of telecommunications, with the Vietnamese-installed government in Phnom Penh. At the time Hun Sen was top man on the hill,” wrote Don Pathan, The Nation’s foreign editor.

Hun Sen’s invitation to Thaksin came two days before the Asean summit, where Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva will be hosting him and other Asian leaders in Hua Hin, Thailand.

A Bangkok Post editorial cartoon yesterday succinctly illustrated the consequence of the undiplomatic invitation: Hun Sen’s right arm warmly welcoming a delighted Thaksin, while his left hand was rudely slapping a flustered Abhisit.

On Thursday, Veera Prateepchaikul, a former Bangkok Post editor, wrote:

“A shrewd politician, the Cambodian prime minister should have realised that his receiving of Chavalit at this juncture and his remark about Thaksin would embarrass if not offend the Thai government, Prime Minister Abhisit in particular.”

“But he didn’t seem bothered and appeared willingly to play into Chavalit’s political game,” he opined in the Bangkok Post.

Ever the statesman, Abhisit on Thursday told journalists he had no hard feelings towards Hun Sen.

The Thai premier said he believed his Cambodian counterpart was mature enough to differentiate matters and had no intention of interfering in Thailand’s internal affairs. He added that he would not raise the matter with Hun Sen during the Asean summit.

However, Abhisit said his government would seek Thaksin’s extradition if he ever set foot in Cambodia.

“Once Thaksin enters Cambodia the extradition process will begin. If Cambodia fails to comply with (the) treaty, that would be another story,” he said.

Don’t bet on that happening.

“If Thaksin decides to come and stay closer to home, he can rest assured it won’t be a walk into a trap,” The Nation opined yesterday.

“First and foremost, the one who invites him and who would be his host is the most powerful man in Cambodia, thus the chance of Thaksin being stabbed in the back and extradited is virtually zero.”

The article continued: “Combine the apparently heartfelt message with Hun Sen’s stormy relations with the current Bangkok leaders, an extradition request should either bounce back to the senders or head straight to diplomatic oblivion.”

Yesterday, Hun Sen’s invitation took a twist.

Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Kanharith claimed that it was untrue the Cambodian premier would allow Thaksin to have a permanent home in Cambodia. He added that Hun Sen was misquoted by the media.

Perhaps Thaksin can shed some light on this latest twist in his next tweet.

(Published in The Star on October 24, 2009)

Chavalit soldiers on

2009-10-10T11:11:00.005+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

THE military has the famous saying that “old soldiers never die, they just fade away”. But in Thailand, where generals can become the prime minister, it may be more accurate to say “old soldiers never die nor do they just fade away”.

One recent example is General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, a 77-year-old soldier/politician who was Thailand’s prime minister from 1996-1997.

On Oct 2, Chavalit made a political comeback of sorts when he was named Pheu Thai Party’s puu yai (Thai for “senior elder”). With Chavalit’s appointment as puu yai of Pheu Thai (the reincarnation of People Power Party, in turn the reincarnation of Thai Rak Thai), Thaksin Shinawatra hopes the opposition party — “headless” from its formation in December 2008, it had only been led by a stop-gap leader — will now be able to take on Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s shaky coalition government.

A Wikipedia background check showed Chavalit to be a former army chief and politician who, since 1988, had been in and out of various Thai Cabinets (under different prime ministers during Thailand’s era of weak coalition governments).

He was deputy prime minister/defence minister from 1988 to 1991, interior minister from 1992 to 1994, and deputy prime minister/defence minister from 1995 to 1996.

As the leader of New Aspiration Party (which has since merged with Thai Rak Thai in 2001) he became prime minister on Nov 25, 1996. He resigned on Nov 6, 1997, in the face of pressure due to the Asian financial crisis.

His most recent foray into the Cabinet was on Sept 24, 2008, during the administration of Somchai Wongsawat, the prime minister in the People Power Party-led coalition government.

However, Chavalit resigned as deputy prime minister on Oct 7 last year to accept responsibility for the bloody government crackdown on the anti-Thaksin Yellow Shirt protesters who besieged parliament.

“I have decided to resume my political activities because I can no longer allow the unprecedented social divisions to persist,” he said on Oct 2 after submitting his Pheu Thai party membership application.

What do the political pundits think of Chavalit’s return?

“Because it lacks baramee (bangkokpundit.blogspot.com translates the Thai word as ‘charisma’ and also ‘a person with clout, influence and respect’), Pheu Thai has brought in Chavalit as party adviser,” Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of Chulalongkorn University’s Institute of Security and International Studies, wrote in the Bangkok Post yesterday.

“Chavalit was prime minister during the economic maelstrom in 1996-97 and was seen as an inept, serial fumbler. His only credit perhaps was a willingness to resign from the army to enter the political arena in the late 1980s, thereby playing by the rules.”

Thitinan eplained that Pheu Thai did not have much of a talent pool to dip into after its “main talents” were banned from politics following the dissolution of its two predecessors — People Power Party and Thai Rak Thai.

“Pheu Thai’s appointment of Chavalit is intended to increase baramee for the party and in behind-the-scenes manoeuvres,” he added.

According to Suthichai Yoon, The Nation’s group editor-in-chief, “Big Jiew’s (Chavalit’s nickname) record isn’t so convincing.”

“But Thaksin is apparently running out of candidates to help him lead his Pheu Thai Party,” he wrote on Thursday.

“Even the Democrats seem to have adopted a wait-and-see attitude instead of giving their usual cynical take against the old soldier who refuses to fade away.”

“The hype about Chavalit coming out of retirement is much overrated,” wrote Avudh Panananda, The Nation’s military expert, on Tuesday.

“The presence or absence of Chavalit is irrelevant. What matters is how fugitive ex-premier Thaksin intends to work his political magic by propping up Chavalit.

“Judging by the numbers of political pilgrimages made from Bangkok to Dubai, Thaksin is the undisputed playmaker of the Pheu Thai Party. Even Chavalit made the trip to meet the man in Dubai before teaming up with the main opposition party last week.”

Thepthai Senpong, Abhisit’s spokesman and a Democrat MP, only had harsh words for the Grand Old Soldier.

“Chavalit is like an old and decrepit car, fit to serve only the Pheu Thai Party, even after being overhauled,” Thepthai was reported as saying.

It will be seen whether the self-exiled Thaksin’s political fortunes will change now that his party has a baramee.

(Published in The Star on October 10, 2009)

Is this Bangkok, or mere cliches?

2009-10-03T08:36:00.001+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

GUESS which city fits this description: “... A teeth-rattling cab ride through the smog-choked, sweltering squalor of metro (name of city), dodging rickshaws and limbless sidewalk cripples begging for change.”

If I was to guess, I would guess ... ermm, I’m thinking of the capital of an Asean country but I better not say it out loud as this nation is literally at war with my host country, Thailand. Another guess would have been any city in South Asia.

Surprise, surprise I’m wrong. It refers to Bangkok where I’ve been living for the past three years. And “a teeth-rattling cab ride through the smog-choked, sweltering squalor of metro Bangkok, dodging rickshaws and limbless sidewalk cripples begging for change” is not something I’ve experienced in the Thai capital.

But that’s how Mark Ebner characterised Bangkok in his article “The Last Days of David Carradine” in the September issue of Maxim, a men’s magazine.

Ebner, who has been covering crime and Hollywood for 20 years, was in the Thai capital to “follow in Carradine’s steps and try to reconstruct his final days” that ended up with the 72-year-old Kungfu icon dead in a Bangkok hotel room on June 4.

The article, which Patrick Winn described in GlobalPost.com (a news website) as “riveting, perfectly paced and dripping with detail”, was loaded with fantasy, however.

“Journalists on assignment in Bangkok often turn out amazing prose. It’s a glittering, messy and alluring city that tends to inspire,” wrote Winn, an American journalist living in Bangkok.

“Trouble is, out-of-town reporters have a tendency to rely too heavily on the fantasy Bangkok they imagine on the plane ride over. The city offers a feast of clichés: lurid sex, prowling transsexuals, low-lives who’ll kill for cheap.”

(Ebner’s plane ride – in his own words - was “23 hours in a cramped China Airlines 747”.)

What does the farang (Westerners) community think of Ebner’s portrayal of the Thai capital?

“It’s not false, but for those of us that have visited BKK (Bangkok’s airport code), it’s just not the real picture,” commented “geriatrickid” recently in ThaiVisa.com’s forum which is popular with farangs.

“Yes there may be limbless sidewalk cripple or two, yes there is choking smog but that’s not really BKK is it?

“I dislike BKK and avoid it as much as possible, but even I can see that the use of the negative imagery is intended to lay the foundation to make (an unflattering impression of Bangkok).”

Another commentator “DP25” sarcastically wrote: “After reading the full article on Maxim it seems quite obvious that the author of the piece has never even been to Thailand.”

However, a forum member called “Danish pastry member” agreed with Ebner’s depiction, saying: “If it was up to me, the picture I’d paint of Bangkok would be a lot less poetic and a lot more nitty gritty.”

“Last time I was in Bangkok, about two years ago, I almost died waiting for a bus. I jest not. Each minute standing at the bus stop was sheer torture, as the fumes from vehicles was horrible.

“How anyone can stand to try to exist in such a hellhole is mind boggling.”

In his article, Ebner pigeon-holed Bangkok as a city where ladyboy (in the writer’s words: “a transvestite prostitute who sounds like a girly-man but would probably kick your ass for saying so”) was a killer or accidental murderer.

And he quoted David Winters (a 70-year-old British who produced several movies with Carradine) as speculating that a ladyboy was involved in the Hollywood actor’s death.

To strengthen his point, Ebner cited Gary Stretch, a British actor, as saying: “A big thing here in Bangkok is that, especially the lady-boys, they’ll go back to your hotel, put something in your drink and then rob you.”

To probe the ladyboy killer angle, Ebner cruised Bangkok’s Nana red light district where he met “a striking-looking child bride” who for 10,000 baht (about RM1,000) “will come back to my hotel, tie me up, choke me and stay the night”.

Instead of cruising Nana, if the writer visited Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn) or Thonglor (where the trendy hang out) he would have seen a less clichéd Bangkok.

(Published in The Star on October 3, 2009)

Newin's star rises anew

2009-09-26T10:22:00.001+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

ON MONDAY, political pundits in Thailand closely followed the live telecast of the Supreme Court delivering its verdict on the so-called 1.44 billion baht (RM149mil) rubber-sapling corruption case.

A guilty verdict in the case – which involved poor quality saplings, delayed delivery, bid rigging and fraud in a project launched in 2003 during the Thaksin Shinawatra administration – could rock Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s wobbly nine-month-old coalition government.

And as predicted by a defendant (who said he had already received a “signal”), the Supreme Court acquitted the 44 defendants of corruption and malfeasance charges arising from the rubber sapling procurement deal.

Interestingly, even though the other defendants included notable personalities such as former deputy prime minister Somkid Jatusripitak, former commerce minister Adisai Bodharamik and former deputy finance minister Varathep Ratanakorn, all eyes were on Newin Chidchob.

Newin, deputy agriculture and cooperatives minister at the time of the alleged offences, was so cocksure the court would find him innocent that his political party had planned a victory banquet ahead of the verdict.

The 51-year-old political playmaker was a former Thaksin loyalist. He and about two dozen People’s Power Party (PPP) MPs left and formed Bhum Jai Thai after the court dissolved PPP, the then ruling party. This betrayal enabled Abhisit, the Democrat Party leader, to cobble together a seven-party coalition government in December last year.

The not guilty verdict is seen by the pro-Thaksin Red Shirt supporters as part of the deal to secure Newin’s betrayal. Another alleged deal was Bhum Jai Thai taking control of the influential and lucrative ministries of Transport, Interior (which oversees the Royal Thai Police) and Commerce in Abhisit’s government.

The media reported that Newin was “choked with emotion” following the verdict. He also pledged to “protect the monarchy until my last breath”.

Tulsathit Taptim, The Nation editor, cheekily described Newin’s emotional state as sounding “like a thankful man who didn’t quite know whom to thank”.

“The Democrats must be the ones who don’t quite know how to feel. A guilty verdict would have put Newin in jail, but here’s a man you would rather have on your side when playing politics,” Tulsathit wrote on Tuesday.

“A wounded Newin is highly dangerous and unpredictable. At a normal time, Abhisit would have been happy to have an angry Newin manipulate things from behind bars, but now the Democrat leader should be content with a relieved Newin trying to fulfil his ambitions (to make Bhum Jai Thai a political force to be reckoned in the next election).”

Now that the rubber sapling case is over and done with, political pundits are predicting that Newin’s political career will be on the rise.

“The most significant acquittal is that of Newin, the de facto boss of Bhum Jai Thai. With the noose loosened, Newin is considered the most powerful broker in Thai politics today,” Suranand Vejjajiva, Newin’s former Cabinet colleague in the Thaksin government, wrote in the Bangkok Post yesterday.

“Although Suthep Thaugsuban, secretary-general of the ruling Democrats as well as deputy PM and government ‘manager’, remains in charge of the present political coordination game, he will have to make way somewhat for Newin.”

Suranand, now a political analyst, continued: “Suthep has even grudgingly admitted that without Newin, the Democrats would not have been able to form the government and Abhisit would not have become prime minister. ‘Without him (Newin), we cannot stay (in power),’ Suthep once remarked.”

But there is still one more rope around Newin’s neck. He – together with 110 Thai Rak Thai (the pro-Thaksin party which was disbanded after the 2006 coup) politicians, including Thaksin and Suranand – have been banned from politics for five years.

But, sooner or later the man whose father (Chai Chidchob, the Thai parliament Speaker) named him for the Burmese leader Ne Win will overcome that hurdle, too.

Newin, who has survived several political pitfalls, is known as the cat with nine lives.

Two days after the Sept 19, 2006, coup which ousted Thaksin, the military detained Newin for 10 days. On the last day of detention, he claimed he was forced to strip down to his underwear.

That was then. Now Newin is seen as the man who could be Prime Minister.

(Published in The Star on September 26, 2009)

The naked truth

2009-09-19T10:11:00.002+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

IT IS a sight not many in Thailand will want to see. Thai Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban has promised to strip naked if there is a coup today, the third anniversary of the military overthrow of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

“I am in charge of security affairs and I have heard of nobody planning a coup. If there is a coup, I will walk naked (as I) step down. I believe no groups (in the military) want to stage a coup now,” Suthep told journalists recently.

No coup, says the confident deputy prime minister. And yet his boss, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has invoked the Internal Security Act (ISA) to bar protesters from Bangkok’s historic Dusit district (where Dusit Palace, the Prime Minister’s office and parliament are located) from yesterday until Tuesday.

Abhisit justified the use of the ISA to give the military a key role in maintaining law and order, saying a “third hand” may turn today’s street rally by thousands of pro-Thaksin Red Shirts protesters to mark the anniversary of the 2006 coup into a blood bath.

Pitch Pongsawat, who teaches political science in Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, laughs when told about Suthep’s pledge.

“There’ll be no coup for sure this Saturday,” he says. “What has happened now is a self coup.”

“In a sense, when (the Abhisit government) invoked the ISA, the government is preventing people from exercising their right (to protest), which is backed by the constitution. And (Abhisit) has allowed the military to intervene in domestic politics.”

The military has no business getting involved in domestic politics, he added.

The naked truth about the invocation of the ISA, according to Pitch, is that it is a preemptive strike.

In announcing that it wants to prevent a recurrence of the April riots (allegedly) by the Red Shirts, the government is using psychological warfare to discourage Red Shirt supporters (mostly from outside of Bangkok) from converging onto the Thai capital to protest against the Abhisit-led government, the academic explains.

Yesterday morning, the military and police installed concrete slabs and iron barricades around Government House (the Prime Minister’s office) in Bangkok in preparation for today’s protest which the Red Shirts leaders promised would be peaceful and “without weapons”.

Yesterday was the second time the ISA was invoked against the Red Shirts. The first was on Aug 29. But the pro-Thaksin movement – in a cat and mouse game with the government – cancelled its street rally and embarassed Abhisit (for jumping the gun).

“Now it is going to be the norm for the government – as long as they have the support of the Bangkok middle class – to invoke the ISA whenever the Red Shirts plan a street protest,” notes Pitch.

The academic questions whether the government will dare invoke the ISA if the Yellow Shirts (an anti-Thaksin movement) plan a street protest.

“Probably not. If they announce they’d use this law on the Yellow Shirts, more (Bangkokians) will pour into the streets,” he says.

Asked why Thailand is still mired in political turmoil three years after the “happy coup”, Pitch says there are two theories.

“One theory says it is because Thaksin has not stopped intervening in the post-coup process,” he explains. “The second says that the coup cannot change the deep structural problem in Thailand – poverty.

“With income disparity in this country, there is a possibility that certain capitalists can capture the heart of the (poor) people and rework (the current elite) alignment.”

Does Pitch wants to see Suthep naked? After a long pause, the academic says figuratively: “I’ve seen Suthep naked and I’m sick of it.”

“He’s already naked. The military has (launched several ‘silent’ coups in the last three years). For example, the government declared a state of emergency to allow the military to crack down on the Red Shirts protest during Songkran (Thai new year in April this year).”

Will there be a coup today?

Surely, the threat of Suthep stripping naked is enough to convince army chief General Anupong Paochinda not to launch a coup.

“Being an international pariah is one thing,” comments Bangkok Pundit, in his Thai political blog bangkokpundit.blogspot.com on Wednesday, “but having to see Suthep in all his glory will just be too much ....”

(Published in The Star on September 19, 2009)

Payback time for Abhisit

2009-09-12T08:17:00.001+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

NOW that Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has shifted the national police chief to a desk job, Thais are speculating what the Defence Minister, who is the top cop’s big brother, will do next.

The talk is Defence Minister General Prawit Wongsuwan is disgruntled with Abhisit’s decision to cold storage General Patcharawat Wongsuwan after the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) ruled on Monday that Patcharawat violated criminal law during a police crackdown on the anti-Thaksin Shinawatra People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) which besieged parliament in October 2008.

On Thursday, quoting a close aide to Prawit, the Bangkok Post reported that the Defence Minister was “shaken by the transfer order and took the matter personally”.

Big brother Prawit’s unhappiness with Abhisit “mistreatment” of his younger brother has raised question marks over the stability of the prime minister’s coalition government.

However, Prawit denied on Thursday he would quit his defence portfolio, saying the government and armed forces were still on good terms.

Like a lakorn (Thai for soap opera) plot, the saga of the Thai police chief has countless twists.

The anti-graft ruling was the latest pretext Abhisit needed to get rid of Patcharawat.

In early August, Abhisit ordered the police chief to go on holiday in China so he could appoint an acting police chief.

However, Patcharawat turned up unexpectedly on Aug 8 and reclaimed his post.

Subsequently, the prime minister re-assigned Patcharawat to Thailand’s restive southern provinces on a mission and Wichien was reappointed acting police chief.

Despite Abhisit’s efforts to banish him, on Aug 20, Patcharawat, who is 60 and due for compulsory retirement at the end of this month, still managed to be part of the 11-man police commission to decide on his replacement.

On that Thursday, the prime minister started the day confidently, assuming that Prateep Tunprasert, his choice for national police chief, would be endorsed by the commission which he chaired.

It turned out that the commission rejected his choice by a five to four vote (with two abstentions, including Abhisit’s), which the Thai media described as a “big slap in the face” for the prime minister.

“Political pundits are in agreement that Abhisit’s failure to get his nominee for the police chief position endorsed by the Royal Thai Police board was a slap in the face,” wrote Atiya Achakilwisut of the Bangkok Post.

“What the analysts have not yet decided, however, is how much should the humiliation hurt. Some said it should hurt like a House dissolution. Others believe it to be more of a personal pain, at the level of a PM’s resignation.

“And there are some others, like members of the PM’s own Democrat party, who say the jab was unexpected but it would cause no tangible damage to the PM’s handsome face.”

Then came Abhisit’s payback.

“It is believed the government was keen to push Patcharawat out of the picture so Abhisit could have his own way in nominating (his man) to the top post,” wrote Nattaya Chetchotiros in the Bangkok Post on Thursday.

“Patcharawat was among the Police Commission members who rejected the prime minister’s nomination of Prateep. His vote was interpreted as scoffing at Abhisit’s authority, whose leadership was seen weakened by the episode of the selection of the new police chief.”

On Wednesday, hours after Abhisit transferred him to an inactive post at the prime minister’s office, Patcharawat handed his resignation to the prime minister.

The police chief’s resignation and the NACC decision to implicate him in the Oct 7, 2008, crackdown come days before the third anniversary of the Sept 19 2006 coup to overthrow Thaksin.

“It has been widely interpreted that the ruling against Patcharawat will prompt the police to go further into ‘neutral gear’ especially when it comes to their response to protests and riots because they could go to jail for performing their duty,” noted Nattaya of the Bangkok Post.

The pro-Thaksin Red Shirt supporters plan a massive street protest on Sept 19 to mark the third anniversary of the coup.

On that day, it will be seen whether the police will be “committed” to keep law and order. Or, will the men in uniform shift into neutral gear?

(Published in The Star on September 12, 2009)

Discussing the unspoken

2009-09-05T11:37:00.001+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

ON TUESDAY, in a packed conference hall at Bangkok’s prestigious Chulalongkorn University, a panel of academics spoke about Thailand’s unspoken.

“We’re going to discuss what is unspoken in Thailand – the sensitive topic of the role of Thai military in politics,” said Chulalongkorn University’s Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS) director Thitinan Pongsudhirak in his opening remarks before the start of a public forum entitled The Military in Thai Politics: What’s Next?

Since the 1932 coup which ended absolute monarchy, the military has been a major player in Thai politics, noted Paul Chambers, a senior research fellow in political science at Germany’s University of Heidelberg.

“There have, however, been but three brief respites from dominant military clout: 1944-47; 1973-76; 1992-95,” wrote the academic, who presented a 101-page paper, U-Turn to the Past? The Resurgence of the Military in Contemporary Thai Politics.

According to Chambers, in 1992, following the bloody Black May massacre, the military was at its lowest point in terms of support from the public and palace.

“Fallout from Black May 1992 represented a massive discrediting of the armed forces in Thai society,” he said, referring to street protests in Bangkok from May 17 to 20, 1992, against the government of General Suchinda Kraprayoon that climaxed in a bloody military crackdown.

Then came Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai (TRT) landslide victory in the 2001 general election.

Prime Minister Thaksin cemented his political grip in the 2005 general election when TRT became the only party to win an outright majority in Thai political history.

“Given the implementation of the 1997 constitution and the 2001-06 dominance of civilian strongman Thaksin across Thailand, civilian control of the military perhaps grew to its highest levels in Thai history,” noted Chambers.

On Sept 19, 2006, the military reversed its loss of political power.

Army Commander Gen Sonthi Boonyaratkalin launched a coup against Thaksin and established a military government (the first in 15 years).

“The takeover immediately enhanced the role of soldiers in domestic politics,” noted Chambers.

However, the result of the December 2007 general election put a spanner in the military’s plan to dominate politics.

The People’s Power Party (PPP) was voted into power.

“The post-2006 coup military leadership was clearly unhappy with the electoral results – which brought a pro-Thaksin government back to office,” observed the academic.

But the military could not stage a conventional coup d’etat.

“The coup and military government that followed it had been mostly unpopular both domestically and internationally. At the same time, damaging events which occurred under the (military) regime (which failed to solve any political or economic problems) caused the armed forces to be seen in an increasingly negative light,” explained Chambers.

Instead of an outright takeover, the military took a back seat to those opposed to Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej’s government and indirectly influenced the dismantling of PPP.

According to Chambers, this was done in three moves.

First, the armed forces put little effort into protecting Samak’s government (and later that of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat) from unruly yellow-shirted crowds which occupied the prime minister’s office, besieged parliament and seized two international airports in Bangkok.

Second, the military at least twice called on Prime Minister Somchai to resign. (In an episode dubbed the TV Coup, army chief Gen Anupong Paochinda – flanked by the navy chief, the air force chief and the police chief – appeared on television to demand Somchai’s resignation.)

Third, in mid-December 2008, the military indirectly engineered the formation of the anti-Thaksin coalition government of Democrat Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Currently, according to Chambers, the military has found a perfect niche.

“Counselled by (General) Prem (Tinsulanonda, who is a chief adviser to the Thai King and a former prime minister and army commander), working behind the scenes with the generally compliant Abhisit government, and strengthened by the (military-drafted) 2007 constitution, the military has made a U-turn back to 1991 to become Thailand’s crucial clandestine political player,” he wrote.

But the armed forces have an even better deal than the soldiers of 30 years ago.

“They have learned from experience that direct governance will only create negative perceptions of them from society,” the academic explained.

“Instead, indirect domination of civilian governments allows them to augment their autonomy from civilian authority.”

(Published in The Star on September 5, 2009)

Embattled Abhisit pulls out the plug

2009-08-29T10:52:00.001+08:00

THAI TAKES
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

IF YOU are planning to visit Bangkok’s historic Dusit district (where Dusit Palace, the Prime Minister’s office and parliament are located) tomorrow, think again.

But if you want to experience a Thai-style protest then make your way there. It’s the Thai capital’s epicenter for political turmoil.

The pro-Thaksin Shinawatra Red Shirts are organising a massive street rally there with a double message: Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, don’t stall the petition for a royal pardon for Thaksin, and please dissolve parliament.

Sunday’s rally comes two weeks after more than 20,000 Red Shirts marched to the royal offices in Bangkok’s Grand Palace to submit their petition (signed by at least 3.5 million Thais).

They were seeking a royal pardon for Thaksin, who was convicted last year over the sale of government-owned land in Bangkok to his then wife Potjaman (whom he divorced last year).

That much hyped street march, which Thai authorities feared could turn into a bloody mayhem, was peaceful albeit theatrical – the petition was packed in 383 boxes wrapped in red cloth.

But for tomorrow’s rally, Abhisit is not taking any chances.

On Tuesday, the Thai Cabinet invoked the Internal Security Act (ISA) that suspends civil rights and puts the military in charge of law and order. The law, effective from today to Tuesday, is limited to the Dusit district.

“Although the protesters have said the rally will not be violent (like during Songkran in April this year, which saw Thailand’s worst street violence in 17 years), we cannot remain complacent,” Abhisit said in explaining his government’s decision to invoke the ISA.

“A third party might step in to take advantage of the situation. Accidents can happen.”

On Wednesday, Veera Musikhapong, a Red Shirt leader, told a press conference that the anti-government demonstration would not be protracted despite government fears.

“The rally will be peaceful, without weapons ... and after submitting a letter calling for the dissolution of the House and a general election the Red Shirts will disperse peacefully,” he said.

Against such words, Abhisit’s measure looks like an overkill.

The Bangkok Post described it as a “security lockdown” where 3,500 soldiers and 1,950 policemen would be deployed to ensure no public gatherings at Dusit Palace, Government House (the Prime Minister’s office) and Parliament.

At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Tourism and Sports Minister Chumpol Silpa-archa expressed concern that enforcement of the law would affect tourism.

And the prime minister’s decision to invoke the ISA raises the question whether Abhisit is afraid of shadows.

“Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is facing fear,” Suranand Vejjajiva, who is a former minister in Thaksin’s Cabinet and also Abhisit’s cousin, wrote in the Bangkok Post yesterday.

“Whether he will become a victim of his own nightmare, or controller of fear and able to utilise it as a political tool, remains to be seen.

“But suspicions arose when he decided to invoke the Internal Security Act through a Cabinet resolution earlier in the week, and the government’s actions so far during the past seven months have been one of reacting to whatever ousted ex-PM Thaksin is doing.”

Suranand, who is a political analyst, continued: “The question everybody’s asking now is: Is there a real threat to stability? Are the anti-government protesters going to resort to violence, which they are being accused of already?

“The general feeling is that the rally’s objective is to further the psychological warfare the Red Shirts and Thaksin are waging. It is designed to crank up pressure on a weakened prime minister and his coalition government.”

To ratchet up the Red Shirts’ill-feeling towards the Abhisit-led government, an allegedly doctored audio clip of Abhisit’s voice has surfaced. The voice – which sounded like Abhisit’s – ordered officials to use force against the Red Shirts during the Songkran riots in April.

“I have listened to the clip, and it is definitely an edited clip because I had never given out such order,” Abhisit said on Thursday.

Jatuporn Prompan, a Red Shirt core leader, said the prime minister and his Cabinet should resign if the clip (which he described as sounding authentic, as the speech was so smooth) was indeed genuine.

If the street rally turns ugly tomorrow, Abhisit could be forced to order the use of force.

(Published in The Star on August 29, 2009)

‘Dr Death’ surprised by call from M’sia

2009-08-22T10:29:00.001+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

TWO days after the death of Teoh Beng Hock, Thailand’s Dr Death received a phone call from Malaysia. The caller, Tricia Yeoh, who is Selangor Mentri Besar’s research officer, asked Central Institute of Forensic Science director-general Porntip Rojanasunan to help in the investigation of Teoh’s mysterious death on July 16.

“I felt the request was strange as I thought I was only popular in Thailand,” recalled the forensic expert dubbed Dr Death by the Thai Media.

It was only the second time a foreign country had sought the expertise of the forensic expert featured in a 2004 National Geographic documentary titled Crime Scene Bangkok.

The first was three years ago when she was asked to conduct second autopsy on bodies buried in Aceh, Indonesia.

“I was told that they (Selangor government) wanted an independent pathologist as they did not believe in the transparency of the government service … just like in Thailand,” said the flamboyant 54-year-old independent-minded examiner, in reference to the opaque Thai police and Thai forensic experts she constantly contradicted throughout her career.

Porntip agreed to the request after receiving the green light from her boss, the Ministry of Justice permanent secretary.

“I was asked about my professional fee. But I said no. I work for the Government and if there is any payment it should be government to government,” explained Porntip, who sported a multi-coloured retro-punk hairstyle and wore jeans and Dr Martens boots during the interview conducted at her office in Nonthaburi near Bangkok.

However, Porntip could not be in Shah Alam for Teoh’s inquest as she had to be in Bangkok to fight for her institute’s budget.

So she asked the Selangor government to send her the autopsy report and photographs of crime scene and the victim. And she suggested points that could be used to question the Malaysian pathologists.

She also dispatched two staff – a forensic doctor and a crime scene investigator – to attend the inquest.

“They’ve returned and from their report, I have an idea on what happened (to Teoh),” she said.

Depending on her busy schedule, Porntip said she would personally deliver her finding at the inquest early September.

The forensic expert was clueless that the case was a controversy in Malaysia.

“I agreed to help because it is my duty to help,” said the devout Buddhist.

She only found out about it when she met Kuala Lumpur-based Thai Embassy officials during the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) visit to southern Thailand early this month.

“The officials asked me about the case. And I asked ‘how do you know that I’m involved?’ And they said it was a popular case and the newspapers had reported about my involvement,” she said, adding that these officials told her it involved a conflict between opposing political parties.

Porntip is no stranger to controversy.

Her recent brush with controversy was during the inquest of the death of 72-year-old Hollywood actor David Carradine on June 3 in Bangkok.

Her critics slammed her for speaking about the cause of Carradine’s mysterious death.

“I was not involved in the investigation (as it happened in Bangkok which is outside her area of responsibility). But the Thai media wanted to get academic information on what could have happened to Carradine,” she explained.

From the information she received, Porntip concluded that it was not suicide or murder.

“I told the Thai media that it might be an accident. And they asked me how. So I had to explain auto-erotic asphyxiation to them as it is something not usual in our society,” she explained.

Porntip is familiar with auto-erotic asphyxiation as she has personally three such cases involving farangs (Thai for Westerners) in provinces close to Bangkok.

Her first involvement was three years ago. A naked farang was found dead in his bedroom. The man’s hands were tied to the pole of bed and a plastic bag covered his head.

“When I saw the body, it looked like something from my textbook on auto-erotic asphyxiation. It was an interesting case as it is not often for me to see such case in real life,” she said.

On why the Thai police have not released the result of Carradine’s investigation, the outspoken forensic expert said: “they will not announce it as their conclusion will confirm my conclusion.”

(Published in The Star on August 22, 2009)

Living with ‘time bombs’

2009-08-15T12:20:00.004+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

IT IS business as usual for Jirayu Tulyanond, a staff member of the Thai Finance Minister, on Monday.

He has several tasks on his to-do list that include planning for Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij’s visit to Thailand’s north-east, attending a meeting on land and property tax, strategising the launch of Thai Khem Kaeng (Thailand – invest for strength) – a 1.5 trillion baht (RM155bil) programme to create two million jobs in three years.

Not on Jirayu’s to-do list, however, is fret over speculation that something big (perhaps a riot or a coup) will erupt in Bangkok on Aug 17.

According to The Nation editor-in-chief Suthichai Yoon in his blog suthichaiyoon.blogspot.com, “several po-litical time-bombs are ready to explode in the next week or so – some of which could be defused by (Prime Minister) Abhisit (Vejjajiva), but there are others that could spin out of control”.

And Suthichai listed three “time bombs”.

On Monday, the Red Shirts will file a petition with five million signatures to seek royal pardon for self-exiled Thaksin Shinawatra who had been convicted of corruption.

The Nation editorialised that the event is designed to repeat the Red Shirts’ attempt at a People’s Revolution on Songkran Day of April 13, 2009.

“One that day, however, they failed to ignite violence on the streets to the point that would allow a military intervention. The blue camp (aligned to Newin Chidchob) was subdued.”

The editorial continued: “Subsequently, the red-shirted protesters were quashed from the streets. Now they are re-grouping and planning another attack or another attempt at the People’s Revolution for the benefit of one individual.”

On Monday too, the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions will rule in the 1.44 billion baht (RM149mil) rubber saplings corruption case involving 44 defendants who were former ministers and senior officials in Thaksin’s government.

One of them is Newin, a Thaksin loyalist who betrayed his boss when he formed Bhum Jai Thai Party to enable Abhisit to cobble up a seven-party coalition government in December last year.

Newin recently denied an allegation that the Bhum Jai Thai Party launched a campaign by collecting millions of signatures to oppose the Red Shirt’s royal petition in an attempt to influence the court in the rubber saplings corruption case.

If Newin was found not guilty, doomsayers predict that the Red Shirts and the Blue Shirts would clash on Monday.

Suthichai’s third “time bomb” is the unfinished affair related to Thai national police chief Patcharawat Wongsuwan. Sondhi Limthongkul, the co-leader of the Yellow Shirts, alleged that Patcharawat had obstructed investigation into the assassination attempt on Sondhi.

Subsequently, Abhisit ordered the police chief (who will be retiring in September) to go for a holiday in China and the prime minister appointed Wichien Pojphosri as the acting police chief.

On Aug 8, Patcharawat suddenly returned from his Chinese holiday and reclaimed his post. Then Abhisit announced that Patcharawat was re-assigned to the Thailand’s restive southern provinces for a mission and Wichien was reappointed acting police chief.

The snub to Patcharawat, conspiracy theorists believe, might lead to a volatile situation as the police chief’s older brother, Prawit, is the Defence Minister. They speculate that the two brothers (and other politicians and men in uniform) might conspire to bring down Abhisit’s coalition government.

I asked Jirayu why he was unfettered about speculations of a coup or a riot on Monday.

“Life goes on for the policy-makers. The petition is another attempt by Thaksin to drum up interest and excitement for his case,” he explained.

Monday, according to Jirayu, would be a non-event just like the promised “big surprise” announcement on Thaksin’s recent birthday. “The big surprise was him opening Twitter and Facebook accounts,” he said.

“From my perspective, the government is seven and a half months in power. It still has the support of its coalition partners and important segments of society such as the bureaucracy, business community and military.”

In a posting titled Mark Your Calendars, Mr Wrigley, an anonymous blogger covering Thai politics and economy in siamreport.blogspot.com, on Thursday wrote: “August 17th – Petition and Newin Verdict. Could be something or nothing.”

Although Mr Wrigley was more inclined to “nothing”, he cautioned: “It’s Thailand, so always keep you umbrella open for the rain”.

(Published in The Star on August 15, 2009)

Meet Thailand's sexiest actress

2009-08-08T14:02:00.004+08:00

THAI TAKES

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

GUESS what Thailand’s sexiest actress doesn’t see when she looks at herself in the mirror naked? Sexiness.

Araya “Chompoo” Hartgett, a 28-year-old lakorn (Thai for soap opera) star, confesses that she is oblivious to her sex appeal.

“I’ve been with myself for 28 years. I take a shower, look at myself in the mirror naked – I don’t know ... I am used to it,” she explains.

“It would be kind of crazy if I said ‘ah, I’m kind of sexy’ while looking at the mirror.”

The readers of FHM, a men’s entertainment magazine, would definitely disagree with Chompoo’s assessment. They voted her Thailand’s sexiest woman in 2007 and sexiest actress in 2008 and 2009. The sexy actress’ nickname is Chompoo (which means rose apple in Thai) because she was very pinkish when born.

She’s a luk kreung (literally half child, a person who is half-Thai, half-European). Her mother is Thai and her father is British.

Eleven years ago, a lakorn scriptwriter approached the then 17-year-old Chompoo, who was doing a bit of modelling, because her production company was looking for a main actress who was half-Thai, half-European.

She told Chompoo that she had heard from her friend that she was good looking and asked her to cast for a lakorn. Immediately after casting (where she acted out a script), Channel 7 (a Thai TV station) signed her up under a five-year contract.

Her first role was that of a nang ek (Thai for heroine) in Pleng Prai (Brilliant Song). And that character – which Chompoo describes as “the good girl who ends up with the good guy” – stuck throughout her acting career.

However, last year Chompoo starred in a dream role – the bad girl. (Like the nang ek, a bad female character is a must in a lakorn. The bad girl will do anything to prevent the nang ek from getting the good guy.)

But she was taking a career-breaking risk. She feared a backlash from her fan base.

“When you’ve been acting the good girl for 10 years it is hard to switch because you wouldn’t know whether your fans would accept you (as a bad girl),” she explains.

Thai soap opera fans obsessively love the nang ek character and fanatically hate the bad girl.

“When fans talk about the good girl, they will refer to her as ‘she’. But when they talk about the bad girl, they will say ‘it or that one’,” she explains.

Playing the bad girl also has financial disadvantages. Actresses playing the villain rarely get offers to do commercials.

In Dao Pbeuan Din (Dirty Star) Chompoo played a bad girl who was jealous of the nang ek. Her character schemed to take everything – wealth, family, boyfriend – from the heroine.

“It went as far as my character killing many people. But in the end – of course – I was punished. I was raped by about 10 men and I went crazy in the end,” she relates. The censor board, however, cut the rape scene.

“I was so mad, as (filming the rape scene) took a day. And I spent lots of energy. Imagine me fighting with 10 guys,” she explains.

And viewers who did not see the censored scene wondered why Chompoo’s character suddenly went mad.

Chompoo’s decision to act the antithesis role paid off. She won Thailand’s Golden Television Award for best actress for her bitchy role in Dao Pbeuan Din. And the actress, who has appeared in commercials for Samsung, Ponds and Wrigley’s, did not lose any contracts.

Early this year, there was a juicy soosip (Thai for gossip) that a politician offered to pay Chompoo to have dinner with him. There was no politician, the actress clarified, but two different CEOs.

“A CEO contacted my manager asking if I would like to do a job – sit down with him for dinner and entertain him – and how much would I ask for,” she relates.

Unclear of the job specification, Chompoo declined.

“I don’t know what he expected. Maybe he wanted to know me better, but he did not have the opportunity. And he thought money can give him that opportunity,” she added.

The CEO should know that in real life Chompoo is a good girl.

(Published in The Star on August 8, 2009)

Satun, Thailand's tamed south

2009-08-01T09:43:00.002+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

HAMZAH Desa, a 42-year-old Thai Muslim, sits cross-legged on the veranda of his one-room wooden house in Kampung Che Bilang in Satun, a Muslim-majority province in southern Thailand.

It’s a typical Sunday afternoon in his village. A handful of villagers wearing tudung (a Muslim headscarf) are buying som tam (papaya salad) and gai yang (grilled chicken) from a street vendor.

“Look at them. The seller is a Chinese Buddhist and the buyers are Malay Muslims,” Hamzah, a community development officer for Kampung Che Bilang, says in Malay laced with a thick Kedah accent.

“That is a sight that is difficult to find in Pattani (a region consisting of three Muslim-dominated provinces — Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani — on the eastern seaboard of the Isthmus of Kra).”

Hamzah then points to the grocery store next door owned by his neighbour, Bunleur Karnsannok, a 62-year-old Chinese Buddhist, as an example of how Buddhists and Muslims in Satun province live side-by-side harmoniously.

“We are like adik-beradik (siblings). When it is Hari Raya Aidilfitri, a Muslim festival to mark the end of the fasting month, we will give Bunleur’s family cakes; when it is Chinese New Year, his family will give us cakes,” he says.

“We are all the same,” echoes the grocery store owner who has lived in the village for 40 years.

The adik-beradik relationship between Muslims and Buddhists in Satun province is in sharp contrast to Pattani region where a separatist-related unrest has killed more than 3,700 people — Buddhists and Muslims — since January 2004.

Satun province, adjacent to Kedah and Perlis, was once part of the Kedah Sultanate.

In a 1909 treaty, the British and Siamese authorities split the northernmost Malay regions of Pattani, Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah.

The Siamese secured Pattani and a section of Kedah (now Satun) while the British took Kelantan, Trengganu and most parts of Kedah.

Satun’s provincial capital is called Satun (pronounced “S-toon”), which is approximately 973km southwest of Bangkok. About 70% of its 280,000 population is Malay Muslim.

Pattani Muslims and Satun Muslims have different aspirations, notes tudung-clad Siti Hajar Sasen, who lives in Kampung Che Bilang which, if not for the som tam and gai yang vendor, you would think is a village in Kedah.

The 27-year-old homemaker is married to a 50-year-old Malaysian who owns a halal restaurant in Satun town and exports fish from Ranong in Thailand to Kuala Perlis in Malaysia.

“(The Pattani Malays) want to be separated from Thailand, while we want to live harmoniously with the other communities,” she explains. “We only want peace; fighting against the Thai government will not be good for business.”

Economically, the local population in Satun has benefited from the absence of inter-communal tensions.

Its per capita income is roughly 50% higher than Pattani’s which sees killings related to the separatist movement almost every day.

Siti Hajar acknowledges that she’s comfortable in the Buddhist-dominated kingdom.

“If a Muslim wants to do business and become a millionaire, the government will not interfere. If Muslims want to build a mosque, the government will not interfere. What else do I want?” she said.

Ali Man, a 75-year-old respected Muslim religious leader in Kampung Che Bilang, shares the same sentiment.

“Although we are a minority in Thailand, when we apply for land the Thai government does not care whether you are Muslim or Buddhist,” says Ali, who was dressed in a Baju Melayu, a gift from his brother, a Malaysian living in Kuala Lumpur.

Ali smiles when asked whether he owned huge swathe of rubber plantation. “Alhamdulillah (Praise to God),” he says, “I’m thankful the government does not discriminate.”

There’s also no discrimination in Kampung Che Bilang, according to Hamzah. “Although we form the majority (90% of the 500 households in this village), we don’t force our religious views on the others,” he says.

For example, the Kampung Che Bilang community development committee allows non-Muslims to drink alcohol publicly in a designated zone in the village which has a dockyard serving farang (Western) boat owners.

Does Hamzah wish Satun province was still part of Kedah?

“That is history. In a blink of an eye, my ancestors became Thai,” he says.

“I don’t regret it. When I was born, I was a Thai.”

(Published in The Star on August 1, 2009)

Birthday 'surprise' keeps them guessing

2009-07-25T11:15:00.002+08:00

Thai Takes
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

GUESS whose birthday it is tomorrow? Here are some hints. He is a Thai politician who advocates populist policies. And he is adored by half of Thailand’s population.

No, it is not Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

If you were a Thai political watcher, you would have known that Thaksin Shinawatra would be 60 tomorrow. But what you probably wouldn’t know is Thaksin’s “big surprise” to be announced on his birthday.

On Tuesday, Puea Thai MP Pracha Prasopdee said the self-exiled former prime minister would make a big announcement on his birthday which would surprise the Democrat-led coalition government.

Since Pracha’s revelation, Thais on both sides of the political divide – pro- and anti-Thaksin, Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts – have been speculating on Thaksin’s “big surprise”.

Even Thaksin’s lawyer, Noppadon Pattama, a former Foreign Minister, claimed he was clueless about his client’s announcement even after asking Thaksin’s aides: Thaksin’s classmate General Sumeth Phomanee, Thaksin’s cousin General Chaisit Shinawatra and Thaksin’s younger sister Yaowaret Wongsawat.

The lawyer, however, is certain that the “big surprise” will not be Thaksin’s plan to give 6,000 scholarships.

The billionaire politician had called from Dubai on Tuesday and told his red shirted supporters that Thai students could apply for birthday presents from him by submitting an essay on the topic “Thailand as I dream to see” to his Thaicom Foundation.

“I really doubt whether Abhisit will have the brains to keep up with my move,” The Nation reported Thaksin as having said.

The government claimed it had no interest in Thaksin’s birthday plans.

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban, secretary general of the Democrat Party, said he was not interested in anything Thaksin might say or do.

Prime Minister Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey said the former prime minister had announced his plan for a “big surprise” because he was fearful Thais would forget him as Abhisit’s popularity had risen after his visit to Buri Ram province in Thaksin’s stronghold in Thailand’s northeast.

However, Suranand Vejjajiva, a political analyst who once served in Thaksin’s Cabinet, wrote in the Bangkok Post yesterday:

“No one knows what this will be, but in waiting for him to tell us, he already has our attention – the most important factor in an effective communications stratagem.

“And it could not have come at a better time. The government of PM Abhisit is now considerably weakened, literally ‘sick with the flu’ and unable to cope with mounting crises.”

So what is Thaksin’s “big surprise”?

Suriyasai Katasila, the secretary general of New Politics Party (the political party of the yellow shirted movement), predicted that Thaksin would declare he would end his political activities after the Red Shirts submit their petition (signed by a million Thais) seeking a royal pardon for the former premier who had been convicted of corruption.

Tulsathit Taptim wrote that theory number seven in The Nation’s newsroom was: “He will become a monk. (We hope this doesn’t happen because the last time an ousted leader in exile took up the saffron robes, it triggered one of the blackest chapters in Thai history.)”

Blogger Meaw & More (meawgyver.wordpress.com) blogged that the self-exiled Thaksin would appear in a hologram for his birthday party.

His prediction is similar to Tulsatit’s theory Number two, which was: “There will be a jaw-dropping state-of-the-art video linkage that will make his well-wishers feel as if he were ‘there’ in person. (Imagine Princess Leia in Star Wars being beamed up for Luke Skywalker by R2-D2.)”

Veera Prateepchaikul, an editor with the Bangkok Post, sarcastically suggested that Thaksin would announce his return to Thailand to face justice.

“Now that would certainly make a front-page banner headline in all newspapers the next morning,” he wrote.

What is definite tomorrow is thousands of pro-Thaksin supporters will be wearing red (a colour associated with the anti-Abhisit government movement) in celebrations across Thailand, while anti-Thaksin protesters will mourn his birthday by wearing black.

A cyberspace campaign, which started as a tweets (July 26, wear black throughout the country), urged Thais to wear funeral black to protest against Thaksin’s birthday celebration.

Guess whose birthday it is on Aug 3? Here are some hints. He is a Thai politician adored by half of Thailand’s population. And he advocates populist policies.

He is Abhisit. I wonder if he, too, would announce a “big surprise” on his birthday.

(Published in The Star on July 25, 2009)