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Firefighters have been monitoring the location to ensure the public stays away from the area.

Mohd Salim tekad untuk terus berada dalam saf kepimpinan Barisan Nasional dan akan memberikan sokongan kepada calon baharu.

Two UMNO leaders dropped from contesting the GE15 have breached the party constitution by opting to stand on a PN ticket.

A reading under the severe category, or over 400, affects healthy people, with serious impacts on those with existing diseases.

Sebagai orang parti, Halimah berjiwa besar menerima keputusan dibuat pucuk pimpinan.

economist.com THE prime minister, Najib Razak, fancies himself as the Tony Blair of Malaysian politics. Like the former British prime minister, Mr Najib purports to be a progressive reformer, on a mission to “modernise” his country. The British-educated Mr Najib also likes to pay as much attention to the spin on his policies as to their substance. He even hires former Blair advisers to make sure he gets it right.

For all that, Mr Najib increasingly resembles the hapless Gordon Brown, Mr Blair’s nemesis and successor. For years Mr Brown agitated to push his rival aside. When at last he succeeded, Mr Brown blew it by missing the chance to call an early election while he was still relatively popular. Rather than winning his own mandate, Mr Brown, unelected and indecisive, watched his authority drain away until he was boxed into calling an election right at the end of his term—which he then lost.

Similarly, Mr Najib took over after an internal party coup in April 2009 against the then prime minister, Abdullah Badawi. Talk of an early election for Mr Najib to secure his own mandate first surfaced towards the end of 2010. He himself began to talk up his chances the following June. Then an election was expected towards the middle of this year. All along, Malaysia has been on an election footing, with the cautious Mr Najib ponderously cultivating the voters.

He has crafted new policies for Malaysia’s younger, unaligned citizens while giving away plenty of money to retain his party’s traditional supporters, especially among the ethnic-Malay (and Muslim) majority. In the budget in late September more cash handouts went to poorer households and a one-month salary bonus to all government workers. They usually vote for Mr Najib’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

Would that there were more to show for all the shadow electioneering. Opinion polls conducted by the respected Merdeka Centre (the latest were for June) gave the prime minister an approval rating of 64%, down from the high point of his popularity in the middle of 2010. Still not bad, you might think, but the popularity of the ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN), is much lower than the prime minister’s own. So now Mr Najib’s options are diminishing fast. He is required to call an election by April at the latest. In the process he has acquired a reputation for dithering, and now has the regrettable distinction of being Malaysia’s second-longest-serving unelected prime minister, just behind his own father, the country’s second prime minister.

Given UMNO’s deep pockets and its practice of gerrymandering constituency boundaries, winning a simple majority has always looked relatively easy for Mr Najib. After all, the ruling coalition, made up of UMNO and several smaller parties, has achieved that in every election since independence in 1957. Yet Mr Najib’s real aim is to win back the two-thirds majority that the BN lost for the first time at the last election, in 2008. In so doing the BN lost its power, among other things, to tinker with the constitution. That failure led directly to the coup against Mr Badawi and the elevation of Mr Najib. The prime minister knows that if he fails to reverse the humiliation of 2008, a genuinely hard task, then he could go the same way as his predecessor. (His chief protection is that personally he remains more popular than the BN.)

Mr Najib has also been spooked by a series of political setbacks. His government mishandled a couple of huge rallies by a coalition of NGOs called Bersih (meaning “clean” in Malay) campaigning for fair elections. And poring perhaps too closely over the minutiae of local-election results, the BN has fretted over a fall in support among Chinese voters. They form the largest minority in the country’s complex ethnic mosaic.

The problem for Malaysia is that the rival parties have been at such a high pitch of combat-readiness for such a long time that the resulting partisanship is poisoning national politics. Pretty murky at the best of times, politics is becoming dirtier by the day. UMNO and its friends in the press and television have been relentless in their assaults on any organisation, such as Bersih, that is deemed to be sympathetic to the opposition. Another target has been an excellent independent website called Malaysiakini. All the old canards about these sorts of groups being in the pay of Zionists, America or George Soros, a foreign financier, have been trotted out. It is not clear whether such slanders still impress Malaysia’s voters, especially its Muslims. They are certainly a sign of desperation.

The Malaysian Insider | KUALA LUMPUR, 24-Dec-2010 — The majority of voters in peninsular Malaysia are against the proposed construction of the 100-storey Warisan Merdeka project, a recent survey by the independent Merdeka Center has revealed.

The survey, conducted between November 30 and December 11, found that 65 per cent of those polled disagreed with the construction of what would be the tallest building in the country.

Opposition to the project was uniform across all three major communities.

Sixty per cent of Malay voters polled disagreed with the project while 76 per cent of Chinese opposed its construction. Among Indians, 58 per cent were against it.

The findings suggest that a recent online protest on the Facebook social networking site was a fair reflection of public opposition to the project.

More than 200,000 Malaysians registered their protest on Facebook in a campaign launched soon after the project was announced a few months ago.

Last month, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad warned of a property glut that would result from the construction of the proposed tower.

Dr Mahathir had said that the government should consult the public before proceeding with the project, announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak when tabling Budget 2011.

Government investment arm Pemodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) had defended the RM5 billion project, saying that it would neither involve public nor depositor funds.

PNB has formed PNB Merdeka Ventures as a wholly-owned unit to undertake the RM5 billion skyscraper project on the land it bought from Pengurusan Danaharta Nasional Berhad in 2000.

PNB paid RM310 million or RM220 per sq ft to buy the land, but the market value of the land has since appreciated to RM800 per sq ft today.

The land was initially given to UEM Berhad in exchange for the infrastructure giant building the National Stadium complex in Bukit Jalil for the 1998 Commonwealth Games.

Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leaders have also derided the grandiose skyscraper project as wasteful and accused Datuk Seri Najib Razak of trying to “out-Mahathir” Dr Mahathir.

Dr Mahathir had embarked on a massive development spree after he took power in 1981 by building highways, the Penang Bridge, opening new industrial estates and oversaw the construction of the Petronas Twin Towers, the KL International Airport, the Sepang International Circuit, intra-city train lines, several ports, and the new administrative capital Putrajaya and its neighbouring Cyberjaya, which was central to the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project.

Najib appeared to distance himself from the controversial tower when he made it known that the project did not originate from him but PNB.

He nevertheless defended it, saying that it would have a “multiplier effect” on the economy and help drive it forward, in addition to providing an attractive commercial centre for Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera businesses alike.

In his 2011 Budget speech, Najib said the rationale for the Warisan Merdeka tower was similar to that of the iconic Petronas Twin Towers, in that it would serve as a symbol of a modern and developed Malaysia.

The 19-acre development area of the mega project — which includes a condominium and a shopping mall — is sited on the car park and land adjacent to Stadium Negara and Stadium Merdeka.

By Leslie Lau
Executive Editor

The “Petaling Jaya City Council residents attitude and opinion towards food outlets on dining out, restaurant cleanliness and Petaling Jaya City Council performance pool” was conducted from 410 selected respondents aged 18 and above. They were interviewed for three days from June 10 via telephone.

The participants from Bukit Gasing, Bukit Lanjan, Damansara Utama, Kampung Tunku, Kota Damansara Seri Setia and Taman Medan.

“In one of the 30 questions posed to them, 15 per cent claimed they had suffered from food poisoning after dining out at food establishments in PJ for the past one year,” said Merdeka Center research manager Tan Seng Keat.

He said 30 per cent believed it was due to dining out at Mamak restaurants.

“Others recognised that the cause of food poisoning was due to eating at outdoor hawker stalls mostly along the streets and hawker stalls in coffeeshops, which stood at 15 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively,” he said, adding the survey margin of error was more than 4.9 per cent.

The survey was conducted via random stratified sampling method along the lines of electoral constituents, ethnicity, gender and age.

Respondents also cited open air food court and non-air-conditioned restaurants (excluding Mamak restaurants) as “dirty” with feedbacks standing at 34 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively.

Tan said hawker stalls, Mamak restaurants and open air food courts need to improve their level of hygiene.

“Cleanliness is the most important criteria for PJ residents to pick a place to dine at. People are particular about the cleanliness of food outlets, and the council’s cleanliness guidelines and laws for food operators are moderate.”

‘This is sabotage!’

THE Malaysian Muslim Restaurant Owners Association (Presma) have questioned the authenticity of the survey findings conducted by Kampung Tunku assemblyman Lau Weng San and Merdeka Center for Opinion Research.

Presma president Noorul Hassan told The Malay Mail he has doubts over the validity of the survey.

“This is sabotage and biased towards Mamak food joints! It’s totally unacceptable and it’s not fair to blame us in a survey which was just based on interviews and distorted facts.”

He said there could be other factors contributing to food poisoning as experienced by many of the respondents.

Claiming the survey was the latest ploy to discredit and damage the reputation of Mamak food operators in Petaling Jaya and nationwide, he said: “I believe it was never substantiated by medical evidence to show the respondents suffered from food poisoning as a result from eating at Mamak restaurants.

“They always get the blame. If it’s true we are unhygienic, I don’t think people will visit Mamak restaurants regularly. The level of cleanliness has improved tremendously and if not, it’s so much better than the other so-called reputable dining places,” he said, adding that 15 per cent with food poisoning out of 410 respondents was not a fair reflection of the whole survey.

‘Three-strikes’ rule

KAMPUNG Tunku assemblyman Lau Weng San (pic) said among the objectives of the research were mainly to obtain residents’ feedback on the ‘Three-Strikes’ enforcement rule for food establishments within Petaling Jaya City Council’s jurisdiction.

“I was also interested to find out the public’s satisfaction with the overall performance of the council regarding cleanliness at food outlets,” said Lau in a Press conference at the DAP headquarters yesterday.

He said the ‘Three-Strikes’ rule has yet to be implemented in Selangor since it was mooted a year ago by the State government.

“The rule stipulates that if a hygiene offence is committed more than three times in a year, the food establishment will have its licence revoked,” he said, adding that 91 per cent of the survey respondents agreed with the rule to be implemented.

He said a third of respondents were concerned that the rule would lead to potential power abuse or corruption by unscrupulous enforcement officers.

“I hope we could look at different perspectives of the survey and also for the Selangor government to have a better understanding on cleanliness at food outlets.”