Current Affairs

For Current Affairs, Kathleen Tan interviews Datuk Dr Abdul Rahim Hashim, President of the International Gas Union and Malaysian Gas Association, on the prospects of the Malaysian gas industry.

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The recent death of a 74 year old man who was mauled to death by a bull terrier on 8 May 2012, has caused a debate on the level of accountablity that should be placed upon the owner of the dog for this tragedy. Current Affairs speaks to Christine Chin, honorary chairperson of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), for some insights into this issue.

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Current Affairs talks to Cik Nor Afizah Hanum Mokhtar, CEO of the  Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) on her organizations efforts in instilling integrity among the various enforcement agencies that the EAIC overseas.

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For Current Affairs, Kathleen Tan interviews Prof Dr Lim Hong Hai, political scientist and associate professor at the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia on gerrymandering and malapportionment, which are tactics used to gain political advantage during elections. Among the topics covered are:

 - The definitions of gerrymandering and malapportionment, which are the two causes of unfairness in constituency delineation

 - How malapportionment of voting  in Malaysia occurs or is practiced

  - To what extent malapportionmentt and gerrymandering affects the outcome of local elections

 - What can be done to prevent or reduce malapportionment and gerrymandering in Malaysia

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For Current Affairs, we speak to Dato’ Dr Lee Yee Cheong, Working Group Leader of the Rare Earth Report and fellow of Academy of Sciences Malaysia, on the potential of Malaysia's rare earth industry

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On April 30, 2012, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced the implementation of private sector minimum wage, which will be RM900 per month for Peninsular Malaysia and  RM800 per month for East Malaysia.

In this interview, Kathleen Tan speaks to Noraini Talib, Vice-President of Malaysian Plastics Manufacturers Association and Managing Director of Sipro Plastics Industries,  for the perspective of manufacturers on their concerns of the immediate and the impact of the new minimum wage rate on the industry players.

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The Malaysian Bar Council says that the police force did not follow best practices during the Bersih 3.0 rally last weekend, but instead resorted to "disproportionate and excessive" use of force, with indiscriminate use of tear gas, police brutality and harassment of media as well as members of Bar Council's monitoring team. 

"Saturday was unfortunately, a bad day for the police force, so far as acting in a professional manner is concerned... the police has yet to learn the best practices in assembly management," said Lim Chee Wee, president of the Malaysian Bar. In the following interview, he speaks to BFM about findings from Bar Council's interim report of the Bersih 3.0 Rally, the need for a transformation of the police force as well as findings from previous Suhakam inquiries into Bersih rallies.

Lim also addresses: 

- how Bersih 3.0 has improved or regressed since July last year

- what are the best practices and guidelines in dispersing demonstrators, and how tear gas should be used during rallies

- legality of the court order preventing participants from entering Dataran Merdeka

- participants being denied access to lawyers by police at the police detention centre

- allegations of Opposition leaders' role in breaking of barricades

- whether Unit Amal members failed to keep protestors from breaking through the barricades

- who should bear the responsibility for crowd control - organisers or police?

- Bersih 3.0's demands for electoral roll clean-up

- Bar Council's next course of action with the interim report

- how the management of the Bersih 3.0 rally could have been improved 

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In view of the upcoming General Elections, Datuk Paul Low, President of Transparency International Malaysia, urges Members of Parliament to sign the Election Integrity Pledge, a voluntary social contract to pledge their commitment against bribe taking and money politics during and after the electoral campaign. In the following interview, he discusses why the take-up has been slow since the launch of the pledge last month, as well as potential abuses in the upcoming General Elections.

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The call to abolish the National Higher Education Fund Corporation or PTPTN loan by student activists has attracted much debate in recent weeks. Student activists claim that the loan leaves students with huge debts, while economists say free education is not a sustainable option.

In the following interview, Professor James Chin, political scientist at Monash University, shares his views of the PTPTN loan, why he believes it shouldn't be abolished and alternative systems to improve loan repayments.

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Citing findings from his Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (MERAP), political analyst Ong Kian Ming has said there are over 400,000 dubious voters on the electoral roll, which could tip the scales in the upcoming General Elections.

In the following interview, Ong discusses: 

- the reasoning behind embarking on MERAP and methodology behind it

- why he believes instructions given to MIMOS by the PSC was too general to weed out the problem of duplicate ICs, and should instead play a devil's advocate role

- issue of double voting and postal voters

- likelihood of tampering versus administrative errors in electoral roll discrepancies

- the need for EC to be more proactive in weeding out discrepancies, as well as the barriers to detecting this discrepancies

- the National Registration Department's role in discovering dubious voters 

- which states had higher number of discrepancies

- why issues with postal voters should be the first to be addressed before GE13 

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