To say this has been a bad year for Malaysia would be an understatement. Now air traffic control has lost contact with an AsiaAsia plane from Surabaya to Singapore with over 160 passengers on board.
The Kelantan state assembly should shelve the special state assembly sitting on 29 December to table and pass amendments to the Kelantan Shariah Criminal Code Enactment in view of the calamitous flood disaster in the East Coast.
https://twitter.com/mfannuar/status/547984920451088384/
https://twitter.com/Dzulkar_naemm/status/548131030012411904/
That’s the scene of devastation in Kelantan.
Large swathes of the East Coast are under water as some of the worst floods in recent times hit Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang.
Circulation of NST plummeted 35 per cent in the first half of 2014 compared to the corresponding period of 2013. Utusan’s circulation fell by about 10 per cent.
Newspaper circulation 1st half 2014 – Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations, Malaysia
Protesters reportedly led by Penang Perkasa youth chief Mohd Rizuad Mohd Azudin held a demonstration at Komtar over the Allah controversy. Their target was Penang state exco member for religious affairs Malik Abdul Kassim.
Police blocked them from going up the stairs near the Komtar Maybank branch.
Over in Ipoh, this was the scene.
We have seen Mahathir firing broadsides over 1MDB. Of course, he may have his own motives. After all, it is not as if there were no scandals during his administration.
Then we saw Batu Kawan Umno deputy chief Khairuddin Abu Hassan lodging a police report calling for a “detailed and comprehensive” investigation into 1MDB.
Now, former NST group chief editor Kadir Jasin has written a piece which suggests that discontent about the country’s leadership is brewing in certain circles.
Not a very edifying spectacle. The Registrar of Societies had ordered the party to hold a re-election, and there are calls for the MIC president to quit.
But I am not sure what principles the people in the scenes here are trying to uphold.
It’s a far cry from its initial public offering price of RM4.55 in 2012. At that time, the IPO for Felda Global Ventures was the second largest in the world after Facebook’s.
Quite apart from the Pakatan and other non-BN voices sniping at the 1MDB issue, we had Mahathir firing an early salvo in his blog.
Then out of the blue, the Batu Kawan Umno deputy chief, Khairuddin Abu Hassan, reported to be a Mahathir supporter, surfaced to lodge a police report on this issue. Khairuddin insists he is acting alone.
Further pressure was heaped on 1MDB, and by extension, Najib, when Kadir Jasin revealed in his blog:
The police report (by Khairuddin) is the culmination of weeks of controversies surrounding the so-called sovereign fund.
Even as Asean goes about forming the Asean Community in 2015, a major regional controversy is brewing in the Mekong Delta, where a Malaysian firm Mega First Corporation Bhd plans to build a 256MW dam.
A document has been making the rounds among residents in Batu Ferrighi indicating that the permissible building density in Batu Ferringhi has been raised from 15 units per acre to 30 units per acre for the tourism and public housing zones. How did this happen?
Despite numerous concerns raised by Penang-based civil society groups in Penang Forum and others, the local planning authority in Penang has granted planning permission for land reclamation work under Phase 2 of the Seri Tanjung Pinang project.
The official chart has not yet been updated to reflect the latest position on Sunday, 7 December, but Steve Ripley, head of Soulfood Music, a UK-based Urban/Soul music promotion company, based with Music House tweets:
