Friday, January 20, 2006

Article 121(1a) Of the Constuition must be amended.

The P.M has degenerated to a pathetic figure, devoid of any direction and authority to bring our nation of diverse culture and religion to a harmonious conclusion.The non-muslims have a right to demand that the Federal constituition protect the religion of the miniority.The current dilemma facing the non muslim is that the present article 121(1a) does not provide sufficient safeguard to ensure that the rights of the non muslims are protected.The civil courts have abdicated their responsibilty to hear cases involving non muslims when islamic religious issues are involved.The civil courts as it is have surrendered their judicial supremacy in direct contravention of the Federal constituition and have accepted the supremacy of the Syariah law.This act alone has left the non muslims position vulnerable and devoid of any protection from the civil courts.Unless article 121(1a) is amended to address this lacuna there will always be another case similar to Moorthy .Can Malaysia afford to have its people facing this uncertainties over and over again without its attendant consequences?

Thursday, January 19, 2006

DBKL Action Is Unreasonable

Enough is enough. DBKL must come out with a
clear irrevocable policy of releasing bumiputra houses
for sale to the non-bumis once conditions have been
complied.Developers around the Klang Valley of late
have been mystified by the frequent changes in the
conditions that DBKL have implemented.The previous
condition was that developers have to advertise in the
major newspapers for sale of housing units to
bumiputra at a discount.After a gestation period of 3
months if the units allocated to bumis are not sold
then they are released to the general public.Now they
have changed their conditions and have insisted that
developers have to do road shows at shopping centres
such as at the Mid-Valley to attract bumi buyers.After
having complied with the 2nd condition, DBKL has now
once again insisted that another road show be carried
out to get bumi buyers when it was quite evident from
the previous road show that bumis were simply not
interested in housing estate with a big majority of
non malays.
DBKL doesnt seem to realise that road shows
and advertisement in the news media cost alot of money
and by imposing these unreasonable demands they are
causing indirectly to the abandonment of housing
projects which would otherwise have been completed.
If DBKL is so adamant in helping the bumis to
buy these houses then it should ask its state agency
to buy up all the bumis unit and sell them to bumis at
a later date.That way at least developers are not
burdened with the holding cost when DBKL keep on
introducing unreasonable conditions.
The Housing Ministry is partly to blame for the
current policy of imposing the 30% sale of houses to
bumis.This is an old policy forged in the 80s with the
vested purpose of helping bumis to increase house
ownership.At no time was it the intended purpose of
the policy to help rich bumis to purchase property at
a discount.Now in the Klang Valley house costing
$300,000 and above are given discount.These are houses
that are only affordable to the rich bumis and if they
can afford to buy such high end houses then there is
no rationale for non bumis to subsidise their
purchase.It is high time the Housing Ministry correct
this unfairness and perhaps introduce a more equitable
policy like stipulating that houses costing $100,000
and below should be sold at a discount to bumis.That
way those bumis that are deserving will only benefit
and not the rich bumis.