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Some good news, but still only words. Implementation of it will bring more smiles to the community. The senior exco, Ngeh Koo Ham said that the state will gazette its lands for religious use for Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Christians as part of the state government’s effort to recognise and give legal protection to non-Muslims. This is to ensure that people from these faiths are not deprived from practising their religion.

According to Ngeh, there are about 4000 temples and churches that occupy state land without approval. Those that are in suitable places will be allowed to remain as the state government will provide land titles or reserve the land for religious use. For those that are in areas like road and river reserves, or obstructing development, relocation will be done.

There are also plans to gazette lands in areas with significant population of non-Muslims for new temples and churches to be built, based on need and request.

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Penang and Perak state governments had announced the publication of magazines that various groups branded as propoganda. These groups called the the two state governments ‘hypocrites’ as they were doing the same thing as the previous governments which they had earlier criticised.

Malaysiakini carried some of the responses from these groups:

Media Watch:

Penang-based Media Watch group described Suara Rakyat, published by the DAP-led Penang government and Citra Perak in PAS-led Perak as “merely a public media tool of partisan propaganda.”“The Pakatan Rakyat governments are no different from the previous ones after all. They are hypocrites by copying BN media policy to serve their cynical self interests,” said its coordinator B K Ong, stressing Media Watch’s stand on governments to ‘stay away’ from media publications.

Even if a state government funds and publishes a state magazine, he argues it should be administrated by an independent editorial board to provide free and fair news coverage.

“But these magazines are more like mouthpieces of Pakatan Rakyat state governments than independent magazines,” he told Malaysiakini.

By following the precedent set by his predecessor, Ong said Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng had proven to be a hypocrite since “he had condemned BN-controlled media all these years.”

“He should have titled the magazine as Suara Kerajaan (Government Voice) not Suara Rakyat (People’s Voice),” he said.

United Hindu Religious Council:

President G Mugunthan criticised the Pakatan Rakyat state governments of not going on an austerity drive to save government spending, more so during such difficult times for the people.“The Pakatan state governments claim to be thrifty but are wrongly spending precious government funds
on propaganda. The money could have well spent for noble causes like helping the poor and Tamil schools,” he stressed.

Aliran:

Although social reform movement Aliran is not against the government-sponsored publications, it nonetheless said that state magazines should be more for “intellectual discourse, intelligent thinking and people centric.”

Penang Heritage Trust:

Penang Heritage Trust head Dr Choon Sim Poey concurred that it would not be right for the state governments to utilise public funds for political publicity, instead of  publishing government policies and action plans for the information of the people.

Opposition Leader in Penang:

Azhar Ibrahim on Monday criticised the state government of going back on its promise to cut operational costs due to a lack of funds.“Is this what we call the ‘CAT’ government?” he asked, taking a swipe at the state government’s widely-propagated principles of competency, accountability and transparency (CAT).

it is estimated that Penang government will spent RM300,000 (20,000 copies x 3 editions) . Perak is also expected to spend same amount for 6 editions of 10,000 copies each. Suara Rakyat (52 pages), Penang’s version is in 3 languages - Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. Citra Perak (20 pages) is in Malay only.

Previous Penang government spent nearly RM300,000 a year to publish separate Malay, Chinese and Tamil magazines in Penang. The Malay version, Wawasan Rakyat was published first in 1994, Hong Yuan in Mandarin was launched in 1999 while Makkal Madal in Tamil was started in 2003.

The previous Perak BN government only published Warta Perak in Bahasa.

The Pakatan government must be careful to ensure that they do not follow the path of those they criticised earlier. This kind of expense will not go down well with public, and will be used by opposition to attack government.

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Well, if earlier there was discontent due to selection of councillors in Perak (only 48 Indians were selected), now HINDRAF outrightly declares that it will support only to those parties that is able to improve the Indian community’s standing. So say its national information coordinator S. Jayathas who foresee a time when Hindraf would have to split ranks and support Barisan Nasional instead, if Barisan proved it could do better:

It would be up to the Hindraf chairman to decide whether to split from Pakatan. The challenge now is for Pakatan and Barisan to prove who can do better. We will wait and see. Until then, we will keep on demanding that Pakatan work for the betterment of the Indians.

Jayathas said Hindraf sought support from the Opposition because MIC had failed to address the community’s issues in Parliament. Jayathas stressed that Hindraf was a group that also wanted better job opportunities, respect and dignity for the Indian community. He added that Hindraf’s allegiance with the Opposition parties did not mean that the group had given up on MIC.

Now, this can be read in many ways -

1. HINDRAF may realise that Pakatan Rakyat is not able to help in its quest as fast as it wanted too.

2. Government is beginning to introduce policies and goodies for the community.

3. MIC is trying to change itself to be better.

Even though the above three are all “work in progress”, I’ll say that groups like HINDRAF are not political parties. They are civil rights or pressure groups who fight for a particular issue - in this case Indian community rights vis-a-vis equal rights for Malaysian citizens.

So, they will see who will best support their ideals. Earlier, Waytha asked the community to support opposition and we saw the effect in last General Elections. Many of the safe seats fell.

If now Waytha says don’t support Pakatan Rakyat coalition in Perak, what will happen? Can we see the assemblymen like Sivanesan, Keshvinder, Sivakumar etc. jump to BN or at least be independent? Will this help BN to gain back Perak by August 31st?

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