Trying To Obtain A Birth Certificate

Some of you may remember a previous post about Malaysian-born children without birth certificates.

I still find it shocking that in this day and age, there are children in this country who are stateless and belong nowhere. They do not exist in the eyes of our government.

These are three of the eight children I wrote about earlier. The little boy peeking out from behind his sister has no birth certificate.

He hasn't attained school-going age yet, but if he doesn't somehow obtain a birth certificate, he doesn't obtain an education.

Which is why my friend was so keen on ensuring these kids make their foray into government records. He dragged the young 25 year old mother and her unregistered children to the Registry department.

But trying to get a birth certificate is not easy. Firstly there is a fine for not registering within the stipulated period.

Secondly, you need a witness to swear under oath that he/she was present when the child was born.

And last but not least, the civil servants in the district were uncooperative. They told the mother to go all the way to Seremban to register their birth.

It takes over an hour to get from Kuala Pilah to Seremban. There is limited public transportation, if any.

Perhaps the civil servants were acting within their rightful jurisdiction. But the manner in which they regarded this uneducated, poverty-stricken woman was out of line.

It is not merely the politicians in the state level that exceed their boundaries. So do those in the local council.

We need to have more say and control over the government and administration of the local council for things to improve.

On The Fast Track To Bankruptcy

These are the days when one is compelled to slap one's forehead in dismay at the priorities of the ruling coalition in terms of "national interests".

Of course, the average Malaysian knows that it is about how much money the politicians can siphon from this project to build a 100 storey tower.

We already have the Twin Towers, which reigned as the tallest for awhile.

And then it was quickly overtaken by Taipei 101 (Taiwan) and Burj Khalifa (UAE).

So why do we need yet another Malaysia Boleh project?

It is not the first time I have said it, and I will say it again:

We are a nation that nurses its deep-seated insecurities by conjuring up ridiculously over-the-top mega-projects which serve no purpose beyond ego-stroking.

When thousands of Malaysians suffer traffic jams everyday due to our poor public transportation, do we need another white elephant?

At some point we need to come to our senses.

Let that be NOW.

Facebook Blocks Politically Sensitive Sites

 

TIME magazine has this to say:

An American may have invented Facebook, but when it comes to social networking, we can't touch Malaysia.

A study showed that Malaysians have the most friends on their social networks, averaging at 233 digital friends per user.

Malaysians were also the heaviest users of social networking sites, spending a whopping nine hours per week on average communicating with their hoards of online friends.

So it is a grave mistake for Facebook to block the publishing rights of the page “Malaysians for Beng Hock”.

The administrators of the above-mentioned page have this to say:

The arbitrary and undemocratic governance of Facebook on its users is not only tyrannical in itself, it is open to manipulation by authoritarian regimes to shut down facebook activism by making a lot of or high-powered complaints.

From our knowledge, at least two other politically-critical pages - ‘Justice for Beng Bock’ and ‘save Jamal on Air’ pages were also terminated by Facebook without reasons.

As both the death of Beng Hock and sacking of 988 deejay Jamaluddin Ibrahim are highly controversial issues in Malaysia, these raise the legitimate suspicion if such blocking was the outcome of some backdoor crackdown operation on new media, made possible by Facebook’s arbitrary governance.

It is entirely expected that our scum-of-the-earth government would pressure Facebook with a request like this, but very surprising that Facebook would accede to that.

After all, Facebook have the highest number of users in Malaysia and you don't want to piss them off.

The Teoh Beng Hock Inquest

Remember how the last session of Teoh Beng Hock's inquest went?

Please attend and support his family. Your presence will make a difference.

Date: 14/10/10 (Thursday)
Time: 2pm
Venue: Shah Alam High Court

Lawyer Gobind Singh will interrogate witness about the ‘note’.

If you have any queries, please call Yap Hwa at 012-2658448

Sabah Or Malaysia

Some dude by the name of Aricco Jumitih represented the country in the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

He took the gold medal for the 62 kg weightlifting event.

But he was seen wearing a vest bearing the flag of his home state Sabah, instead of the Jalur Gemilang usually worn by national athletes participating in international events.

That has irked some of the bigwigs.

The irony is they barely give two hoots about East Malaysia, except to exploit them politically and economically.

Even when they actually do the nation proud, they get their asses stomped on.

You just can't win sometimes.

Dog Eat Dog World

Some of you may have been unhappy about struggling to make ends meet when April comes and the tax man wants another chunk!

The problem is, Najib needs your money.

More than you do.

Third Line Of Defence

I expect our National News Agency to spout a lot of rubbish.

It is even a given for our Prime Minister to babble nonsense.

But still, nothing prepared me for this.

I guess the fourth line of defence would be to show this article to enemies of Malaysia so that they die laughing.