Have a Meaningful Deepavali - tomorrow in The STAR

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 – 1964)

“Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.”

Back to basics: 

What we should do in the beginning before anything else

Each year zubedy picks a theme that is relevant for our nation, our Malaysia. We usually launch a new theme around Deepavali. Last year we called on you, our brother and sister Malaysians to consider The Middle Path as the way to move forward. For this coming year, we feel it is time for us to get back to basics.

As we progress as a people, we need to understand and appreciate our history, to remember our principles, to further strengthen our foundation, and to find ourselves. We need to go back to basics.

What do we mean by going back to basics?

It is the need for a firm foundation – to rebuild it if needs be. Ensure the cake is right before icing it. Eat right and exercise, before considering supplements. Get the product right before advertising. Know the alphabets before aiming to read and write. Eradicate poverty before erecting fancy monuments.

Why is there a need to get back to basics?

Because we must first have a strong footing for all our actions form chain reactions; the right ones will provide the groundwork for success and the wrong ones may lead to bad consequences. And also, because we need to address the fundamental problems and not just the symptoms – patch-up work won’t do anymore. Get it right at the start.

How do we get back to basics?

Believe; we need to do this. Prioritise; delay gratification and allow politics to be on the back burner. Act; do what is right and needs to be done. These three steps can very well be the start of a better Malaysia and help us avoid situations becoming like nasi jelantah – undercooked at its core.

When to do it?

Always.

Where should we apply this concept?

At home. At work. In politics. Business. Education. Welfare.  Family. Poverty eradication. Sports management. Everywhere.

Who to do it?

You and I.

At zubedy, our programs draw strength from shared values and traditions. We believe that at heart, all Malaysians want good things for themselves and for their brother and sister Malaysians, simply because our nation cannot prosper as a whole if some of us are left behind.

Let us be first and foremost Malaysians.


Let us add value,
Have A Meaningful Deepavali

Plight of city's poor by Bavani M - The STAR

A little help: Ramanathan (second from left) and a volunteer (fourth from left) presenting Manjeet’s family with some groceries.

MANJEET Kaur, 31, sells vegetables at night to neighbours living in and around her low-cost government unit in Batu Muda, Kuala Lumpur. In the daytime, she toils under the blazing sun at a nearby empty land planting those vegetables to earn a living.

The heavy responsibility of feeding her family has fallen on her frail shoulders.

She has five children aged between five years and 11, a 72-year-old mother and a disabled relative to care for.

A few doors away, Letchumi Govindasamy is left to care for five grandchildren, aged four to 13, after the children’s parents abandoned them.

The 63-year-old granny’s only income is a paltry RM300 a month from the Welfare Department; with that amount she has to feed, clothe and pay for the children’s education.

At times, the family has to make do with biscuits and water for a meal as there is no money to buy proper food.

Three floors below, 53-year-old Ayaimah Sinnapaian struggles alone to care for her 35-year-old mentally-disabled son, Vijesh Veeran, while another family in the same building is burdened with the medical bills for their four-year-old bedridden daughter Jayasree Prithy Saravanan who suffered brain damage from a fever three years ago.

These families are among Kuala Lumpur’s urban poor who fall under “hard-core poor” category in the Government’s E-kasih programme, a national database to collect information on poor families in need of help.

Under the programme, the Poverty Line Income (PLI) for the hard-core poor in peninsular Malaysia are those whose household income is less than RM430.

There are hundreds of families in the city in similar situations as Letchumi, who are living below the PLI and are not registered with E-kasih.

Click here to read more on this article

What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? - The New York Times Magazine

Dominic Randolph can seem a little out of place at Riverdale Country School — which is odd, because he’s the headmaster. Riverdale is one of New York City’s most prestigious private schools, with a 104-year-old campus that looks down grandly on Van Cortlandt Park from the top of a steep hill in the richest part of the Bronx. On the discussion boards of UrbanBaby.com, worked-up moms from the Upper East Side argue over whether Riverdale sends enough seniors to Harvard, Yale and Princeton to be considered truly “TT” (top-tier, in UrbanBabyese), or whether it is more accurately labeled “2T” (second-tier), but it is, certainly, part of the city’s private-school elite, a place members of the establishment send their kids to learn to be members of the establishment. Tuition starts at $38,500 a year, and that’s for prekindergarten.

Randolph, by contrast, comes across as an iconoclast, a disrupter, even a bit of an eccentric. He dresses for work every day in a black suit with a narrow tie, and the outfit, plus his cool demeanor and sweep of graying hair, makes you wonder, when you first meet him, if he might have played sax in a ska band in the ’80s. (The English accent helps.) He is a big thinker, always chasing new ideas, and a conversation with him can feel like a one-man TED conference, dotted with references to the latest work by behavioral psychologists and management gurus and design theorists. When he became headmaster in 2007, he swapped offices with his secretary, giving her the reclusive inner sanctum where previous headmasters sat and remodeling the small outer reception area into his own open-concept work space, its walls covered with whiteboard paint on which he sketches ideas and slogans. One day when I visited, one wall was bare except for a white sheet of paper. On it was printed a single black question mark.

For the headmaster of an intensely competitive school, Randolph, who is 49, is surprisingly skeptical about many of the basic elements of a contemporary high-stakes American education. He did away with Advanced Placement classes in the high school soon after he arrived at Riverdale; he encourages his teachers to limit the homework they assign; and he says that the standardized tests that Riverdale and other private schools require for admission to kindergarten and to middle school are “a patently unfair system” because they evaluate students almost entirely by I.Q. “This push on tests,” he told me, “is missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.”

The most critical missing piece, Randolph explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”

Randolph has been pondering throughout his 23-year career as an educator the question of whether and how schools should impart good character. It has often felt like a lonely quest, but it has led him in some interesting directions. In the winter of 2005, Randolph read “Learned Optimism,” a book by Martin Seligman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who helped establish the Positive Psychology movement. Randolph found the book intriguing, and he arranged a meeting with the author. As it happened, on the morning that Randolph made the trip to Philadelphia, Seligman had scheduled a separate meeting with David Levin, the co-founder of theKIPP network of charter schools and the superintendent of the KIPP schools in New York City. Seligman decided he might as well combine the two meetings, and he invited Christopher Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, who was also visiting Penn that day, to join him and Randolph and Levin in his office for a freewheeling discussion of psychology and schooling.

Levin had also spent many years trying to figure out how to provide lessons in character to his students, who were almost all black or Latino and from low-income families. At the first KIPP school, in Houston, he and his co-founder, Michael Feinberg, filled the walls with slogans like “Work Hard” and “Be Nice” and “There Are No Shortcuts,” and they developed a system of rewards and demerits designed to train their students not only in fractions and algebra but also in perseverance and empathy. Like Randolph, Levin went to Seligman’s office expecting to talk about optimism. But Seligman surprised them both by pulling out a new and very different book, which he and Peterson had just finished:“Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification,” a scholarly, 800-page tome that weighed in at three and a half pounds. It was intended, according to the authors, as a “manual of the sanities,” an attempt to inaugurate what they described as a “science of good character.”

It was, in other words, exactly what Randolph and Levin had been looking for, separately, even if neither of them had quite known it. Seligman and Peterson consulted works from Aristotle to Confucius, from the Upanishads to the Torah, from the Boy Scout Handbook to profiles of Pokémon characters, and they settled on 24 character strengths common to all cultures and eras. The list included some we think of as traditional noble traits, like bravery, citizenship, fairness, wisdom and integrity; others that veer into the emotional realm, like love, humor, zest and appreciation of beauty; and still others that are more concerned with day-to-day human interactions: social intelligence (the ability to recognize interpersonal dynamics and adapt quickly to different social situations), kindness, self-regulation, gratitude.

In most societies, Seligman and Peterson wrote, these strengths were considered to have a moral valence, and in many cases they overlapped with religious laws and strictures. But their true importance did not come from their relationship to any system of ethics or moral laws but from their practical benefit: cultivating these strengths represented a reliable path to “the good life,” a life that was not just happy but also meaningful and fulfilling.

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Debates rage on many fronts by Shad Saleem Faruqi - The STAR

There are some law issues being argued of late like secular state, parliamentary committee and death penalty.

IN the last fortnight, a number of engaging public law issues captured the public imagination.

Secular state: De facto law minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz crossed swords with DAP’s Lim Kit Siang over the latter’s claim that Malaysia is a secular state.

The law minister correctly pointed out that nowhere in the Constitution is there any mention of the word “secular”.

Further, as Islam is recognised in the Constitution as the religion of the federation, it would be improper to regard the country as a secular state.

In support of this view, one can point out that the word “Islam” is mentioned at least 24 times in the Constitution, the words Mufti, Kadi Besar and Kadi at least once each. In Schedule 9, List II, paragraph 1, state legislatures are permitted to apply Islamic law to Muslims in a variety of civil areas.

The state legislatures are also permitted to create and punish offences by Muslims against the precepts of Islam except in relation to matters within federal jurisdiction.

Syariah courts may be established. Under Article 121(1A), syariah courts are independent of the civil courts.

On the other side, Lim correctly pointed out that Malayan constitutional documents and pronouncements by early leaders indicate that at its birth the federation was meant to be a secular state.

To back this view, one can point to the Supreme Court decision in Che Omar Che Soh’s case that although Islam is the religion of the federation, it is not the basic law of the land.

Article 3 on Islam imposes no limits on the power of parliament to legislate contrary to the syariah. Islamic law is not the general law of the land either at the federal or state levels.

It applies only to Muslims and that too in limited and specified areas. It is noteworthy that non-Muslims are not subject to syariah or to the jurisdiction of the syariah courts.

Ever since Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s declaration on Sept 29, 2001 that Malaysia is an Islamic country, this debate ignites periodically and no firm conclusion is ever possible because of the problem of semantics – the assignment of different meanings to the words “secular” and “theocratic” by participants in the discourse.

My personal view is that if by a theocratic state is meant that the law of God is the supreme law of the land and that the temporal ruler is subject to the final direction of the theological head, then clearly Malaysia is not a theocratic state due to the presence of a supreme Constitution and the overriding power of secular authorities over the religious establishment.

At the same time if by a secular state is meant that law and religion are separated from each other; that there is no legally prescribed official religion; that religion is not interwoven into the affairs of the state; that no state aid is given to any religious creed; and that religion is left entirely to private establishments, then Malaysia is certainly not a secular state.

Then how should we be described? It is submitted that the Malaysian legal system is neither fully secular nor fully theocratic. It is hybrid. It permits legal pluralism.

It avoids the extremes of American style secularism or Saudi or Taliban type of religious control over all aspects of life. It walks the middle path. It promotes piety but does not insist on ideological purity.

Muslims are governed by divinely ordained laws in some fields but in others their life is regulated by Malay adat and by secular provisions enacted by elected legislatures. Non-Muslims are entirely regulated by secular laws.

In sum, the secular versus theocracy debate is full of semantics and polemics and will take us nowhere.

Parliamentary committee: The Government is contemplating setting up a permanent select committee in Parliament to scrutinise Suhakam reports.

If this move comes about it will not only catapult human rights to the forefront of parliamentary discussion, it will also do a great deal to bolster the image of parliament as the grand inquest of the nation.

A system of well integrated and well serviced investigatory committees as in the United States and the Philippines holds the only key to enabling parliament to become an effective countervailing force to the ever increasing powers of the executive.

An increase in the number of permanent select committees from the present five to one for each government department as in Britain, one joint committee on Human Rights, a Dewan Rakyat committee on Public Complaints to examine the reports of the Public Complaints Bureau and a joint committee on subsidiary legislation will do much to improve the institutional efficacy of parliament and to enable backbenchers to play a more meaningful role.

To assist parliamentarians in this oversight function, non-partisan support structures ought to be established.

MPs should be assigned research assistants. The Houses should have their own legal counsel. In the manner of INTAN and ILKAP, an Institute of Parliamentary Affairs should be established to train MPs and to hone their abilities to research and analyse issues.

> Death penalty: Amnesty International has praised Malaysia for the proposal to abolish the death penalty for drug trafficking. The proposal is in its early stage and it is a matter of speculation which of the three alternatives will ultimately be accepted.

First, maintain the death penalty for serious crimes but remove its mandatory nature. Restore judicial discretion to tailor the punishment to suit the factual matrix of each case.

Second, reduce the number of offences for which the death penalty may be imposed as at present for waging war against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, offences against a ruler or governor, abetting mutiny in the armed forces, murder, abetment of suicide, attempt by a life convict to murder if hurt is caused, kidnapping or abduction in order to murder, hostage-taking, gang robbery with murder, drug trafficking and unlawful possession of firearms.

Third, abolish the death penalty altogether as in 87 countries plus 27 others that have not executed anyone for the last 10 years.

Which of the alternatives will be chosen will ultimately be a matter of high policy dictated as much by human rights considerations as by public opinion. It is submitted that on fundamental issues of right and wrong, popular opinion, while given due weight, should not be allowed to dictate ultimate decisions.

As Jesse Jackson once said: “Leaders of substance do not follow opinion polls. They mould opinion, not with guns or dollars or position but with the power of their souls.”

Read more on the article here.

My letter to the Headmaster of SXI Penang

30^th October 2012

Ref: AZSXIHM1

Mr. Loh Kea Yu,

Principal,

Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Saint Xavier

Penang.

Dear Mr. Loh,

RE :     PUNISHING A 14 YEAR OLD FOR COPYING IN A TEST WITH ZERO MARKS FOR ALL HIS OTHER PAPERS IS LIKE CHOPPING OFF THE HANDS OF A THIEF FOR STEALING SOME RAMBUTANS :)

I refer to our telephone conversation yesterday with regards to my nephew Erza Faiq Amar who is a student in Form 2 (Anthony) at your school.

While I do not ignore Erza’s act of copying, I find your rule and regulation with regards to this matter lacks wisdom. It lacks a sense of proportion. Teachers and school administrators must have the depth to know the difference between budak-budak yang nakal , budak-budak yang tersilap jalan, and budak-budak yang jahat . To expect a 14 year old not to break rules every now and then shows a lack of understanding of what it is (and what it was) to be a teenager; that is why we must set rules and punishment with wisdom.

As stated above I find your regulation in punishing a 14 year old for copying in a test with zero marks for all his other papers is similar to an act of chopping off the hands of a thief for stealing some rambutans. I find your ruling draconian even if you have set a process of appeal that will overturn the decision.

This rule shows lack of confidence in your team and you in winning the hearts of students to do good without using a very big stick. I see this as an abuse of power: a tendency to use clout simply because it is within your disposal. A projection to students that they should fear you because you have at your disposal enormous power and you are willing to use it at your convenience.

It is such examples of misuse of power that our children will remember and learn from this incident. I worry Erza will forget what he tried to copy but learn that it is okay to create regulations that have little sense of balance. I dread that while Erza remembers not to cheat but at the same time discovers the power of exploiting one’s authority and using it to the fullest.

Please do not get me wrong. I am for instilling discipline. It is your approach that I am questioning. Fear is an archaic  tool for education and it is sad that our school system is still using them as the first rule of engagement. Your team did not ask Erza why he did it. They did not even try to understand the reasons behind his action. They did not even bother to have a chat with him after the class. What they did was being quick to slap him with a convenient and sweeping ruling. Overlooking that the Agama paper is not his last paper and thus showing no care that Erza might lose interest in the remaining ones since he will get a big fat zero anyway.

Your officer summoned my brother, Erza’s dad out of bed (as he was unwell) to the school just to tell him that his son will get zero for his entire subjects and will be sent to the last class next year. Remember that Erza was a 4 As 1 B student in his standard 6 assessment.   Do you think that this move will make Erza a better student? Did your officer get a kick out of putting down a father’s hope for his son?

Let me paint you a larger picture.

I have two confessions to make because I am a party to the problem. Firstly, a month ago Erza and I had a conversation and we set a goal of him targeting to be in the top 10% of his school by end next year, top 20% this year. He lamented that his Agama marks always pull his results down as he is weak in Arabic, while he is doing okay with his other subjects. Perhaps that was why he tried to copy in his Agama paper. I spoke to him about this last evening and sold him the idea that it is better to fail than to cheat, and the act of copying is not worth it. I also had to motivate him to do his best in the remaining paper, not to copy again and not care even if he is given zero marks.

Secondly, some time ago he once asked me if I have ever copied in school. Obviously I told him the truth; not much, but yes I did it. While we never copied in big exams, my friends and I did share information during monthly tests. Sometimes simply doing it for the fun of it or because we can get away with it, crafting ingenious new approaches and ‘technologies’ and testing it out to see if they work. Once a friend wrote answers on a separate sheet of paper, folded it into a paper airplane and flew it across the class once the teacher in charge had to go for a toilet break, sending the class into chaos and laughter. I told Erza that these were the silly things I did when I was young and foolish. I may have sent him the wrong signals.

You see, I have always told Erza the truth. Perhaps that is why, when his friend reported on him and the teacher in charge asked him if he tried to copy, Erza’s spontaneous response was to tell the truth. He is not even sore with his fellow student the whistle-blower. Other kids would have wanted to keep a score. As a 6 footer at 14 years of age, Erza could have sent the little kid to the other side of the room with a single blow. But did he? He did not. This is because he knew that his fellow student did not do any wrong reporting.  As stated earlier, “teachers and school administrators must have the depth to know the difference between budak-budak yang nakal , budak-budak yang tersilap jalan, and budak-budak yang jahat .”

It is not wise to set blanket rules and punishment as though every single kid out there is a potential criminal. Yes, my friends and I were punished when we get caught. It was hilarious to see ‘a rose among thorns’ once at form 6 when a sweet female friend was made to stand in front of the class with the boys when they were caught copying. She now has a PhD in Dance Drama and became an international proponent of a dance genre. Other friends went to be  top management of international and local banks, conglomerates, doctors, lawyers, architects, accountants etc. Quite a few of us, like me are now entrepreneurs. Between us we have employed, created jobs, and managed thousands of people over the years. Our silly antics when we were young and playful were not pre-cursors to plagiarism, cheating, and unlawful business. We were not made to feel like potential criminals so we did not become one. Our teachers were strict, but their firmness was tempered with mercy … and sometimes even with humour. That made all the difference.

We love many of our teachers and till today we still send them Teacher’s Day wishes. One of my favorite teachers is a no-nonsense strict lady teacher. Until today I do not miss sending her birthday wishes each year. I cannot remember a single instance when my headmaster flexes his power suggesting that he will fail all my subjects if I was caught copying or anything of this sort. What I remember was a simple warning with a deafening silence after he said, “Boys, if you are caught copying…. BE CAREFUL…” . That’s it.

When I first call you about 1 30 pm yesterday, you did not want to have a dialog with me because I am not Erza’s father. You only agreed to set another telephone appointment at 3 30 pm after I suggested I get a written permission faxed to you. So I hurried my brother out of bed again, got him to type a letter, rushed to a friend’s office and faxed to you the letter before 2 30 pm. I called you at the agreed time but I was told that you were still in a meeting. I left a message and my contact number with a Cik Siti. I called again a little after 4 pm, but she informed me that you are still in the meeting. My calls after 5 pm were not picked up. Till now, 11 00 am the next day,  I have yet to hear from you.

As a businessman, if someone copied some of my ideas and makes some money on the sidelines, I am cool about it. In fact I feel a little proud helping a fellow business colleague survive. But I do not take lightly to those who fail to keep to their word. It shows lack of character. I am sure keeping to one’s word is also an important quality of being a headmaster. As a leader in your school you need to show a good example in keeping your words not just to the students but also to parents and caretakers. Unfortunately, you have failed in this area.

I hope you do not have a rule in Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Saint Xavier where your salary for the whole year will be forfeited for failing to keep to your word. That would be too harsh. Or perhaps I need not worry as you may have one rule for the students, but another for you.

I hope you get my point.

“No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”

                                                                        Kahlil Gibran

Peace and thank you.

Let us add value,

Anas Zubedy

anas@zubedy.com

c/o

zubedy (m) sdn bhd

3rd Floor, Wisma W.I.M

7, Jalan Abang Haji Openg,

Taman Tun Dr. Ismail,

60000 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel  : 03 - 7727 0758

Fax : 03 - 7727 0759

Website: www.zubedy.com

Youth and Political Awareness – by Anas Zubedy

I was recently invited to speak at Perdana Leadership Foundation in a forum titled, “Citizenship in the Age of the Internet: Has the Internet increased political awareness among Malaysian youth?”

The other panelist were YB Dato' Saifuddin Abdullah (Deputy Minister of Education), Tricia Yeo a researcher and former assistant to the Selangor MB Khalid Ibrahim,  Cheah Kar Fei a student leader, former AIESEC President of Malaysia. The session was moderated by Lim Teck Hoe.

I see being a panelist in this talk as a great chance to test a hypothesis I have regarding youth and political awareness. In a previous session I delivered early this year among 200 student leaders from all over the country, I polled the audience and most of them had no idea who Khairy Jamaludin is, let alone PR’s Nik Nazmi. From this, I had a hunch that the youth, despite the ‘noise’ they seem to be making about politics, are not really that aware.

In preparation for this talk, I experimented with the hunch. A telephone/face-on-face survey of 10 questions (5 behavioural/5 knowledge-based, Question 7 and 9 being tricky on purpose) was conducted between 15 and 16 October 2012. This is to minimize any opportunity to look up the answers and to capture the most candid ones. 120 respondents between the ages of 18 to 25 were surveyed and the answers supported my initial thought.

Here are the findings:

Question 1: Out of 1 hour of internet time, how  many % of it you spend on reading news about politics?

Summary: Total of 73% spend less than 20% of 1 hour of internet time on politics.

Question 2: You get your biggest chunk of information about politics from? (e.g internet, friends, parents, TV, newspaper, etc)

Summary: Source of information on politics: 54% - internet, 17% print media, 14% other people, 11% TV, 4% don't  know.

Question 3: Do you consider your interest in politics as 1) Very Interested,  2) Interested, 3)Oklah,  4) Not Interested  5) Don’t Care

Summary: Only 25% of the respondents are either interested or very interested in politics.  The majority of 53% rate their interest as only 'oklah'.

Question 4: In one word how would you describe our politicians?

Summary: 77% view politicians negatively.  The negative descriptions range from the mild 'complicated' up to 'unscrupulous' / 'crazy' / 'sneaky' , and most everything in between.

Question 5: Describe your trust level towards our politicians. 1) Excellent  2) Good  3) Average  4) Poor  5) Very Poor

Summary: Only 27% of them rate their trust level towards politicians a 'Good' or 'Excellent'.

Question 6:  How many seats are there in the Malaysian Parliament?

Summary: When asked of the number of parliamentary seats, 90% either got it wrong or don't know.

Question 7: Which ministry is Chua Soi Lek heading today? (Note: Trick question. Chua Soi Lek is not currently heading any ministry)

Summary: 92% has no clue that Chua Soi Lek no longer is a cabinet minister.

Question 8: What is the prerequisite to amend the constitution in the Malaysian Parliament? 51% votes, 63% or 75%?

Summary: 74% has no clue that a 2/3 majority of the parliament is required to amend the Federal Constitution.

Question 9:  How many federal and how many state seats does Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur has? (Note: Trick question. Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur does not hold any state seats)

Summary: 98% has no clue that the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur has no state seats (DUN) 

Question 10:  Do you know what Article 153 is about? Tell me a little about it.

Summary: 100% answered wrongly when asked what is Article 153 is about.  However, 8% of them did answer Malay rights but this is technically imprecise.

In conclusion.

The panellists were given a task to answer 4 questions with regards to the title. Based on the survey results, I provide conclusions as the following

1.    Based on all of the above consideration, do I believe that the age of Internet has increased political awareness among Malaysian youth? My conclusion : Not particularly.

2.    Do I think the Internet is being properly utilised to understand political and national issues? My conclusion : Not particularly.

3.    Why is that? My conclusion : Simple, there are just too many distractions out there and politicians are not seen as cool. If the youth likes football, they’d make an effort to watch the matches. If they fancy a particular celebrity, they’d be stalking the celebrity on twitter and be reading up about him or her in all available media. Our politicians lack the cool factor and as a consequence, the youth just don’t have that drive to fully use the Internet to catch up on current affairs, politics in particular.

4.    Ultimately, do I think the ‘Internet population’ will significantly affect the outcome of the thirteenth general election? My conclusion:  Not particularly. The parties are better off concentrating on their ground-level machinery, making sure their workers go all out to approach the voters, and also to curb internal sabotage to ensure UNITY IN PURPOSE.

I have another hunch..

If we ask the same questions to older Malaysians, the results would not be too far off too.

What do you think?

Coffee Talk With Dr Chandra Muzaffar On “Anak Malaysia…1 Malaysia: Ke Arah Mana?”

Yayasan 1Malaysia is organising a Coffee Talk with Dr Chandra Muzaffar on “Anak Malaysia…1 Malaysia: Ke Arah Mana?” which will be held as follows:

Date : 24th October 2012, Wednesday
Time : 8pm – 10.30pm
Venue : Urban Village, 25 Jalan Abdullah Bangsar, Off Jalan Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur

This coffee talk is aimed at engaging Malaysian to ascertain the challenges to national unity while emphasizing the needs to focus on the common ground of the future of this country.

For more information or clarification, please contact Ms Yuen Ling at Tel: 03-7781 4575