Foul!

As published in Malay Mail today Going Nuts By Graig Nunis   MERDEKA is just over a month away and Malaysia Day a further 16 days down the road. To most Malaysians Aug 31 is the bigger celebration and it was only since 2010 that Malaysia Day became a public holiday — even though this is when we truly became the nation we are today following the inclusion of Sabah and Sarawak. Shouldn’t we be celebrating this on a grander scale? So it is not hard to sympathise with the organisers of the Sarawak Freedom and Independent Walk on July 22 who are pressing for the state to make that date a public holiday to celebrate the day Sarawak was granted independence by the British colonial rulers in 1963. However, as usually is the case when it involves east Malaysians, many have jumped on the bandwagon and there were reports some wanted to misuse the event to talk about Sarawak seceding from Malaysia. And as usual, the police, led by IGP Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, hav...

As published in Malay Mail today. BEING FRANK By Frankie D'Cruz IT's annoying isn’t it when the authorities don’t tell you what’s going on in your city? There are ugly, self-defeating, barricades on key streets in the Golden Triangle ahead of a street car race early August — and we will all get lost in the city soon. Weep all you want, now that Kuala Lumpur has been transformed into a dreary, unfashionable and undesirable capital city. The spirit of city life has vanished since the set up for the KL Grand Prix began two weeks ago. No one is saying what sort of research went into holding the event in the heart of KL. What we know is City Hall chose not to hear views from the public, business community and public transport operators. Few knew about the grand prix until four days ago when people vented their frustration to Malay Mail over the disruption to traffic and inconvenience caused to pedestrians. Yesterday, City Hall urban transportation department deputy dir...