Malaysia Needs a Covid-19 National Blueprint
With infections and deaths both rising, confusion reigns
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By: B A Hamzah
As Asia Sentinel reported in April, fears were rising that Malaysia, once a regional leader in the fight against Covid-19, was beginning to slip behind other Southeast Asian nations, with confusion over vaccine procurement, low signup rates due to fear of the vaccines, and a failing campaign to test and trace potential victims.
Now those fe…
Indonesian Anti-graft Watchdogs to be Ousted Over President’s Objections
Suspect test used as pretext to get rid of KPK’s most effective sleuths
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Indonesian President Joko Widodo appears to have failed to save the jobs of 51 employees of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), an indication of the power of anti-sleaze forces in the country in seeking to emasculate the fabled watchdog agency.
The dismissed employees, who include some of the agency’s most celebrated investigators, were among 75 ordered removed after supposedly failing a controversial “National Insight Test” or TWK on the basis of a provision requiring the employees to pass the test in order to change their status to civil service. The test, administered by the National Civil Service Agency, included what critics said was a dubious oral interview process.
Malaysia’s shaky, deeply unpopular government is seeking to regain control of the narrative in the internet age via dramatic use of police power to harass and investigate activists, journalists, and social media users. Foreign news reports from investigative journalism websites Asia Sentinel and Sarawak Report have been blocked periodically by the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission.
Local media rarely issue critical reports out of fear of prosecution. Blogs, like Mariam Mokhtar’s Rebuilding Malaysia are suffering periodic distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, in which targeted websites are flooded with tens of thousands of responses, overloading the websites and crashing them.