Politicians are politicians, wherever they are

Bad, or naughty, politicians to be specific.

Mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, recently resigned from his post, having pleaded guilty to felony charges last Thursday in a sex scandal.

Why Kwame? Well, I happened to witness his campaign for his first term in 2001. He was the young candidate (31 years old at that time), campaigning against the old opponent (Gill Hill was 70 at that time). He was hip-hop, energetic, and had this 'young' aura - at least in his TV campaign ads - if I remember correctly.

He was exciting.

However, apparently his two terms in the office was full of controversies. Similar to some politicians in this part of the world, but handled differently.

While he must have done some good things for Detroit, but the information in Wikipedia lists mostly his controversies.

A wild party involving strippers at the official residence of mayor.

The murder of one of those exotic dancers.

Personal use of Detroit Police's Harley-Davidson.

Expensive lease of a luxury SUV (by the city) used for his family.

Use of a Civic Fund (created to improve the city of Detroit) for week-long California vacation with his wife, three sons, and babysitter.

And the latest, a sex scandal with his chief of staff, having previously denied the wrongdoing under oath.

The chief of staff, by the way, once was pulled over for speeding. She reacted by saying "Do you know who the f*** I am?" to the traffic officers. She called the Police Chief and the cops were called off.

These sound kind of familiar, doesn't it?

So I'd say, bad politicians are the same everywhere.

The difference is the way they are handled. Of course, some would get away. But in this region, most will get away. Worse, some are well-guarded and keep their positions for long.

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Banned!!

Marina Mahathir found more nonsense in Malaysia. Unspun added more meats on it.

The victim is now the devil-horn hair clip. (yes, hair clips for children)

This adds to the list of banned 'products' in Malaysia, which, Unspun summarized, include Inul (though she finally got to perform at the KBRI), Avril Lavigne, the sight of women's armpit on TV (what?), and more.

Well, it's not all that bad, actually. If it's an art, it seems people here are more receptive.

Like the recent Sloggi Art for Humanity in Sunway Lagoon. (photos from Bun Virus' flickr)


A bit of hypocrisy, eh? Or simply an irony? But life will be boring otherwise...

More pictures here.

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Living dangerously

No, not the movie/novel (The Year of) Living Dangerously.

It's blogging.
Particularly, blogging against the government.

In Malaysia, you can be jailed and charged. Your home may be raided, and your website can be blocked. Defamation is the keyword.

In Russia, you're dead.

So Malaysians can consider themselves lucky.

P.S. Malaysia Today is now blocked, and has moved to another address.

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Roadblocks - preventing crimes or causing traffic jam?

Today's massive traffic jam / flood was pretty bad and pissed off many of my colleagues. It reminded me how annoyed I was with traffic jam resulted from roadblocks.

"Roadblocks part of regular crime prevention" - title of the article below.

clipped from thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: Police say the roadblocks around Kuala Lumpur and here on Saturday were part of the normal crime prevention measures.

Several readers had called The Star office in Petaling Jaya on Saturday expressing concern that several roadblocks had been set up around Kuala Lumpur and here, causing traffic jams. Some even questioned whether the roadblocks were in any way related to Sunday's rally organised by the Coalition Against Inflation (Protes) at Stadium Kelana Jaya here.

I fully agree with the idea of having sensible roadblocks. Like the ones for speeding (which I got caught), the ones for drunk-driving (I assume so if it's done past midnight), or the ones for some unknown reasons - most likely to catch criminals or something.

But I think it's a little too many roadblocks in Malaysia. I doubt the effectiveness to prevent crime (how would it prevent crime from happening?), but for sure they cause traffic jam. Even the Deputy Tourism Minister complained about having it (done just outside KLIA).

On this particular roadblock in KLIA, I experienced it once or twice. Why did it have to be just outside the airport? What were they looking for?

Perhaps positively responding to the Minister appeal, the roadblock was once done on the highway between the airport and KL, causing at least 30-minute jam on the highway. Yeah, I was there as well... *sigh*

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Drama nation

I don't follow politics - well, except the big events like elections. I'm a skeptic when it comes to politicians (or politician wannabes).

I also don't read newspaper regularly. We don't subscribe to any local paper, but every other week we always get the free Star everyday - because our maid is nice enough to pick up the free paper every time she takes Anya out to wait for her carpool.

Last week Anya was carpooling so we get to read local newspaper everyday. That's when I've really had enough about drama with Malaysian political leaders.

The news are full with crappy drama from the political leaders. Either it's about sodomy, or unresolved murder of a Mongolian model, or racist comment, or missing private investigator (after providing a report, of course), or other things that are shameful enough to occupy first page news for days.

Or maybe they should be on the first page. Because these news involve the number one and the number two, as well as the former number one and the former number two...

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25 years too old

The Egyptians have a law that limits the age gap between spouses to 25 years.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

The Egyptian authorities have banned a 92-year-old man from marrying a 17-year-old girl, the Egyptian al-Akhbar newspaper has reported.

The ministry of justice invoked a law which says the age gap between spouses should not exceed 25 years.

That means, 17-year old girl can only be married by a man no older than 42 years.

That also means, if Rika Tolentino Kato is an Egyptian, Yusril would've not been allowed to marry her.

The same goes to Woody Allen, Billy Joel, and Rod Stewart.

While Michael Douglas - Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Harrison Ford - Calista Flockhart would be on the border.

However, as in "if there's will, there's a way", there's a catch in this law.

In special cases, the justice ministry does allow foreign men to marry Egyptian women more than 25 years their junior if they deposit a very large sum of money in the name of their wife at the Egyptian National Bank. (Didn't the Indonesian government try to implement something like this before?)

To be fair to the old man, though - if he is 92, he's only allowed to marry a 67-year old. Maybe we should let him make use the money he's earned all his life, lah...

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Fitna from our perspective

To go with the flow, I think it doesn't hurt to write some shallow observations about Fitna - the movie. I am not interested in watching this BS, nor do I have empathy for any side. People do BS everyday.

I do, however, observe that the Indonesian government is not that much smarter than the Malaysian government on internet. Or perhaps that the Malaysian government is not as dumb as some bloggers thought, especially after this Indonesian Minister of Information's blunder.

Fitna does have a direct impact to our life - at least that's how Tari and I would like to think so.

Ben's best friend, Sam, has been missing several play-dates. His mother has been, umm, kind of avoiding us.

Based on this limited experience, we concluded that we have been impacted by Fitna. Sam's mom feels unease with us because of that movie, she rather puts a distance. She probably is afraid that we will revenge, somehow, through his boy.

We failed, though, to think what we had done that may cause them avoid us (well, if they do at all - good question to answer). Perhaps it's us, not them.

But hey, there's this guy Wilders to blame on. Everyone else does, so why don't we?

We're just another human being, after all.

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I question the effectiveness of busway

Having had the chance to observe Jakarta's famous busway, as well as discussed it with some friends, I doubt that busway is, and will be, effective.

There are several premises and assumptions in this thinking (or perhaps others have done similar approach as well). One is that the goal of having a busway system is to reduce traffic congestion on the streets where the system is implemented.

Here traffic congestion is defined as the number of cars per unit length of street with busway. If this number gets smaller with busway implemented, then it's effective. And vice versa.

There's no hidden agenda, politically or economically, in the opinion below, which concludes that installing busway lanes, indeed, increases traffic congestion.

The framework of determining the effectiveness is very much simplified, that is by looking at whether replacing a vehicle lane with a busway lane will actually reduce the overall traffic (on the other vehicle lanes).

Without considering the cost, I'm looking at the balance of demand (number of people to ride busway) and supply capacity (number of people that the busway system can transport) - on a unit of length.

Let's say a vehicle, running at a decent speed on a traffic lane, will consume an average space of 12.5 meters (4.5 meters length + 8 meters distance between front-end and back-end of two cars). That makes 80 vehicles per lane per kilometer.

If we assume 1.25 passengers per vehicle (that is 5 people for every 4 cars), that'll make 100 people transported per lane per kilometer.

The question is whether taking off one lane for busway will positively affect (reduce congestion on) other lanes. In other words, whether at least these 100 people in 80 cars will use busway.

Another assumption here is that there's no costs of switching (whether financially or based on comfort). These passengers will switch to busway (if available) once they feel there are more than 80 cars per lane per kilometer, and so on to keep the system in balance.

To complete the demand side of this equation, it is also assumed that in each bus available, 25% of the passengers are actually coming from those who do not drive. These are the people who has the buying power to switch from other means of mass transportation to busway. These people are assumed to be more experienced in using mass transportation, thus will always get in to the busway ahead of the people who are used to drive or use vehicles. In other words, these people are in higher priority.

Let's also say the average speed of a busway is 30 km/h, of which each bus will take 2 minutes to travel for 1 km. If we assume the time between two buses is 1 minute, there will be two buses at any given time in a kilometer of busway lane.

Another important parameter is maximum capacity of a bus. A friend who's a regular busway rider informed me that a normal capacity is 40 passengers, and 60 passengers in an extremely full situation ("kalau dipaksain"). Let's assume an average of 50 passengers per bus.

This will give us a capacity to transport 100 passengers (50 passengers times 2 buses) every one kilometer per one busway lane.

Since 25% of these 100 passengers, or 25 people, come from other mass transportation, only 75 people truly move from driving a car to riding a busway. These 75 people equal to 60 cars (with 1.25 people per car).

A little summary from the above rough estimate:
- number of cars "displaced" when busway lane is installed: 80 cars/km/lane
- number of "cars" that will switch to riding a bus: 60 cars/km/lane

This means, once a busway lane is installed, the other lanes will be more congested by 20 cars for every kilometer. The more lanes available, the less added congestion will occur. But it will always be more congested. E.g. if there is only one other lane, it will be more congested by 20 cars for every kilometer. If there are 20 other lanes, each lane will be more congested by 1 car for every kilometer.

Therefore, busway is not effective in reducing traffic congestion.

Imagine on Jalan Sudirman, which is about 4km long, the two express lanes (jalur cepat) will have an additional of at least 160 cars - displaced from the new installed busway lane.

With this same logic (and only with this logic), several ways to decrease traffic congestion with busway are:
- Increase the capacity of busway - either by using bigger buses (more than 50 passengers per bus) or by having more frequently buses (less than one minute between buses).
- Prioritize passengers who "give up" driving. (How?)
- Add another vehicle lane for every busway lane installed. (Then we may not need busway.)
- Create busway lanes (or other mass rapid transportations) that do not utilize regular vehicle lanes. Subway? LRT? Hmm...

I'm sure there are lots of loopholes in this exercise, mostly through the simplified assumptions (I may need to do some sensitivity analysis?). But the conclusion probably won't be too far...

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Nasty brother neighbor

A quick update/addendum to my last post.

Yes, it's the latest two incidents in Malaysia - the arrest/detention of an Indonesian diplomat's wife and the forceful breaking into an Indonesian student's apartment.

Can you imagine - a bunch of people breaking into your home, to check whether you have valid documents?

It is said that RELA volunteers are allowed to make arrests and enter or search premises without a search or arrest warrant. It's a bit of a violation to human rights, isn't it? Perhaps they think human rights don't apply to (suspected) illegal immigrants...

I do agree with Unspun that it is the government, and not necessarily the people, who is doing this. In fact, a (Malaysian) friend was bitching about RELA, and we really had fun talking about it. I think RELA would be more of a use if their members take care of the Mat Rempit and illegal double-parking.

Yes, someone needs to educate people that double-parking is rude, lah!

Anyway, happy Eid / Ied / Lebaran / Hari Raya. I'm off to Jakarta tomorrow.

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Bisa diatur

"Can be arranged" or "can be worked out" - more or less.

My neighbor was approached by a high-ranked Indonesian government official. A simple version of it, they wanted to hire him. So there they went, talking about, perhaps most importantly, compensation - salary and benefits. To make it short, this officer can't match the salary, but the total amount "bisa diatur" through other means.

So here's the thing, again. (Relatively) low formal salary but big take home pay. Probably something like uang rapat (meeting allowance - should meetings be part of the normal job?). Or perhaps "projects", whatever it means.

For my neighbor, he sees it as a risk. Good for him. There's no written contract. What if this official moves? What if he simply lies?

For many others, this might be an opportunity. An opportunity to maximize whatever it is that can be arranged. Might lead to corruptions, unprofessional decision-makings, and other bad practices.

And that's one of many reasons why Indonesia is what it is now.

On uang rapat, someone once shared his frustration. He works as a consultant to a UN-funded initiative to develop infrastructure outside Jakarta. Often, the government officials refused to attend the meetings unless uang rapat was provided. Holy cow! This was for their own development!

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Another blunder - more to come?

After 'not-so-well-thought-out' comment from Malaysian Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan about bloggers, another official made another 'blog-unfriendly' comment.

If officials in a country that's relatively well-developed in the IT infrastructure like Malaysia still make this kind of comments, what about officials from other countries?

I hope the Indonesian officials learned from their neighbor's blunders. Learned not to talk trash and also learned about what is up in the 21st century.

But the indication is not that good.

Here's an email I got a few days back, claimed to be based on real interview with DPRD (House of Representatives) of East Kalimantan.

===========

LAPORAN PANDANGAN MATA DARI DPRD

Pertanyaan REPORTER: Bapak sebagai anggota DPRD, apa sudah punya e-mail?
Jawaban Anggota DPRD: Apa itu e-mail? Saya belum punya e-mail
karena masih kurang paham teknologi macam itu. Keinginan punya ada,
cuma untuk mengoperasikannya saja saya mesti tanya sana sini. Di
lingkungan Dewan ini sebenarnya sudah ada, tapi sampai sekarang tidak
dioperasikan karena tidak ada yang menggunakan.

Pertanyaan REPORTER: Bapak sebagai anggota DPRD, apa sudah punya e-mail?
Jawaban Anggota DPRD: Sekarang ini belum punya, sebab saya tidak
ingin punya nafsu besar untuk memilikinya namun tidak ada waktu untuk
melihatnya.

Pertanyaan REPORTER: Bapak sebagai anggota DPRD, apa sudah punya e-mail?
Jawaban Anggota DPRD: Saya masih pikir-pikir, karena tidak bisa
dibawa pulang, jadi kurang efektif bagi saya yang terus kerja keras, baik
di gedung Dewan maupun di rumah

Pertanyaan REPORTER: Bapak sebagai anggota DPRD, apa sudah punya e-mail?
Jawaban Anggota DPRD: Sudah, saya waktu itu sudah pernah punya.
Tetapi karena kurang efektif, sekarang sudah saya jual...

Pertanyaan REPORTER: Bapak sebagai anggota DPRD, apa sudah punya e-mail?
Jawaban Anggota DPRD: "Secara pribadi saya belum memilikinya.
Bukannya saya tidak mampu untuk membelinya, namun saya masih cinta
produk dalam negeri. Buat apa kita membanggakan produk luar, kalau
hanya untuk gagah-gahan. Lihat saja nih HP (handphone) saya, masih
model lama kan?"

Jangan dikira ini reportase fiktif lho! Benar-benar merupakan jawaban
anggota-anggota DPRD, ketika reporter kami melakukan semacam
survey di suatu DPRD-Kota di Kalimantan Timur.
Nama kotanya dan nama-nama masing-masing anggota DPRD yang
menjawab sebagai di atas, ada pada Redaksi suatu surat khabar...

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How can we engage more people in the democratic process?

Barack Obama, a candidate from the Democratic Party for the next U.S. president, is trying something that perhaps no other presidents or candidates have tried. He posted a question in Yahoo!Answer: how can we engage more people in the democratic process?

I'm not exactly clear what he meant by democratic process - whether it is the election only, or the whole democratic process, whatever the process is.

Some answers are quite interesting:

The first thing I would suggest is to reestablish the people's trust in government. Many people have lost trust in the system and this leads to apathy. After all, who wants to participate in a process that is viewed as flawed or biased? I, myself, have become disillusioned with our democratic process (as have many others I know). Many people just no longer believe that the government has their best interest in mind.
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This question assumes that participation in democratic process if a matter of *choice* when in fact its a matter of *ability*. The first step should be to bring all people to equal *ability* to participate in the democratic process. With massive inequalities in education, standard of living, and access to resources - we are clearly not there yet. On one hand we have those who don't even know whether they will get to eat tonight - worrying about voting in the mid-term elections is hardly on the top of their mind. On the other hand we have those who have paid millions of dollars to politician's election campaigns to make sure that their needs are taken care of once the politician gets elected. Can this really be referred to as "the democratic process"?
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It would help if politicians could be trusted. And the best way to gains ones trust is an act of generosity on their behalf. I think proposing legislation to remove corporate and private donations, essentially cleaning up the system, would prove to the voters you are genuine and can be trusted.
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By ending the smear campaigns. Many people have become apathetic to politics because they are fed up with the negativity and mud slinging. We want to hear what the candidates CAN and WILL do, not a list of every crime against the other.
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Send corrupt politicians to real prisons to serve real time. Stop treating us like children. Stop lying.
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The majority of the people I talk to tell me "it doesn't matter what I say or how I vote, Congress does what the people who donate the money to their campaigns tell them to do". I believe most politicians in Washington D.C. probably are bought and paid for and unless their constituency makes enough noise to change their vote they vote with big donor interest in mind. Unless we have Federally funded campaigns and some way to reign-in lobbyist pocket books and influence we will never get enough people engaged in the democratic process to make it really a "Government by the people".

Why do politicians want to engage more people in the democratic process? At the same time, why do people want to get engaged in the democratic process? I guess, whatever the answers are, politicians should not engage people in the process just for the sake of making the process looks democratic.

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Jakarta flood - the aftermath

Many people here in Malaysia asked about the Jakarta flood. Not much I could tell about it, other than what I saw on the TV and read on the internet. I think pictures from Javajive and Marek Bialoglowy capture most of it.

One of my close relatives' home was badly hit by the flood. The family stayed at my parents' for a couple of nights, and the last two weekends my family has been going there to help clean the house. Almost everything is gone or no more usable. Sofa, mattress, TV, refrigerator, clothes, documents... We're now trying to get their life started and going again.

Letter from a Sun's reader questions the RM3.6 billion fund to help mitigate flood in Johor. That's about USD 1 billion (Malaysia's 2005 GDP was $290 billion.) The letter nicely put it that the flood could've been prevented if developments around Johor had been properly assessed.

"... The root cause is no doubt due to corrupt practices. The government is trying to fool people by putting the blame on global warming."

Quite a similar situation to Jakarta. What about the fund for tsunami , earthquake, and others?

Will the government ever learn?

Because anything that can go wrong, will -- at the worst possible moment.

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Bird flu virus for sale: unethical opportunism or state of survival?

Indonesian government's decision to negotiate the bird flu virus with an American company has sparked some debates. Many, it seems, argue that this is just another vehicle for corruption.

My buddy Sheque wrote "Kisah Anta dan Prota", about antagonistic and protagonistic (?) characters in Indonesia's sinetron (soap opera) and in real life.

There are new cases of bird flu in Hong Kong and Korea. Not human cases, fortunately.

What if, a big if, one of the bird flu-affected countries sell the virus and make a lot of money out of it, while Indonesian government decides not to? What if, a bigger if, the Indonesian government, indeed, plans to use the "profit" for the welfare of its citizens?

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought ... it figures
-- Alanis Morissette

Ironic? Dreaming?

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