The countdown to Chinese New Year is now 29 days.

The mood for the celebrations to welcome to Year of the Rat is picking up. Shops start selling Chinese New Year decoration ornaments, lanterns, food and drink supplies, hampers, etc.

I’m currently looking forward for the Chinese New Year event in 1 Utama (New Wing) which is to begin on Friday 18 January. Like the last 3 years, will be taking photographs at the set-up located at Lower Ground Floor, Oval.

Shuhada Elis & Chan Mei Ling
New Straits Times

KUALA LUMPUR: Pahang’s Bukit Tinggi, especially its sleepy town, about an hour’s drive from here, is facing a landslide threat.
The hill has been sitting on a dormant major fault line for quite some time.

Now, the fault line — a fracture in the earth’s crust — has been reactivated due to pressure build-up from surrounding ground movements.

Tremors at Bukit Tinggi were felt intermittently since Nov 30 with the highest magnitude being 3.5 on the Richter scale.

The last tremor at 5.19pm on New Year’s eve was the ninth recorded by the Meteorological Department with a magnitude of 3.0 on the Richter scale.
Compressions had triggered the Bukit Tinggi fault line to release its strain in the form of tremors, said Universiti Malaya’s Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences (IOES) deputy director Dr Azhar Hussin.

He said the only worry would be an increased potential of landslides if the tremors occurred during the rainy season.

“Frequent tremors would cause instability to the slope — particularly in areas like Bukit Tinggi and Genting-Sempah near Genting Highlands.”

The geologist said it was important to consider the geological area before developing high-rise buildings to avoid disaster.

“Those who bought properties in these areas might not be aware of the consequences. Even though the tremors are small, it is the duty of the authorities to inform and educate the public.”

He added that authorities should not only think about the value of the land but make public safety a priority.

Another geologist, UM associate professor Mustaffa Kamal Shuib, said even the fault line on which Kuala Lumpur sits could be reactivated.

He said there was a fault line running below Kuala Lumpur, which is parallel to and of the same make-up to the one in Bukit Tinggi.

“If the Bukit Tinggi line is reactivated, Kuala Lumpur’s fault line can be reactivated too.”

However he is more optimistic about the outlook, saying that the city centre’s line was not as deep seated as the one in Bukit Tinggi and was made up of brittle fault rocks which carried less severe risks of seismic movements.

“It won’t be severe, even at Bukit Tinggi because Malaysia, on the whole, is on a plate, nowhere near the edge of a fault zone,” said Mustaffa. He was, however, worried about potential landslides.

The Meteorological Department also agreed that the public should not be worried.

“Readings below five on the Richter scale are considered small earthquakes. They can’t damage buildings and people may only feel a minor tremor,” said the department’s Geophysics and Tsunami Unit director Dr Mohd Rosaidi Che Abbas.

Andrew Ong
Malaysiakini

A group of disgruntled young Malaysians today symbolically handed a ‘gift’ to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to express their disappointment with his administration.

The gift was in form of a yellow pillow and a bolster - both decorated with the Malaysian flag and the Petronas Twin Towers.

Abdullah however was not on hand to receive the items, which the group left at the doorsteps of the premier’s office in Putrajaya this morning.

Spokesperson for the group Badrul Hisham Shaharin said he and his eight other friends had come to the conclusion that the government’s ineffectiveness was due Abdullah’s purported “sleepiness”.

He added that Abdullah had previously been allegedly caught nodding off at various official functions both locally and abroad.

“So we wanted to send a ‘memorandum’ about what the youth wants. This memorandum is in form of a pillow… He can use the pillow to continue sleeping or wake up and realise that his administration is not efficient,” Badrul told reporters.

Badrul said the group consisted of artists, poets, bloggers, writters and activists but denied that the ‘pillow act’ was politically motivated.

A. LETCHUMANAN
The Star

MALACCA: The 60 ducks that were released into Sungai Melaka by the Malacca City Council recently, to beautify the river and attract tourists, have gone missing.

Mayor Datuk Zaini Md Nor, who personally released the ducks, lamented that some irresponsible people had carted away the ducks from the river.

“I am very sad that the ducks are missing,” he said when contacted.

Zaini had urged the people who had seen the ducks being caught or taken away to report to the council so that appropriate action could be taken against them.

He said a local had come forward to donate 100 ducks which would be released into Sungai Melaka soon.

“We will be more vigilant and have regular patrolling to ensure the ducks are not carted away this time,” he said.

Zaini said tourists and visitors would have an opportunity to feed the ducks and also appreciate the view at the various resting areas along the river.

He said those taking the river cruise would also have the opportunity to feed the ducks in the river.

“There are plans to release more ducks into Sungai Melaka in future to make it livelier,” he said.

Sungai Melaka had been categorised one of the most polluted rivers in the country and had undergone four phases of beautification involving RM332.7mil. The river is yet to undergo another four phases of beautification.

A report by Wong Sai Wan in The Star today has a more complete analysis of the fate of whoever held the post of the Health Minister. As I posted in The Health Minister post yesterday, I’ve pin-pointed three former Health Ministers before Datuk Seri Dr. Chua Soi Lek who had their political career came to an abrupt end. The report in The Star analyzed several other Health Ministers since Independence that had their career cut short, such as Tun Omar Ong Yoke Lin, Dr. Lim Swee Aun, Dr. Ng Kam Poh and so on.

Read on…

Majority of those in portfolio fell out of favour

By WONG SAI WAN

KUALA LUMPUR: The next Health Minister be warned – the post seems cursed as 80% of its past holders have fallen into political oblivion soon after taking over the portfolio.

It would seem that except for the first two Health Ministers, the other 14, upon being “tainted” by the post either died, became embroiled in some scandal or fell out of political favour.

The late Tun Leong Yew Koh (the pre-independence Health minister) went on to become the first Governor of Malacca upon independence while his successor Tun V. T. Sambanthan went on to be a prominent leader until he stepped aside as MIC president in 1972.

Their successors did not fare as well.

The third person to hold the post was Tun Omar Ong Yoke Lin who held the post for a year before being appointed Minister without Portfolio. In 1963, he was made Ambassador to the United Nations. His political career never survived that posting.

Ong’s successor, Abdul Aziz Ishak, quit the post in the same year that he was appointed because he fell out with Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. Aziz was then detained under the Internal Security Act and became the first sitting minister to be held under the Act.

The country’s fifth minister in charge of the health portfolio was Dr Lim Swee Aun who held the post for a year. After the 1964 general elections, he was appointed Commerce Minister – a more senior position but in the 1969 election he lost his MP seat. He then retired from active politics.

His successor in the Health post was Tan Sri Bahaman Samsudin, a civil servant-turned-politician. Although he was briefly appointed as Justice Minister in 1968, he was not fielded as a candidate in 1969.

In 1968, Dr Ng Kam Poh was appointed briefly as the Health Minister and then as Welfare Services Minister in 1969. He lost his MP seat in 1969 and also quit politics.

The seventh was the then Umno deputy president Tun Sardon Jubir who held the post until 1972. He retired from politics in 1974 and was made Ambassador to the UN – a post then normally associated with retired politicians.

The next eight Health Ministers were all from the MCA and most of them suffered from political fallout following in-fighting in the party.

Tan Sri Lee Siok Yew, a one-time MCA deputy president, held the post for five years before he was removed after a falling out with party boss Tan Sri Lee San Choon.

He was replaced by Tan Sri Chong Hon Nyan, who was one of the longest-serving party secretaries-general from 1979 till 1985, and held the health portfolio from 1978 until 1982. But by 1985, he resigned as Transport Minister after he sided with Datuk Dr Neo Yee Pan in the party squabble against Tan Koon Swan.

During the Koon Swan-Yee Pan strife of the early 1980s, lawyer Datuk Chin Hon Ngian was the Health Minister. Chin, who supported the Yee Pan faction, was dropped and replaced by Datuk Mak Hon Kam in a Cabinet reshuffle.

Mak, another leader of the Yee Pan faction, held the post until 1987 when he was dropped as both MP and Minister.

The 13th Health Minister was Tan Sri Chan Siang Sun who held the post from 1987 to 1989 when he died from a heart attack while playing badminton.

Chan was succeeded by Datuk Ng Cheng Kiat who was a staunch Koon Swan supporter during the party crisis. However, he held the post for only a year and was not fielded as a candidate in the general elections after he and several others backed the then party deputy president Tan Sri Lee Kim Sai to challenge then party boss Tun Dr Ling Liong Sik for the top post.

Kim Sai became the next Health Minister until 1995 when he retired from politics after a falling out with Dr Ling.

Johor’s Datuk Chua Jui Meng was then appointed as the 15th Health Minister and held the post for almost a decade. In 2004, he was dropped as the Health Minister after he sided with Tan Sri Lim Ah Lek against Dr Ling. He challenged the present party president Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting for the top post but was defeated.

Fellow Johorean, Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek was appointed to the Health post to succeed Jui Meng. Yesterday, Soi Lek quit after admitting he was the man in a widely-circulated sex DVD.

If indeed there is such a curse or jinx then Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi may find it difficult to find anyone volunteering for the post.