(VERSI BAHASA MALAYSIA DI AKHIR ARTIKEL INI)

The
price of crude oil has increased by 400 percent in the last three
years. It follows that the price of products must increase, sooner or
later. In other countries petrol prices had already increased. In the
United Kingdom one litre of petrol sells for more than one pound
sterling or RM7. In the United States it is about RM5.

That the
price in neighbouring countries has gone up is shown by the rush to
fill up by Thai and to a lesser extent Singapore vehicles.

The
Government has now announced an increase in petrol price by 78 sen to
RM2.70 per litre, an increase of more than 40 per cent.

2. But clearly the Royal Commission on the Lingam tapes has allowed itself the liberty of stretching legal principles in order possibly to achieve a certain objective.

3. One sentence in the report is very telling and I quote, “In the process, Dr Mahathir Mohamad was also entangled. That possibility was ominous when
examined against the factual circumstances surrounding the rejection of
Malek Ahmad as Chief Judge of Malaya. Their ultimate aim or purpose could not be ascertained with exactitude given
the limitation under the (Commission) terms of reference. It could be
related to the fixing of cases as submitted by counsel for the Bar and
others. Certainly it is reasonable to suggest that it could not be anything but self-serving.”

It
is strange that whenever people like Param Cumaraswamy accuse others of
being racist they end up by exposing the racist in them. For them you
are racist only if you talk about Malays and their need to catch up
with other races. If you talk of the imagined plight of other races in
Malaysia, and make ridiculous statements that the Tamil Indians in
Malaysia are facing “ethnic cleansing” when you know that no such thing
is happening, it is not racist.

It is only in Malaysia that
people of immigrant origins, so identified by their insistence on being
linked race-wise with their countries of origin, are actually accepted
as citizens.

The Japanese had been
guilty of perpetrating brutalities during their Manchurian Incident and
war against China and also during the Pacific War.

On the other
hand they were the only people in the world to experience the first
ever nuclear war, of having their citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
reduced to ashes by atomic bombs, with the loss of 200,000 lives and
thousands more struck down by radiation sickness later.

Sebenarnya
sejak saya melantik Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi sebagai Perdana
Menteri dan dianya mengisi jawatan itu, UMNO tidak pernah layan saya
sebagai ahli UMNO, jauh sekali sebagai bekas Presiden UMNO.

Dari
awal lagi Menteri-Menteri UMNO, pemimpin-pemimpin UMNO dilarang
daripada berjumpa dengan saya atau menghadiri apa-apa majlis di mana
saya mungkin berucap.

Apabila musuh menyokong ketua pasukan lawannya, kita boleh ramal ada sesuatu yang tidak kena berkenaan dengan ketua tersebut.Inilah
yang kita sedang lihat berkenaan dengan Presiden UMNO sekarang. Secara
langsung dan tidak langsung kita lihat ketua-ketua parti lawan
menyokong pengekalan Dato Seri Abdullah Badawi sebagai ketua atau
Presiden UMNO dan Perdana Menteri.

Demikian Karpal Singh,
musuh ketat UMNO menasihatkan saya supaya bersara dan tidak
campurtangan dalam urusan kepimpinan Dato Seri Abdullah Badawi.