Malaysia’s constitutional monarch and paramount leader known
The UMNO-dominated government continues to promote policies buy feather hair extensions that favor ethnic Malays over minority Chinese and Indians – though it has introduced a new economic transformation program. Counter-rallies by UMNO and supporters of the racist Perkasa group were being organized against the planned Bersih event. Despite the crackdown on Bersih, analysts believe its gathering will far outnumber the counter-rallies. The opposition PAS party president had earlier asked its million members to turn up for the Bersih event.
King Mizan Zainal Abidin, Malaysia’s constitutional monarch and paramount leader known locally as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, intervened in the brewing conflict on Sunday, saying problems should be resolved through talks. King Mizan warned that street demonstrations could bring more negative than positive effects, even when the original intentions of the rally may have been noble.
Unlike the government and its controlled mainstream media, he pointedly did not use the term “illegal” when referring to the Bersih gathering. Najib upped the pressure on Bersih on Monday by offering the organizers the use of a stadium to keep their rally off the streets.
After an audience with King Mizan on Tuesday, Bersih’s committee said they would accept the government’s offer. During their audience with the king, Bersih put forward a statement calling for a royal commission of inquiry into the electoral wholesale peacock feathers system, the release of all those detained without trial or otherwise arrested, and for no further official obstructions to its planned event.
The royal intervention, rare in Malaysia’s political context, plays to Bersih’s advantage. The coalition was able to put forward their concerns about the electoral system to the Agong, their campaign for far-reaching reforms received both local and global attention and their grace under pressure approach won them new admirers at the Malaysian grass roots, judging by social media postings.
More than 135,000 Somalis so far have fled the unending violence in their country in a fast-escalating crisis that is being compounded by one of the worst droughts to hit East Africa in decades, Fleming said.
Her agency estimates a quarter of Somalia’s 7.5 million population is now uprooted in their own country or living as a refugee abroad. In Dadaab camp in Kenya, for example, 1,400 refugees a day are pouring in.
Some 9 million people need humanitarian assistance in the drought-hit countries of the Horn of Africa, which is experiencing one of the worst droughts since the early 1950s, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian aid coordination office (UNOCHA).
The UNOCHA chief coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, made an appeal for help at an event in New York on June 29.
“Resources are woefully inadequate. We have an appeal that is at the moment only 40 percent met. Some of the key sectors that are needed to protect and save the lives of people in Somalia are not being addressed at all. So we find ourselves as the humanitarian community in a position that we want and are able to do more but just don’t have the resources with which to do it,” said Bowden.
One of the key difficulties in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Somali, says the UNOCHA, is its location. The crisis is centered in southern Somalia – territory currently controlled by the al Qaeda-linked Islamic militant group al-Shabaab.
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