WATCH OUT DAP: SUPP says likely to win back Sibu with Najib's help

S the Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP) celebrated its 53rd anniversary last weekend, the party faces a rather grim prognosis going into the coming general election. Party president Datuk Seri Peter Chin Fah Kui could only manage to suggest that "all is not lost" for the party as it struggles to hold on to its mostly urban constituencies. Even Chin's own seat of Miri, where the anniversary celebrations took place, is no longer safe. He will, however, very likely not repeat the mistake of his immediate predecessor, Tan Sri Dr George Chan, also from Miri, who was defeated in the last state election after years of sterling work reshaping the city. Chin is expected not to contest in the general election. He put aside earlier announced plans to retire from politics to heed calls from party elders to be a transitional party president at a moment of deep internal crisis. He will likely devote himself to healing the party's wounds as full-time leader after the general election. Those internal party wounds are still deep. A serious rift opened up when he contested the party presidency against state minister Datuk Seri Wong Soon Koh at the end of last year. Wong led a faction of the party in a walkout at the party elections. Unfortunately for Chin, that runaway faction included all six of the party's remaining state assemblymen. The two factions are now barely coming together and then only because of a far more potent external enemy in the opposition DAP in the coming polls. Read more... Jarumemas: Mirror, mirror on the wall which party is the greatest of all? DAP, PKR, PAS?

Ex-IGP says crime on the rise, refutes official statistics

KUALA LUMPUR, July 13 — Former Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan has accused the authorities of hiding facts from the public over the country’s crime rate, claiming that public security has now reached a “worrying stage”. In an interview with The Malaysian Insider, Musa told the government that there was no need to mask crime figures, pointing out that if crime was not on the rise, top-ranking officials and ministers would not need to hire bodyguards. “The public needs to know the truth, there is no need to hide when it comes to crime. When I was the IGP, I always spoke about rising crime,” he pointed out in the interview yesterday. Musa, who has served in the Royal Malaysian Police for over four decades, was the country’s IGP for four years from 2006 before he was succeeded by Tan Sri Ismail Omar on September 13, 2010. Read more... Jarumemas: Crime may be reduced in certain places but in major towns it may has risen.