I am the most winnable candidate in Malaysian election

PETALING JAYA: Sacked DAP leader Jenice Lee who is defending her Teratai state seat as an Independent claimed that she is the most “winnable” candidate in the contest.

Despite going up against four others as well as one DAP comrade, she claimed that the support from those who showed up to cheer her on during Nomination Day was a lot more than the DAP candidate.

“Show me which DAP branch here does not support me. All of them proposed my name for candidacy to the party. This only shows that the leadership refuses to listen to the grassroots,” she said in an emotionally-charged interview on Switchup.tv's GE13: The Showdown with journalist Regina Lee.

She said that she was not sorry about contesting as an Independent, citing a conspiracy and tales of sabotage by her own party.

Hitting out at “certain quarters” which included a top party leader, Lee claimed that her popularity triggered the “conspiracy” to sideline her.

She also claimed that her party members made all sorts of allegations against her.

Fighting spirit: Lee (right) answering a question during the interview at Menara Star in Petaling Jaya.
 

“They claimed that I abused funds and even resorted to personal attacks, claiming that I was having affairs with many men,” she said.

If the party was serious about investigating those allegations, she said they should have acted when the rumours surfaced in 2011.

She also claimed that she was sidelined due to “jealousy”.

“In the Selangor party elections in 2010, I received the highest number of votes and I'm one of the most popular faces in the party,” she said.

Despite her “popularity”, she lost in the race for the Selangor DAP Socialist Youth chief post to her former assistant last year.

Despite the claims of sabotage, she said she would attempt to rejoin the DAP if she wins the elections and even if she does not, she considers herself to be Pakatan Rakyat-friendly.

“My heart and soul is still with DAP and it is a good party, but there is just this small group of leaders practising cronyism.

“I think I have what it takes to fix this,” she said.

 - The Star/Asia News Network

China, U.S. trade barbs on human rights

Americans do not enjoy a genuinely equal right to vote

China slammed the human rights record of the United States in response to Washington's report on rights around the world, saying that U.S. military operations have infringed on rights abroad and that political donations at home have thwarted the country's democracy.

The report released Sunday in China — which defines human rights primarily in terms of improving living conditions for its 1.3 billion people- also cited gun violence in the U.S. among its examples of human rights violations, saying it was a serious threat to the lives and safety of America's citizens.

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012 said the U.S. government continues to strengthen the monitoring of its people and that political donations to election campaigns have undue influence on U.S. policy.

"American citizens do not enjoy a genuinely equal right to vote," the report said, citing a decreased turnout in the 2012 presidential election and a voting rate of 57.5 percent.

The report from the information office of the State Council, or China's Cabinet, which mostly cited media reports, said there was serious sex, racial and religious discrimination in the U.S. and that the country had seriously infringed on the human rights of other nations through its military operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

The U.S.'s annual global human rights report issued Friday by the State Department said China had imposed new registration requirements to prevent groups from emerging that might challenge government authority. It said Chinese government efforts to silence and intimidate political activists and public interest lawyers continued to increase, and that authorities use extralegal measures such as enforced disappearance to prevent the public voicing of independent opinions.

It also said there was discrimination against women, minorities and people with disabilities, and people trafficking, the use of forced labor, forced sterilization and widespread corruption.

China's government maintains strict controls over free speech, religion and political activity — restrictions that the U.S. considers human rights violations.- AP

Danger of the single story

SOMETIMES (most of the time) it’s probably wiser to resist commenting on Facebook posts.

In the last week or two there have been posts, written by two Facebook friends, about women who admit to regretting having children. You can imagine the responses, including to my comments saying that I can relate to such feelings. It’s just not the done thing to admit that parenthood may not be the smartest choice you’ve made.

We go on about how it’s OK to make mistakes, but heaven forbid that the mistakes should be baby-shaped. I may be wrong but it also feels like that it’s especially shocking if a woman says that she’s doesn’t like being or doesn’t want to be a mother.

Why, she might as well be admitting to infanticide.

Why am I bringing this up in a column about books for children and teens? It’s because I think books play a part in shaping the way society views girls and the women they grow up to be. For girls, it’s hard to avoid the traditional stereotypes of women as mothers and wives.

Look, even kick-ass Katniss in The Hunger Games Trilogy ends up with a partner and a child. And most of my favourite fictional female characters become wives, or at very least, fall in love by the final page of their stories.

Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with falling in love, marrying and having children, but I am saying that authors should portray alternative routes to a happy and fulfilled life. I’m trying hard to think of fictional heroines who skip happily into the sunset, alone and joyful, but right now I can only think of Tove Jansson’s Little My, Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, and two nannies: Mary Poppins, the titular character from P.L. Travers’ books, and Nurse Matilda from the trilogy by Christianna Brand.

All four are decidedly unconventional females, but My and Pippi are just children, while Mary and Matilda, although unmarried and childless, are still given the traditionally female role of care-giver.

Even my beloved harum scarum Jo March (from Little Women) becomes totally domesticated, marrying an older man (in Good Wives), running a school and playing mother to a whole brood of children (in Little Men and Jo’s Boys) and committing the unforgivable sin of keeping an ex-student and her niece, Bess, apart because she feels the working-class lad is not a suitable match for the prissy young lady.

There is Nan, a young girl in Little Men, who remains unmarried and goes to medical school, but characters like her are rare and don’t get much space on the page.

New fiction continues to be full of female characters who spend a great deal of time wondering when their prince will come. Codename Verity is a recent exception, but the girls in that book seemed more interested in one another than in men. It’s as if lesbians are the only women who might safely avoid being married with children.

In fact, as I’ve mentioned earlier, young women who don’t desire motherhood and marriage are often viewed as freaks. It’s unlikely the authors of young adult and children’s fiction think this way, but they are, by and large, products of a world still very much fixed in its ideas of gender and gender roles. Also, romance (and sex) sells.

The problem is, of course, what Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie calls the “danger of the single story”: if just one version of something – a people, a culture, a religion, etc – is portrayed then it soon becomes the only version that is believed and accepted and taken for granted as the truth. The “danger of the single story” is that it creates and reinforces stereotypes.

So, in terms of describing what girls want, it just supports the already firm belief that we are naturally maternal creatures who crave the love of a good man (or any man, really) and the cosy feeling of a child at our breast ... or simply being asked to the prom and being kissed by the time we’re 16.

I’ve just thought of a female character who resists the conventions of marriage and motherhood to go to university: Mattie Gorkey from Jennifer Donelly’s A Gathering Light is more interested in reading than dating. For Mattie, words are the key to a new life and to freedom. I wish there were more female characters like Mattie.

Also, more female characters who have more interesting things to think about than romance; female characters who grow up and don’t get married and are happy; female characters who choose to be childless and never regret it. These women exist, we know they do, they just need to appear more in books, that’s all.

Tots to Teens
By DAPHNE LEE
>Daphne Lee is a writer, editor, book reviewer and teacher. She runs a Facebook group, called The Places You Will Go, for lovers of all kinds of literature. Write to her at star2@thestar.com.my.

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