> RoS to determine PPP Presidency

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin is to meet the Registrar of Societies (RoS) tomorrow or on 2 June to find who the legitimate president of the People's Progressive Party (PPP) is.

He said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, just before flying off to South Korea today, had asked him to meet the ROS to find out whether Datuk M Kayveas or Senator Datuk T Murugiah was the president.

Najib is scheduled to open the PPP general assembly on 7 June and "if we do not have a decision (on who the PPP president is), we do not know whether he will attend the meeting," Muhyiddin told reporters after attending a religious ceramah (talk) organised by the Pagoh Umno Division, here.

Muhyiddin, who is Umno deputy president and Pagoh Member of Parliament, said Murugiah handed him a letter claiming he was the PPP president when the latter met him at the Royal Malaysian Air Force base in Subang, Selangor, where Najib flew off to South Korea to attend the Asean-South Korea Commemorative Summit.

The PPP leadership crisis erupted after Murugiah, who was sacked by the party's disciplinary board for allegedly tarnishing the good name of the party, claimed he had been elected the president at an extraordinary general meeting convened by a section of party members 24 May in Putrajaya.

However, when the PPP nominations for the post of president closed yesterday, Kayveas was said to have been returned unopposed as president for a fourth five-year term.

Asked whether the leadership crisis in the PPP, a component party of the Barisan Nasional (BN), tarnished the BN's image, Muhyiddin said crises in any component party should be resolved swiftly to maintain the coalition's image.

He said it was important for the component parties to avoid differences of opinion among them and resolve crises swiftly at a time when the BN was restoring its image.

"The BN must be seen as a strong and stable coalition," he said - Bernama.

> Aminah's threat to discredit PKR - a dud

The latest threat by independent candidate in the Penanti by-election Aminah Abdullah’s to "expose" an incident that allegedly discredited the PKR turned out to be a dud when she produced another secret voice recording - of a senior party leader scolding her at a meeting.

The 56-year-old former Penang PKR Wanita chief who quit the party in 2007 had called for a press conference today to "reveal" the incident that she had earlier hinted at involving the conduct of Penang PKR chief Datuk Zahrain Mohd Hashim at "a hotel in Nibong Tebal".

When queried by reporters, however, she admitted that the incident was not scandalous but had just damaged her integrity.

Zahrain had apparently scolded her in front of other PKR Wanita division chiefs and several party leaders, admonishing her for not performing her job.

"If Zahrain does not explain himself about the incident, he should resign from the party," she told reporters at her operations centre in Simpang Tiga Kubang Ulu.

Displaying a CD of the audio recording, she said, "The recording was made when we were at a party seminar in Nibong Tebal," she said, adding that the incident was one of the reasons she left the party in 2007.

Not contented with this latest "expose", Aminah said she would reveal yet another "big surprise", but declined to give details, saying she would reveal it when the time is right.

Aminah had on Monday (May 25) produced an audio recording she had secretly taken of a lunchtime conversation with two PKR members that she claimed bore proof she was offered inducement to abort her election bid.

The revelation had prompted an investigation by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and a report to be lodged with the Election Commission.

The recording showed one of the duo, Cheah Kah Peng and Peter Lim Eng Nam, suggesting that she may be compensated for her expenses for the by-election, which he husband Mohd Rofi Osman put as RM80,000, if she aborts.

The duo later said they were invited by Aminah for lunch at her house, and just had a jovial, casual conversation with them, not realising that they were being taped - theSun.

> Sri Lanka protest in Kuala Lumpur

Hear our own brethren on the issue.

> Police raid DAP HQ

The police today raided the DAP headquarters in Petaling Jaya in search of documents believed to be related to the arrest of 16 party activists in Ampang on Thursday night.

The raid, which took place at 6.25pm, was carried out by a team of 11 police officers. They left at 7.30pm.

The police had brought one of those arrested, Ulu Selangor councillor Ooi Leng Heng, 34, along with them in the raid.

Ooi, who is also DAP Youth's political education bureau director, was seen in handcuffs and dressed in the standard orange lock-up uniform.

In the one-hour raid, the police confiscated Ooi's computer monitor, keyboard, headphone, a number of CDs and a CPU (central processing unit).

According to witnesses, the cops did not show any search warrant.

An outraged Nga Kor Ming, who is DAP parliamentarian for Taiping, lambasted the raid.

"This is the first time in DAP's 42-year history that police have raided our HQ," he fumed.

Investigated under PPPA 

Sixteen people were arrested at the DAP Teratai service centre for holding a candlelight vigil.

Those arrested, including Teratai state assemblyperson Jenice Lee, have been held over the past two days at the Pandan Indah police lock-up to facilitate investigation.

It is learnt that they are being probed for illegal assembly as well as Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 (PPPA).

At the candlelight vigil, DAP had distributed a two-page leaflet titled ‘507 Detik Hitam dalam Sejarah Demokrasi Malaysia!’ (507 - A Black Moment in Malaysia’s History of Democracy).

Under the PPPA, the police could charge them for publishing an illegal document or for spreading false news.

At a press conference, DAP Puchong parliamentarian Gobind Singh slammed the police for not producing a warrant, although this is a requirement under Section 16 of the PPPA. 

“This is a clear cut case of invasion of privacy and trespass,” said Gobind, who is head of the party’s legal bureau. 

Also at the press conference, DAP central committee member Teresa Kok said that the raid and detention of the 16 was a “scare tactic” by the police to pre-empt any future candlelight vigils. 

“They are intentionally prolonging the detention of the people, putting additional charges (other than illegal assembly) just to discourage people from attending,” said Kok, who is Seputeh MP and Kinrara state assemblyperson. 

Meanwhile, DAP chairperson and Cheras MP Tan Kok Wai said that the candlelight vigil outside his office in Cheras would still proceed tonight at 9pm tonight - Malaysiakini.

> Egypt to begin controversial pig slaughter

Egypt is to begin a controversial slaughter of the nation's 250,000 pigs in earnest today, despite the WHO saying there was no evidence the animals were transmitting swine flu to humans.

Cairo governor Abdel Halim Wazir told the state news agency Mena that the government will begin slaughtering an estimated 60,000 pigs raised by rubbish collectors in a shanty town in Egypt's sprawling capital.

Egypt announced on Wednesday that it will slaughter the nation's entire pig population after an outbreak of swine flu in other countries, even though no cases have been detected in Egypt.

The move has been widely criticised, with the UN World Health Organisation saying there was no evidence that pigs were transmitting the virus to humans.

However, UN agencies are still trying to find out if the virus behind a human pandemic alert is circulating in pigs in Mexico, warning that ongoing swine infection could "worsen" the risk to human health.

As such, possible restrictions on the movement and trade of swine livestock have not been ruled out, the WHO and Food and Agriculture Organisation in a food safety report today.

Egyptian officials say the slaughter is a general health measure.

Wazir has said the slain pigs will be frozen and the offal burnt in furnaces at the slaughterhouses.

"We're at stage five, the matter is now human not animal," health ministry spokesman Abdelrahman Shahine told AFP on Thursday, after the WHO raised its alert level over the flu, now called influenza A(H1N1).

"The authorities took advantage of the situation to resolve the question of disorderly pig rearing in Egypt," he said.

Pigs eaten by Coptic Christian minority

The pigs mostly belong to and are eaten by members of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority and are reared by rubbish collectors in Cairo's shantytowns.

Wazir said on Friday that 70 pigs were confiscated from owners in the Batn el-Baqar slum of Cairo and slaughtered, and the sites disinfected and destroyed.

The government has said it would compensate pig owners, but a man who lost his herd told AFP he received nothing.

"They did not give us anything. Riot police came and government workers came and took the pigs," said Ayman Saed, a resident of Batn el-Baqar who owned 30 pigs.

"We went with them to the slaughterhouse, and they said take the carcasses. I left everything there because I didn't know what do with them," he said.

The rubbish collectors say the cull will affect their business and wipe out a crucial source of income. They use the pigs to dispose of organic waste and sell off some their herds once a year.

At least one clash was reported north of Cairo on Wednesday, with farmers throwing stones at veterinary officials who had come to take away their pigs.

Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza has defended the measure, inviting the FAO, which criticised the cull, to "come and see for itself the conditions at any pig farm in Egypt."

The agriculture ministry's head of infectious diseases Saber Abdel Aziz Galal said the government would eventually set up farms with imported pigs.

"Within two years the pigs will return, but we need first to build new farms," he said - Malaysiakini.