An Islamic Da’wah Centre religious officer emphasised the need to be sincere in performing religious obligations such as daily prayers and fasting during a talk held in conjunction with the Israk Mikraj celebration for 1443 Hijrah recently.
The talk, carried out on Zoom, was organised with the objective of ensuring mosque congregants and Kampong Sungai Akar residents have better understanding of religious obligations, thus participate in events and programmes lined up by the Rashidah Sa’adatul Bolkiah Mosque (MRSB) takmir committee.
Minister of Primary Resources and Tourism Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Ali bin Apong and Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports Major General (Rtd) Dato Paduka Seri Haji Aminuddin Ihsan bin Pehin Orang Kaya Saiful Mulok Dato Seri Paduka Haji Abidin as co-patrons of
MRSB was among those in attendance.
Minister of Primary Resources and Tourism Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Ali bin Apong and Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports Major General (Rtd) Dato Paduka Seri Haji Aminuddin Ihsan bin Pehin Orang Kaya Saiful Mulok Dato Seri Paduka Haji Abidin at the talk. PHOTO: LYNA MOHAMMAD
THE STAR – The son and namesake of late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos has maintained a strong lead in the Philippines’ presidential election race, according to an opinion poll published yesterday.
The February 18-23 survey by independent pollster Pulse Asia showed Marcos cornering 60 per cent of support from 2,400 respondents, unchanged from January, with his closest rival Leni Robredo, the incumbent vice president, sliding from 16 per cent to 15 per cent.
The other main presidential contenders for the May 9 contest – Manila Mayor Francisco Domagoso, boxing great Manny Pacquiao and Senator Panfilo Lacson – received 10 per cent, eight per cent and two per cent, respectively.
Sara Duterte-Carpio, the daughter of incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte, remained the top choice for vice president, with a 29-point lead over her closest rival, Senate speaker Vicente Sotto.
Duterte-Carpio is the running mate of Marcos. In the Philippines, the vice president is elected separately to the president.
More than 67 million Filipinos, including 1.7 million overseas, have registered to vote in the elections, which historically have a high turnout.
Posts contested include the presidency, vice presidency, 12 senate seats, 300 lower house seats, and roughly 18,000 local positions. Official campaigning began on February 8.
Philippine presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. PHOTO: THE STAR
THE WASHINGTON POST – In NoViolet Bulawayo’s new novel, Glory, a nation riven by decades of autocratic rule finds itself dividing once again. Seeking “to forget the screaming in their heads”, the citizens of Jidada flock to the Internet. Safe inside this ‘Other Country’, they rage against their government in ways that would be unthinkable in the physical ‘Country Country’, where cancellation is truly final.
The gulf between the world as it is and the world as it could be is as wide in Bulawayo’s novel as it is outside it. The actions depicted in the book are so familiar, the events so recognisable, the pain so acute, it’s easy to see how Glory began as a work of non-fiction. That the characters are animals – furred, feathered, scaled and all – is almost incidental.
In a note to readers accompanying pre-publication copies of her book, Bulawayo reported that before writing Glory, she had been at work on a non-fiction account of the 2017 coup that ended Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s oppressive, 37-year reign. The 93-year-old strongman’s replacement was Emmerson Mnangagwa, the 75-year-old vice president whom Mugabe fired in one of his last acts as head of state. Mnangagwa, a former military leader with an allegedly brutal history and a vicious nickname, the Crocodile, won the presidency by a narrow margin in 2018. Mugabe died the following year.
Glory repeats this story almost as it happened. In Bulawayo’s telling, however, Jidada’s deposed autocrat is an elderly stallion long known as Father of the Nation but now derided as Old Horse.
Following a bloodless coup staged by the nation’s canine military, the Father’s vice president and fellow old horse, Tuvius Delight Shasha, returns from a brief exile with promises of “a new dawn, a new season, a New Dispensation”. Tuvy, as he’s called, vows to make Jidada “great again”. In no time, he acquires a cultlike following, a new nickname (the Savior) and a reputation for megalomania, misogyny and corruption that surpasses that of his predecessor.
An expected chain of absurdities follows. That is not a knock on Bulawayo’s storytelling gifts, which are prodigious. Her 2013 debut novel, We Need New Names, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for its indelible tale of a Zimbabwean girl who immigrates to the United States.
Among her new book’s many strengths is Bulawayo’s portrayal of the Jidadans’ experience as at once distinct and universal. A host of real-life tyrants can be seen in the novel’s four-legged bad guys.
This is not a humourless book. The animals are gleeful insulters (“You have a demon of idiocy!”) and inventive cussers. Tuvy and the Father are as foolish as they are evil. The latter’s reaction to finding himself in hell, to which he’s been led by a lipstick-wearing monkey, is wickedly funny. Bulawayo even delights in satirising a certain United States president, represented here as a tweeting primate prone to subliterate warnings of electoral malfeasance. His handle: @bigbaboonoftheUS.
The citizens of Jidada often speak with one voice. They recite long lists, grim tautologies (“killed dead”, “died death”) and anecdotes that circle back on themselves like tail-chasing dogs. Traumatised by violence at home and abroad, they repeat phrases that fill entire pages of the book: “and talks to the dead”, “and considered the maths of the revolution”, “I can’t breathe”.
Glory reads longer than its 400 pages. Bulawayo shifts among omniscient narration, first-person plural, oral history and even chapters written as Twitter threads. The effect can be disorienting, but individual voices stand out. None resonates as strongly as that of Destiny Lozikeyi Khumalo, a goat who returns to Jidada after a decade away. Hoping to exorcise the trauma that prompted her departure, Destiny becomes a chronicler of her nation’s history and an advocate for its future. Her writing provides a “way of rising above the past, of putting together that which was broken”.
In her author’s note, Bulawayo shared how her book’s most obvious literary inspiration, George Orwell’s anti-Stalinism allegory Animal Farm, became a trending topic on social media in the wake of Mugabe’s ouster. The parallels between post-revolution Manor Farm and post-coup Zimbabwe were too painful to ignore. “Pivoting from non-fiction to create Glory became an extension of my fellow citizens’ impulse to articulate the absurd and the surreal,” she wrote.
Any satire worth its weight in talking animals is really a warning – to the powers that be, the complicit and anyone who thinks nothing so terrible could ever happen to them. When Destiny diagnoses Jidada’s condition as “the willingness of citizens to get used to that which should have otherwise been the source of outrage”, she could be describing a great number of places. By almost any measure, Glory weighs a tonne.
STEVNS, DENMARK (AFP) – With three friends, all violinists like her, Nadia Safina fled the invasion of Ukraine to find peace at a music school in Denmark, a horrific ordeal that took 10 days.
Now, “all we have is our talent. Not boots. Not clothes, not jewellery. Only our talent and our instruments”, the 24-year-old said, a weary look of despair in her eyes.
Safe but with her “heart in pain”, she arrived this week in Stevns, an hour outside Copenhagen, far from the bombs falling on her hometown of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine which she fled on the first day of the war.
The four women are now at the Scandinavian Cello School, which frequently welcomes artists from around the world but is now focussing exclusively on bringing over Ukrainian musicians.
“We support them with exactly the same conditions as everybody else. We give them a place to study and to stay for free, and food,” the school’s director Jacob Shaw said.
Thanks to his professional network, he was able to arrange for the four women’s exodus on the first day of Russia’s invasion on February 24.
The school is now hosting six Ukrainian musicians who have fled the war, and three more are expected in the coming days.
Ukrainian musicians Olesia Kliepak, Marharyta Serdiuk, Nadia Safina and Kseniia Kucherova pose in Stevns, Denmark. PHOTOS: AFPDirector of the Scandinavian Cello School Jacob Shaw
Nadia and her fiance Misha, both alto violinists, and his sister Ksenia Kusherova, also a 24-year-old violinist, had already planned to come to the school before the war broke out.
“On February 24, we woke up to the sound of bombs. It was scary. Really scary. Panic broke out everywhere in our dormitory, and we just packed up our stuff,” said Nadia, still shaken by the events.
Their first stop was her mother’s place in Donets, a village in the nearby countryside. Then the women went to Lviv, where they picked up Ksenia’s family, and left for Poland.
They travelled by car, train and bus to reach Warsaw.
“In Lviv, we waited eight hours on the platform in zero degrees and we couldn’t get on a train.”
Like all able-bodied men aged 18 to 60, Misha was not allowed to leave Ukraine. He returned to his hometown of Kriviy Rig in central Ukraine.
Since then, Nadia has worried for his safety. The two are in constant contact.
“We send messages, we speak every day, every hour.”
Nadia thinks back on her life before the war.
“I had three jobs, my studies, my students, my colleagues. I had everything I needed. And I had very big plans for my life.”
The conservatory and university in Kharkiv have since been bombed, the instruments destroyed.
Her professor is still there, in a shelter, caring for his disabled mother.
“We can’t imagine what the future holds because they don’t stop bombing us. We can’t plan anything,” she said despairingly.
“I just want to return home, I want God to save our friends and our families. That is my plan now,” she said.
“But Putin is crazy. He won’t stop anytime soon.”
In Stevns, a pastoral oasis nestled between the sea and countryside, she has a tidy room under the rafters.
She practises her alto violin, either in her room or in the music hall in another building on the grounds, formerly a farm.
With their friends Olesia Kliepak and Marharyta Serdiuk, who had to hide for several days in Kharkiv before joining the others in Poland, Nadia and Ksenia now appreciate the tranquillity in Stevns, though they are still sick with worry.
A few hundred metres away, the beach provides some solace.
PHOENIX (AP) – Anthony Davis had a few words to say about the Los Angeles Lakers’ playoff loss to the Phoenix Suns last season before the teams played yesterday.
The Suns got the last word.
Devin Booker scored 30 points, Deandre Ayton had 23 points and 16 rebounds in just 27 minutes and the NBA-leading Suns routed the Lakers 140-111.
Booker also had 10 assists and four steals. Mikal Bridges added 18 points to help Phoenix move 40 games over .500 at 54-14. The 140 points were a season high for the Suns.
Davis told reporters before the game that the Lakers would have beaten the Suns last year in their postseason series had he not been sidelined with a groin injury.
“We know that. They know that. They got away with one,” Davis said.
Booker said the Suns heard about Davis’ comments before the teams took the court yesterday.
Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker is pressured by Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James. PHOTO: AP
“Instead of taking the high (road), you make a comment like that,” Booker said.
LeBron James led the Lakers, who have lost 10 straight road games, with 31 points, seven rebounds and six assists. He did not play in the fourth quarter.
James reached a milestone with his 10,000th career assist in the second quarter on Carmelo Anthony’s three-pointer. James is the only player in NBA history with at least 30,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 10,000 assists.
“I get a loss of words anytime things like this happen to me,” James said. “I automatically start thinking about my hometown of Akron and my upbringing where I come from. The dreams I had of being in this league at the highest level and to now sit alone in a statistical category in this league. I model my game after being able to score, rebound and assist. And to sit alone in a stat, I’ll say cool, but it doesn’t quite make sense to me.”
Ayton’s double-double came after a text exchange with coach Monty Williams following the Suns’ loss to Toronto on Friday night. Ayton had 16 points and seven rebounds in the loss and told Williams in the text that he could take advantage of the Lakers’ small lineup, featuring James at centre.
“It wasn’t selfish, not like I want more points,” Williams said. “(It was) ‘I can dominate them.
I think we need to look at me more.’ DA doesn’t make those kinds of statements so he can score more and get those points. He’s like, ‘I can work down there.’ I’ve been around long enough to know his intentions and he backed it up.”
Ayton said he feels “disrespected” when teams employ a small lineup against him.
“That’s just my thing,” he said. “I’m punishing teams like that.”
The Suns broke it open in the first five minutes. They went on a 14-0 run – punctuated by back-to-back 27-foot three-pointers by Booker – to take a 16-6 lead, and kept pouring it on.
Phoenix led 48-22 after the first quarter, the Suns’ highest output in a quarter this season and the most the Lakers have given up in a quarter in the shot-clock era.
Phoenix had 14 assists and no turnovers in the quarter and was seven of 12 from three-point range. The Lakers had seven turnovers and were one of 10 on three-point attempts.
Phoenix had a season-high 79 points at the half for a 23-point lead.
“We played poorly,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. “How we started, really the whole night, was unacceptable. This is a tough matchup to play small-ball against but we definitely have to be better than we were tonight.”
NEW DELHI (AP) – India is exploring ways to avoid a major disruption in its supply of Russian-made weaponry amid United States (US) sanctions following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tightrope walk could become more difficult due to a continuing border standoff with China.
Experts said up to 60 per cent of Indian defence equipment comes from Russia, and New Delhi finds itself in a bind at a time when it is facing a two-year-old standoff with China in eastern Ladakh over a territorial dispute, with tens of thousands of soldiers within shooting distance. Twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers died in a clash in 2020.
“The nightmare scenario for India would be if the US comes to the conclusion that it confronts a greater threat from Russia and that this justifies a strategic accommodation with China. In blunt terms, concede Chinese dominance in Asia while safeguarding its European flank,” India’s former foreign secretary Shyam Saran wrote in a recent blog post.
President Joe Biden has spoken about unresolved differences with India after the country abstained from voting on United Nations resolutions against Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Modi has so far avoided voting against Russia or criticising Putin for invading Ukraine.
MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia accused the West yesterday of seeking to push it into an “artificial default” through unprecedented sanctions over Ukraine, but vowed to meet its debt payments.
Russia is due to make an interest payment on its external debt later this week and Moscow warned it will be doing so in rubles if sanctions prevent it from using the currency of issue.
“The freezing of foreign currency accounts of the Bank of Russia and of the Russian government can be regarded as the desire of a number of foreign countries to organise an artificial default that has no real economic grounds,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in a statement.
Ratings agency Fitch last week downgraded Russia’s sovereign debt rating deeper into junk territory, warning that the decision reflects the view that a default is “imminent”.
But Siluanov denied that Russia “cannot fulfil the obligations” of its government debt.
He said Russia “is ready to make payments in rubles” according to the exchange rate of Russia’s central bank on the day of the payment.
While Russia’s foreign currency government bonds issued since 2018 do contain provisions for repayment in rubles, that is not the case for the combined USD117 million in interest payments on two dollar-denominated bonds last Wednesday.
Russia tumbled into default in 1998 when, thanks to a drop in the prices of oil and other commodities, it faced a financial sqeeze that meant it could no longer prop up the ruble and pay off its debts which had swelled due to the first war in Chechnya.
The plunge in the value of the ruble, a spike in inflation and bank collapses caused widespread misery and were seen as helping President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power.
Putin had worked on improving Russia’s finances by keeping debt low and using windfall oil export revenue to amass USD600 billion foreign currency reserves.
But sanctions on Moscow over its “special military operation” in Ukraine, targetted USD300 billion of Russia’s foreign currency reserves held abroad.
Without access to these funds to make payments, Russia could find itself forced to default.
Another ratings agency, Moody’s, warned last week that investors could face losses of 35 to 65 per cent in case of a default but “the unpredictability of government actions to date increases the risk of higher losses”.
“Russia’s ability and willingness to honour debt obligations has steadily deteriorated since the start of the military conflict,” it said.
“It is a unique situation where the sanctioning party will be the deciding factor on Russia’s 2022 default,” said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Washington-based Institute of International Finance.
She noted that the United States (US) Treasury could unlock part of Russia’s foreign currency reserves to enable payment of the bondholders, who are mostly from countries which have imposed sanctions.
If Russia fails to make the bond payment, an automatic 30-day grace period kicks in and after its expiry it would be considered in default.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Sunday that the while Russia has money to pay its debt, it “cannot access it”.
“I can say that no longer we think of Russian default as an improbable event,” Georgieva told the CBS show Face the Nation.
The Western sanctions on Moscow over Ukraine have delivered an unprecedented blow to Russia’s banking and financial system and will likely lead major disruptions in trade and inflation.
To stave off a default Russia has boosted efforts to prevent money from leaving its borders and to support the ruble, which has already seen a precipitous drop in value against the dollar.
This includes a measure allowing Russian firms to make payments on debts sanctioning countries in rubles.
IRPIN, UKRAINE (AFP) – Most of the citizens of Irpin, a once well-to-do commuter suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, have fled the Russian army’s bombardment.
The streets are dotted with rubble where Grad missiles have burst open high-rise apartment blocks and modest wood and brick bungalows.
Sometimes the empty streets are so silent that a woodpecker’s tapping in a tall tree sounds more insistent than the distant guns.
But sometimes there is the roar of racks of Grad missiles and volleys of mortar shells being launched nearby.
It’s more than Mykola Pustovit, 69, can take. He bursts into tears as he and his wife start the long walk to find relative safety in Kyiv.
They had hoped the frontline would move away from Irpin, “but now, after such bombing, it’s unbearable”.
In fact, the frontline has not shifted for days. By the reckoning of Ukrainian soldiers manning checkpoints in the town, maybe 20-30 per cent of the district is in Russian hands.
ABOVE & BELOW: Evacuees walk on a makshift pathway to cross a river next to a destroyed bridge as they flee the city of Irpin; and a woman carries her while fleeing the city of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv. PHOTOS: AFP
Ukrainian servicemen carry rocket-propelled grenades and sniper rifles as they walk towards the city of IrpinABOVE & BELOW: Ukrainian servicemen evacuate an old woman from the city of Irpin; and Irina Morozova plays with dogs she is caring for
The next suburb, Bucha, a few hundred metres further north, is already in the hands of the invading Russian army and violence is never far away.
As AFP reporters crossed a makeshift wooden bridge into Irpin early on Sunday, Ukrainian forces were shipping the corpses of three of their comrades back out.
Later in the day, a car carrying American journalists came under fire near a Ukrainian checkpoint, killing film-maker Brent Renaud and wounding photographer Juan Arredondo.
After the incident, Irpin’s mayor Oleksandr Markushyn banned reporters from the town, but before the restriction came into place AFP found some civilians not ready to leave.
Iryna Morozova is clearly frightened, she raised her hands in surrender when AFP journalists approached, as if being held at gunpoint.
Her house was badly damaged, lying next to another that was all but demolished by an apparent missile hit. But the 54-year-old couldn’t leave; who would feed her dogs?
She has the keys to a neighbour’s house where three excitable puppies, a placid Golden Retriever and a nervous German Shepherd, confined and circling in a kennel, have a home.
“This one bites, we closed him up in the cage. We found him, he was scared and was shaking,” she said of the distressed dog.
The others have the run of a garden, and play happily with visitors.
“They sleep there in the kitchen. They play during the day. How can you leave them?” Morozova asked.
The few remaining neighbours look out for one another and take food to the elderly, but Morozova is more worried about the pets.
“There’s nothing left here,” welling up in grief in front of a ruined home. “Now we collect stray animals and feed them, because people left them behind and moved away.”
Another neighbour, 76-year-old Vera Tyskanova, retired to the once pleasant suburban street after a career as a train driver in the Tajik capital Dushanbe.
She has been without power since an air strike early in the war, late last month, and is also consoling herself by feeding neighbourhood strays.
“There’s water, but no electricity. There’s a fireplace in the part of the house which is not ruined… I’m surviving,” she laughed.
She may be putting a brave face on things, but just around the corner 84-year-old Mykola Karpovych – who once drove a tractor in farmland near the then friendly Belarus border – is bewildered.
“Where would I go? My legs and my hands hurt,” he told AFP.
“To leave? Where would I go? Shall we go to Kyiv? I won’t go anywhere. What happens, happens. I’m too old.”
A fire brought down a two-storey house in Kampong Mumong, Kuala Belait on Sunday, according to a Fire and Rescue Department (FRD) statement.
Ten firefighters from the Kuala Belait Fire Station, led by station commander Assistant Superintendent of Fire and Rescue Hanapi bin Haji Hamid, were dispatched upon receiving an emergency call.
The house, made of wood and spandex roofing, was engulfed in flames that also spread to a nearby storeroom and three vehicles belonging to the occupants of the house.
No casualties were reported, and the cause of the blaze is under investigation.
The FRD reminded the public to ensure that electrical wires are maintained and serviced by accredited companies in accordance with the standards issued by the Department of Electrical Services.
The agency also advised the public to make sure unused electrical appliances at home are turned off after use, adding that it is important to have firefighting equipment, such as fire blankets and fire extinguishers, available in the residence.
A house engulfed in flames in Kampong Mumong, Kuala Belait. PHOTO: FRD
THE STRAITS TIMES – Following Barisan Nasional’s (BN) landslide win in the Johor state election, political analysts expect influential ranks within Umno – which leads the Barisan coalition – to demand that a general election be called soon.
They said the Umno general assembly, which begins tomorrow, would be a perfect platform for their rallying battle cry.
Professor Sivamurugan Pandian of Universiti Sains Malaysia expects the pressure to increase on Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob to dissolve Parliament for an early general election.
“He may have an uphill task in staving off calls for a general election, especially if they come from the Umno grassroots at the party’s general assembly.
“There will be prior indication if this will happen, as the Umno supreme council will meet first to set the agenda for the general assembly,” he said on Sunday.
The Umno-led Barisan Nasional is expected to increase pressure for an early general election after the coalition’s win in Johor. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
Professor Sivamurugan said that although Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri held the post of prime minister, as Umno vice-president, he sat below party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and deputy president Mohamad Hasan.
“It would be different if Ismail Sabri was Umno president as he would then be able to have the final word on the matter,” he said.
Zahid and Datuk Seri Mohamad had previously called for an early general election but subsequently agreed not to push for it because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Professor Sivamurugan said Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia’s dismal showing in the Melaka and Johor elections was also a factor in the push for an early general election.
On the memorandum of understanding inked last September with Pakatan Harapan (PH) for, among other things, Parliament not to be dissolved until July 31, 2022, he said calls for a snap election would not be entirely against the agreement. “Parliament could be dissolved in May or slightly later as they will still have 60 days to call for a general election.
“This would put the timeframe for the general election to be after Hari Raya Aidifitri, with a window of opportunity coming during the school holidays. It is all about timing in politics,” he said.
BN won a super majority of 40 seats out of 56 contested in Johor, with PH winning 13 and Perikatan Nasional taking just three seats.
