Selamat Datang ke Malaysia!

If anyone was wondering how come P'd stopped updating the blog, it was because of her preparations for a business trip to Malaysia. Malaysia's political scene is really vibrant compared to its counterpart in Singapore and nowhere more so than in its blogs.

Today's main headline in the New Straits Times was an article about blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin and his effect on Malaysia's shaky Barisan Nasional ruling party. For those not keeping up with Malaysian politics, the ruling party has recently made itself tremendously unpopular by a series of price increases, in particular that of fuel. Malaysian petrol has always been heavily subsidised by the government in order to keep prices affordable and the BN cut the subsidies this month, resulting in a whopping price increase of 78 sens. Regular petrol has gone up from 1.92 Ringgit per litre to 2.7 Ringgit. When P arrived on Monday, there were rumbles of a no-confidence vote on BN being tabled in parliament (not just because of this, it's complicated), but that hasn't materialised so far.

Anyway, back to our blogger. Raja Petra Kamaruddin has alleged on his blog and even made a statutory allegation that deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife were in some way involved in the recent murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu. Police are investigating his claim.

For those not in the know, Altantuya was a mongolian part-time model who is thought to have had a love affair with Abdul Razak Baginda, a Defence Analyst from the Malaysian Strategic Research Centre. Her remains were found in late 2006; she had apparently been murdered and the body exploded with C4 explosives in an attempt to obscure the evidence. Possibly a love affair gone sour, Abdul Razak has been charged with abetment in the murder and the prime suspects are members of the Malaysian Police Special Action Force assigned to guess who? The deputy prime minister's office.

Mind you, Raja is not exactly an uninvolved party as he was the leader of opposition party Parti Keadilan Nasional; although he has maintained that in this case, the government merely wishes to silence Malaysian bloggers. Freedom of the blog? You decide by checking out Raja's Malaysia Today website here (while you can).