JOHOR BAHRU: The Johor state government will establish an investment company in Singapore to improve trade links between both sides, Chief Minister Hasni Mohammad said on Thursday (May 14).
Speaking at a press conference, Mr Hasni said the state-owned company, called the Johor Investment Company (JICO), will be setting up an office in Singapore soon.
"It is not an office where we deal with matters related to diplomatic relations but rather an office for our state administrators to improve trade relations," he said.
"It will be a host for collaboration in all aspects, especially the technical exchange of ideas for the mutual interest of both Johor as well as Singapore," he added.
Mr Hasni highlighted that working in the office will benefit the state's civil servants as it gives them an opportunity to "experience working in an international environment".
He added that this would enhance the potential of Johor in attracting investment.
Mr Hasni, who is also the Benut state assemblyman, said the state government has informed the federal government of its plan to establish JICO in Singapore.
He said that the Malaysian Foreign Ministry, the International Trade and Industry Ministry as well as the Malaysian High Commission in Singapore have also been notified.
During the same press conference, Mr Hasni highlighted that the state government will review the previous Singapore-Johor-Indonesia (Sijori) growth triangle cooperation.
He said that Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has supported the decision and that the Johor state government will meet representatives from Singapore and Indonesia after the Hari Raya Aidilfitri celebrations to discuss the matter.
Sijori was established in 1994 when Johor was under the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration.
It was established between Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, to strengthen economic links between the three countries.
The cooperation aims to link logistics, transportation and financial strengths of Singapore with the natural and labour resources of both Johor and the Riau province.
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said on Thursday (May 14) that the ruling government has limited next week's parliamentary sitting to a royal address most probably because it does not have confidence of commanding a majority in the House.
His comments came amid a chorus of criticism from the opposition bench, after parliament speaker Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof announced that the Members of Parliament (MP) will not meet after the royal address.
In a Facebook Live, Mr Anwar said Pakatan Harapan's (PH) view is that it is not appropriate to adjourn the meeting immediately after the Malaysian king’s speech.
“If COVID-19 is the reason, the seating arrangement has already been taken care of … If this is already completed, for sure we can have a meeting. This is why we believe the meeting should convene,” he said.
On Wednesday, the speaker said that the change in agenda for next Monday's parliamentary sitting was the decision of the government, having taken the current COVID-19 situation into consideration.
This meant that no government businesses would be discussed in the Lower House come Monday. Motions earlier accepted by the speaker, including Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s proposed vote of no confidence against Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, could also not see the light of day.
A statue of Malaysia's first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman is pictured in front of the parliament building in Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2018. (Photo: AFP/Mohd Rasfan)
The announcement did not sit well with PH politicians, who believed that the move was to delay the vote of no-confidence against Mr Muhyiddin. He had in February led Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia out of PH and joined forces with the former ruling coalition to take power.
“I believe this is largely due to the fact that the government does not have confidence that it has obtained the support of a majority of the MPs,” Mr Anwar said in his Facebook Live.
There are MPs who would jump ship when they are not given ministerial posts or posts in government-linked corporations, he claimed, urging people to choose candidates who will hold fast to their principles and ideals in the coming general elections.
MAHATHIR SAYS CHANGE IN AGENDA IS AN ATTEMPT TO BLOCK HIM FROM SPEAKING
Dr Mahathir, the former prime minister whose resignation triggered the collapse of the PH government, described the ruling government’s decision as an attempt to block him from speaking as an MP in the House.
“Now that the parliament is not allowed to convene, which means Muhyiddin actually does not have the support to be the prime minister,” he claimed in a video posted on his Facebook page on Wednesday.
Malaysia's former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad leaves after an event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, February 28, 2020. REUTERS/Lim Huey Teng
Dr Mahathir insisted that Mr Muhyiddin did not command the majority of the House at the time the latter was sworn in before the king.
He said he has been waiting for the chance to speak in the House and to explain the reasons of him tabling the motion of no-confidence vote.
Meanwhile, Mr Mohamad Sabu, the president of Parti Amanah Negara and former defence minister, described the current government as a “backdoor government” and “spineless government”.
According to the Star, Mr Mohamad said the decision to not allow any debates during the one-day parliament sitting reflected “the absence of wisdom and democracy” in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government.
“It also shows the Perikatan government’s anger at the no-confidence motion on Muhyiddin’s leadership,” he said.
“If parliament isn’t an open platform for us to show the effectiveness of the country’s democractic system, does that mean that the streets will be the decisive platform after this?” he asked.
Former minister Yeo Bee Yin, who is Bakri MP and with the Democratic Action Party, said an online parliament session should be held instead if the pandemic is of concern.
“If you are prime minister, whose majority is questioned but you (actually) do hold the majority, will you have your very first parliament session with no question and answer, no motion, no debate and no vote?” she wrote on her Facebook page.
BARISAN NASIONAL REITERATES SUPPORT FOR MUHYIDDIN
Meanwhile, the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition has continued to pledge support for Mr Muhyiddin and his PN coalition.
In a press conference on Thursday, BN's secretary-general Annuar Musa said the 43 MPs are in favour of Mr Muhyiddin's leadership as prime minister
“Should there be a motion of no confidence in Parliament against PN (Perikatan Nasional), all Barisan MPs would en-bloc vote for Muhyiddin as Prime Minister," he stated.
TOKYO: With the world's oldest population and one of the most crowded megacities on the planet as its capital, Japan should have provided a fertile breeding ground for the deadly COVID-19.
Images of salarymen crammed into Tokyo commuter trains fuelled warnings that Japan's capital could become the "next New York City" if the virus took hold.
Yet the country of 126 million has recorded 16,024 cases and 668 deaths, according to the health ministry - rates so far below comparable nations that many have been left scratching their heads and others suspicious that authorities are not giving the full picture.
Mask-wearing, removing shoes, bowing not shaking hands, low obesity levels and even consuming certain foods have all been advanced as possible cultural reasons for the puzzlingly slow spread.
And with reported new cases dropping sharply in recent weeks, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected later Thursday (May 14) to lift a state of emergency for most of the country.
But against this backdrop of apparent success, critics say the true extent of the crisis in Japan is unknown given relatively low rates of testing.
As of May 11, the health ministry said there had been 218,204 tests, by far the lowest per capita rate in the G7, according to Worldometers.
Even the government's own coronavirus expert, Shigeru Omi, has admitted "nobody knows" whether the true number of coronavirus cases "could be 10 times, 12 times or 20 times more than reported".
Ryuji Koike, assistant director of Tokyo Medical and Dental University Hospital, told AFP that while Japan had lower death and infection rates than many countries, "this doesn't mean we're doing well".
He added: "I don't think (the decreasing number of infections) is due to government policies. I think it looks like Japan is doing well thanks to things that are not measurable, things like daily habits and Japanese behaviour" - such as good hygiene and not shaking hands.
However, Kazuto Suzuki, professor of public policy at Hokkaido University, said Japan's strategy of tracing clusters and only testing people with acute symptoms had proved sufficient for the relatively low numbers of cases.
"Test, test, test is not the Japanese strategy," he told reporters.
With a ratio of positive cases to tests of around 7.5 per cent, "the testing is sufficient", he said.
Japan has defended its policy of limiting coronavirus testing, saying widespread testing would not be helpful AFP/Philip FONG
But, he warned: "If there is an exponential outbreak again, we need to have more testing."
Suzuki put Japan's success down to near universal mask-wearing and a culture of hygiene and hand-washing.
"JAPAN PUZZLE"
Japan was exposed early in the coronavirus pandemic with a first case in January and the arrival a month later of the Diamond Princess cruise ship near Tokyo, at that time the biggest cluster outside the epicentre in China.
Following what was largely seen as a bungled response to the ship, Abe recommended schools close in late February, even with fewer than 200 daily cases nationwide.
As the number of infected rose - hitting a daily record of 700 on Apr 11 - there were fears the virus was surging and putting pressure on Japan's healthcare system.
So Abe declared a state of emergency on Apr 7, giving regional leaders the power to urge people to stay indoors - a much softer form of lockdown than seen elsewhere, with no punishment for transgressors.
Japan is under a nationwide state of emergency but appears to have avoided the large-scale coronavirus outbreaks seen in parts of the world AFP/Charly TRIBALLEAU
To ease the pain on the world's third-largest economy, Abe also pledged 100,000 yen (US$930) for every citizen as part of an emergency stimulus package worth around US$1 trillion.
But the handouts were the result of an embarrassing u-turn and he has also been widely mocked over the haphazard distribution of two cloth masks per household, a programme dubbed "Abe-no-masks".
A recent Kyodo News poll showed that 57.5 per cent were unhappy with the Abe government's response to the pandemic, with only 34.1 per cent approving.
Abe's performance has been "uneven", Tobias Harris, an expert on Japanese politics from Teneo consultancy, told AFP.
"I think he has struggled to stay ahead of events since the beginning, has not communicated effectively, and has been poorly served by his lieutenants," added Harris.
While policies such as school closures probably helped to contain the disease, Harris cited high standards of hygiene, a generally healthy population and masks as more likely reasons behind Japan's low death rate.
However, any speculation should come with a pinch of salt given so much remains unknown about the disease, warned the analyst.
"It may take more knowledge to answer the Japan puzzle."
TOKYO: Japan's government said on Thursday (May 14) it wants to lift a state of emergency declared over the coronavirus in most of the country, though not yet in the capital Tokyo and other urban centres.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earlier this month extended a nationwide state of emergency until the end of May.
But with infections sharply down, his government is now hoping to lift the measure early in up to 39 of the country's 47 prefectures.
On Thursday morning, the minister in charge of the virus response, Yasutoshi Nishimura, held talks with an expert panel, the first step in the process for lifting the measure.
"We have confirmed new cases have been dropping below the levels in mid-March when infections began to spread," he said.
"Considering the (stable) medical care and monitoring systems in these regions, we think it is appropriate to lift the state of emergency for them," he said, referring to 39 prefectures.
According to local media, the state of emergency will stay in place in eight regions, including Tokyo and Osaka, but another review will be held on May 21, raising the prospect the measure could be lifted before the end of the month.
Abe is scheduled to hold a press conference later Thursday to explain the move to lift the measure.
Japan's state of emergency falls far short of the toughest measures seen in parts of Europe and the United States. It allows local governors to urge people to stay at home and call on businesses to stay shut.
But officials cannot compel citizens to comply, and there are no punishments for those who fail to do so.
Schools in much of the country closed down even before the emergency was declared on Apr 7 in Tokyo and six other regions, before being expanded nationwide.
Japan's virus outbreak remains small compared with those seen in parts of Europe and the United States, with a little over 16,000 confirmed infections recorded and 687 deaths.
New cases have dropped recently, with 55 infections newly confirmed Wednesday nationwide, and just 10 in Tokyo.
Japan recorded its first coronavirus infection in mid-January and came under early pressure with a mass outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked off the city of Yokohama.
Despite so far avoiding the devastating tolls seen in places like Italy and New York, there have been persistent fears that Japan's healthcare system could be quickly overwhelmed by a sudden spike in infections.
GENEVA: Pinning down the source of the COVID-19 pandemic should help in working out how COVID-19 has "invaded the human species" so quickly, a senior World Health Organization official told AFP.
The outbreak has triggered a fierce diplomatic spat between China and the United States - with the WHO at the centre of the row.
In late March, US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping struck an informal truce in the war of words over the origin of the deadly disease.
But it quickly broke down. Trump has been accusing Beijing of being slow to alert the world to the initial outbreak in Wuhan, and openly suspects China of covering up an accident at the eastern city's virology lab.
Far from the cross-Pacific spat, Sylvie Briand, the WHO's director of infectious hazard management, said it was crucial to know the origin of the virus "to understand how it has evolved".
"It is a virus of animal origin transmitted to humans. And so we have to try to understand how the adaptation of this virus allowed it to invade the human species," she told AFP outside the WHO's headquarters in Geneva.
VIRUS "PING PONG"
The first cases of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease, were reported in late December in Wuhan.
Since then, the pandemic has infected more than four million people worldwide and claimed nearly 300,000 lives.
Many researchers believe the novel coronavirus came from bats, but passed through another species before being transmitted to humans.
"The virus multiplied in these animals, changed a little in doing so and finally resulted in a type of virus" that is transmissible to human beings, said Briand, who in 2009 headed the WHO's influenza progamme during the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic.
Retracing the origin of the virus, by discovering the intermediate hosts, would "prevent the phenomenon from happening again - and avoid ping-pong" transmission between humans and animals.
"Every time it jumps from one species to another, the virus can mutate a bit," the French scientist said.
"That can have an impact on treatments - it can become resistant - while vaccines may no longer be effective enough."
For now, there are still many unknowns, despite "thousands and thousands of samples" having been taken, notably from "many animals in the market in Wuhan" - but also from dogs in Hong Kong, said Briand, stressing that the analysis will take time.
The samples are taken by WHO member states but the United Nations' health agency "encourages them to share information with each other" in order to speed up research.
CHANGING THE ALERT SYSTEM
The United States and Australia have called for an international probe into the origin of the virus.
More diplomatically, the WHO has called on Beijing to invite them in to investigate the source.
Shortly afterwards in early May, China proposed setting up a commission under the auspices of the WHO to assess the "global response" to COVID-19 - and only once the pandemic is over.
The Chinese authorities insist that the plan should be signed off in advance by the WHO's World Health Assembly or its executive board - the two main bodies of the UN agency, which host their annual meetings next week.
Briand said the gatherings should also focus on the need to "refine" the WHO's health alert system, which only allows the organisation to declare whether there is a global emergency or not - while the previous procedure had six stages, with the last being declaring a pandemic.
"We need to find a system that can trigger alerts so that people can get ready," she said.
"But at the same time we have to tell them whether it is imminent or if it's coming in a few weeks or months, and tell them more precisely what it is they need to be prepared for."
