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KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob on Monday called an early election, aiming to win a stronger mandate and end political instability since the multi-billion dollar 1MDB scandal and COVID crisis.
The ruling United Malays National Organisation's rush to hold polls that had been due by September next year comes as some of its leaders face the prospect of long jail terms over graft charges.
Factions pressing Ismail to hold early elections support former premier Najib Razak and party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, both of whom were charged with corruption after UMNO lost power in the 2018 election. They say they are victims of a political vendetta.
Opposition politicians fear the election could become a vehicle for disgraced politicians like Najib - who was jailed in August - to find a way back into positions of influence, and undermine reforms aimed at fighting corruption.
In a televised speech, Ismail - Malaysia's third prime minister since the last election in 2018 - said the country's constitutional monarch, King Al-Sultan Abdullah, had agreed to his request to dissolve parliament on Monday.
The election commission said it will meet soon to discuss a date.
King Al-Sultan Abdullah said he was disappointed with the political developments and urged the commission to hold polls as soon as possible given the onset of monsoon rains in mid-November.
Polls must be held within 60 days of the dissolution of parliament. Voter turnout could be reduced if the chosen date falls during the year-end monsoon season.
A year-end change in government could also hamper the economy, which is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and has begun to feel the pinch of rising costs and a global slowdown.
Ismail, who came to power because a previous government collapsed and whose coalition had a thin majority in parliament, said he was calling the election to end questions over the legitimacy of his government.
"The people's mandate is a powerful antidote for the country to manifest political stability and create a strong, stable and respected government after the general election," Ismail said.
Malaysia has been mired in political uncertainty since the last election in 2018 - a historic vote in which the opposition ousted UMNO, which had governed for more than 60 years since independence, due to widespread corruption allegations largely linked to the looting of state fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB).
But the winning coalition collapsed in two years due to a power struggle, returning UMNO to power in a new alliance along with other partners.
UMNO is trying to win back its dominant position by pressing for early elections, having recently won state level elections.
Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow with Singapore's Institute of International Affairs, said UMNO is the favourite to win as voters can rely on the party's patronage system to help them out during an economic slowdown.
"UMNO would emerge as the party with the largest number of lawmakers, although not necessarily an outright majority," said Oh.
With the dissolution of the parliament, Ismail, who came to power in August 2021, becomes the shortest serving prime minister in Malaysian history.
He was named as UMNO's prime minister candidate in April, though it was unclear if he still had that support.
His government presented the budget for 2023 just last Friday. The new government will have to present the budget to parliament again or propose a new plan after the election.
UMNO president Zahid justified an early election, saying the party "had been maligned by court cases levelled against its top leaders" and that it would be stuck in an endless cycle of selective prosecution if it did not win big in the upcoming election, local media reported.
He is facing 47 graft charges and has pleaded not guilty.
"(Zahid) wants to turn back the clock, to restore UMNO's one-party state and to delete the collective history and societal gains from the 2018 general election," opposition leader Liew Chin Tong said.
Writing by A. Ananthalakshmi; Editing by Ed Davies, Simon Cameron-Moore and Philippa Fletcher
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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TAIPEI, Oct 10 (Reuters) - War between Taiwan and China is "absolutely not an option", Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said on Monday, as she reiterated her willingness to talk to Beijing and also pledged to boost the island's defences including with precision missiles.
China again rejected her latest overture, saying the island was an inseparable part of its territory.
Democratic Taiwan, which China claims as its own, has come under increasing military and political pressure from Beijing, especially after Chinese war games in early August following a Taipei visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Any conflict over Taiwan could drag in the United States, Japan and perhaps much of the world, as well as shatter the global economy, especially given Taiwan's dominant position as a maker of semiconductors used in everything from smartphones and tablets to fighter jets.
Tsai, in her national day speech outside the presidential office under a grey sky, said it was "regrettable" that China had escalated its intimidation and threatened peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and region.
China should not think there is room for compromise in the commitment of Taiwan's people to democracy and freedom, she said.
"I want to make clear to the Beijing authorities that armed confrontation is absolutely not an option for our two sides. Only by respecting the commitment of the Taiwanese people to our sovereignty, democracy, and freedom can there be a foundation for resuming constructive interaction across the Taiwan Strait."
Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Taiwan is part of China, "has no president and is not an independent country".
"The root cause of the current tensions in the Taiwan Strait lies in the Democratic Progressive Party authorities' stubborn insistence on Taiwan independence and secession," she said, referring to Taiwan's ruling party. "We are willing to create a broad space for peaceful reunification, but we will never leave any space for Taiwan independence and secession activities."
China calls Tsai - re-elected by a landslide in 2020 on a promise to stand up to Beijing - a separatist and refuses to speak to her.
Tsai's speech comes less than a week before China's ruling Communist Party's congress opens in Beijing, where President Xi Jinping is widely expected to win a precedent-breaking third five-year term.
An official familiar with Tsai's thinking, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters the president was looking to "clearly convey" her position to the world and Beijing.
"Standing firm on the status quo of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is the main axis of Tsai's comments on cross-strait relations this year," the official said, adding this was the world's expectation and responsibility of both Taipei and Beijing.
Tsai said, to applause, that her government looked forward to the gradual post-pandemic resumption of healthy and orderly people-to-people exchanges across the strait, which would ease tensions.
But the broad consensus in Taiwan is that its sovereignty and free and democratic way of life must be defended, she added.
"On this point, we have no room for compromise," she said.
Tsai has made strengthening Taiwan's defences a cornerstone of her administration to enable it to mount a more credible deterrence to China, which is ramping up an ambitious modernisation programme of its own military.
Taiwan will show the world it is taking responsibility for its own defence, Tsai said.
Taiwan is increasing mass production of precision missiles and high-performance naval vessels, and working to acquire small, highly mobile weapons that will ensure Taiwan is fully prepared to respond to "external military threats", she added.
The military tensions have raised concerns, especially in the United States, about the concentration of chip making in Taiwan.
"I want to specifically emphasise one point to my fellow citizens and the international community, which is that the concentration of the semiconductor sector in Taiwan is not a risk," she said.
"We will continue to maintain Taiwan's advantages and capacity in leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing processes, and will help optimise the worldwide restructuring of the semiconductor supply chain, giving our semiconductor firms an even more prominent global role," she added.
Reporting by Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Martin Pollard in Beijing; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Gerry Doyle
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Setyawan did not mind helping out and continued to do so while working as a village secretary in Paringan, which is located within Ponorogo regency. He married Lamini in 1998.
In 2005, Setyawan had to stop volunteering. “I had to stop doing it cos I had tetanus,” he recounted. He almost died but eventually managed to recover.
He told CNA that the near-death experience made him decide to dedicate his life to helping people with mental health problems.
In 2007, someone asked Setyawan to pick up two men, aged 37 and 45, who had been discharged from a psychiatric hospital.
As their families did not welcome them back, Setyawan decided to take them home.
Lamini remembers being shocked when Setyawan came home with the strangers.
“To me, it was just strange. Why should we have them at our house?
“We were still a young family and I wanted attention from my husband but was forced to share it with strangers.”
Eventually, she began to understand why Setyawan wanted to help.
“I realised that people who suffer from mental health problems also need attention, affection and love like us normal people,” Lamini recounted.
Setyawan added: “And now actually it is the other way around. She is the one who takes care of them.”
For the next 10 years, they took in mainly men who suffered from mental health issues.
But in 2017, they decided to house only women as Setywan started to take a step back due to health reasons and Lamini became the main caregiver.
Setyawan and Lamini do not charge a fee for looking after those with mental health problems. However, most of the families give the couple a small token sum to help out with their expenses.
When funds run low, the couple would draw from their savings. They have also received donations from the public.
Margo Widodo can take care of 12 people at once.
When a former Olympic swimmer and a former national netball player come together to organise camps for children, what would they teach? If you’re guessing either swimming or netball, you are in for a surprise.
For almost a year, Joscelin Yeo, 43, and Zhang Tingjun, 40, have been organising wilderness camps for children under their new company, Into The Wild. They have since run camps for 700 to 800 kids from the age of four.
These camps are generally three hours long and priced at S$120 per child. They are designed to create unfamiliar situations with unexpected real-life simulations that push kids out of their comfort zone and challenge them to find creative solutions.
The Disaster Survival Night Camp, for instance, creates a simulated natural disaster such as a volcano erupting, earthquake or tsunami. Kids are tasked to chart their own escape route out of the jungle in the dark as a team, without adult support.
The Wilderness Survival Camps teach first aid skills and allow kids to put them into practice during a high-stress simulated injury. Another cool series is the ongoing Snake Squad series, which offers weekly off-the-grid adventures.
MALANG: Indonesian father Mochamad Munif looked at the grave of his young daughter, sprinkling petals across it before bending down to kiss the square white stone slab and utter the words he never wanted to.
"If you have done any mistakes to me, to your father, I forgive you," he whispered to himself at a cemetery in the city of Malang as his second daughter and her grandmother cried next to him.
Munif, like so many others who lost loved ones in a stadium stampede at the weekend, was unable to comprehend how his 20-year-old daughter went to watch her first football match and came back dead.
Lutvia Damayanti was at the overcrowded game in Malang on Saturday that descended into tragedy when police tried to quell a pitch invasion by firing tear gas into packed stands, sending panicked spectators rushing for small or closed exits.
At least 131 people including 32 children died and hundreds more were injured in one of the deadliest disasters in football history.
The family still don't know the circumstances of the daughter's death, whether she died instantly or later in hospital, but Munif blames the police.
"Why should it (the tear gas) be fired at the stands?" he asked. "While supporters such as my daughter were not at fault?"
Many were killed by asphyxia after being pushed up against closed gates that became warped by the force of the crowd. Munif said his daughter's face bore no marks of trauma.
He was renovating a house in the East Javan city of Surabaya when colleagues told him a deadly stampede had unfolded at the Kanjuruhan stadium in his hometown, a two-hour drive away. Then he got the call that every parent dreads.
His daughter was in an ambulance travelling to the family home in Malang, his younger brother told him by phone, after she had attended the derby between fierce Javan rivals Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya. His heart sank.
"I knew that if she was in an ambulance, she had already died," the 47-year-old told AFP, recounting the moment that would change his life forever.
He cannot remember his journey home, one shrouded in a blur of grief.
When he arrived to find her body lying on the floor and a sheet was pulled back to reveal her face, he passed out.
SINGAPORE - Asia's second-wealthiest man, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, is setting up a family office in Singapore, according to people familiar with the move.
The Mumbai-based billionaire has picked a manager to hire staff for the new entity and get it running, the people said. The Ambanis have also chosen real estate, one of the people said.
A Reliance spokesman, who also represents Mr Ambani, was not available for comment.
Mr Ambani is the latest in a series of ultra-rich people to pick Singapore for their family offices - the organisations set up to manage the affairs of wealthy clans - joining the likes of hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Singapore has become an attractive hub for family offices thanks to its low taxes and relative security. The Monetary Authority of Singapore estimates that about 700 were in place by the end of 2021, up from 400 a year earlier.
But the rising number of global rich crowding Singapore's shores is also resulting in higher prices for cars, housing and other goods. Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong signalled in an August interview that the wealthy may face more taxes to boost inclusive growth.
Mr Ambani's move to set up the family office ties in with his larger vision of taking his retail-to-refining empire global and acquiring assets outside India. While announcing the appointment of Aramco's chairman on the board of Reliance in 2021, the billionaire told his shareholders that this marked "the beginning of internationalisation" of his conglomerate, without elaborating.
"You will hear more about our international plans in the times to come," he had said at the time.
Reliance paid US$79 million (S$113 million) for Stoke Park in April 2021, adding an iconic British locale that has been the setting for two James Bond films. It also bought an indirect 73.4 per cent stake in Mandarin Oriental New York for US$98.15 million in January and a US$80 million beachside villa in Dubai this year.
Mr Ambani, who is worth an estimated US$83.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Wealth Index, wants the Singapore family office to be running within a year, one of the people said. His wife Nita Ambani is also helping to set it up, the people added.
Reliance has been pivoting from its legacy oil refining and petrochemicals business towards e-commerce, green energy and the expansion of its retail footprint across India.
In 2020, its technology venture Jio Platforms lured more than US$25 billion from marquee Silicon Valley investors including Meta Platforms and Google. It has also unveiled ambitious plans to take on Amazon.com in the country, including in streaming. BLOOMBERG
