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From Yahoo! News SINGAPORE : Outgoing Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Zainul Abidin Rasheed, has said he will not accept the post of Speaker of Parliament, even if it were offered to him. Mr Zainul also thinks support among the Malay voters at the national level was affected by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's remarks on Malays and integration in his book "Hard Truths". This in turn affected the Malay support for the People's Action Party (PAP) at the polls. In a news conference on Thursday, Mr Zainul said: "I am a great believer in re-generation, so I would like to see more younger people coming forth to provide that leadership for that future and I hope to play an active role in helping and furthering that cause. "I will always be involved in community work. I can never say never in life and politics. But as you know given my age, I am not getting younger, I think it is unlikely (I will) stand in the next election. "We will see what the Party has to say, I also do not want to be presumptuous. I will continue to be the advisor to the grassroots organisations until the Party decides what is the way forward." Mr Zainul also felt that the Malay votes were not the reason for the decline in his support at the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) level. He said: "It was more the national issues. In particular, it could be a combination of issues like cost of living or how they see or saw government and also the role of the opposition, rather than Malay issues. "I had good vibes about the Malay community from the Malays whom I had met at Aljunied GRC, particularly in Eunos. But I cannot underestimate if there were sentiments of Malays who felt that the Malay-Muslim leaders are not doing enough." But he added that unhappiness over Minister Mentor Lee's comments in his latest book remains in the community. Mr Zainul said: "MM has already explained that those remarks were made two years ago and the timing of the publication came out earlier this year and in that sense, timing was bad for the GE (General Election). "But discussing such issues, there is no such thing as good timing or bad timing because it sometimes touches on the raw nerves. This is where we have to manage the way we discuss potentially-sensitive issues which could be divisive. "But this is not new. All over our history, we have been discussing very sensitive issues from National Service to tertiary fees to quotas in public housing, even in schools, and I think the Malay-Muslim community has grown to accept some of these issues which can be sensitive, but were discussed, some behind closed doors and some out in the public, and it is the combination of approaches we have taken that has brought about the community to face some of the issues squarely and then move forward." Before the General Election, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had hinted that Mr Zainul would be made the Speaker of Parliament once he gets elected. Although there are provisions in Singapore's Constitution for a non-elected Speaker of Parliament, Mr Zainul said he would not be accepting the post even if it is offered to him this time round. Mr Zainul said: "On the question of the Speaker, PM said that it will be contingent on my being elected as a Member of Parliament and PM has now said that since I am now not an elected member of Parliament, that question does not arise any more. "For myself, even if PM were to offer me as Speaker now, I personally will not accept. Having not been elected, it is not appropriate for me to be considered as Speaker of Parliament." Mr Zainul said he looks forward to spending more time with his family. But he will miss the weekly Meet-the-People sessions - where he has been seeing at least 60 cases each week - and his market visits to the Eunos division as its MP. Regards,

April 9, 2008 JI DETAINEE'S ESCAPE Govt has to take some responsibility too I REFER to last Saturday's article 'Guards were negligent, says MM'. Like MM Lee, I very much agree that the Government is not to be blamed for the escape of Mas Selamat Kastari. The good track record of the Singapore Government should not be diminished by this unfortunate incident. However, there should be some level of accountability by the Home Affairs Ministry and not only by the guards who were in charge of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) detainee who had once planned to crash a plane into Changi Airport. The ministry had a role to play in ensuring all this did not happen in the first place. But none of the statements from the ministry suggested that it was apologetic over the incident and there was no admission that there could have been an oversight on its part. Ironically, an Insight report in The Straits Times on the same day cited Dr Michael Benoliel, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at the Singapore Management University, as saying 'All the great corporations collapsed because they underestimated the competition'. Is it fair that accountability lies only with certain strata of staff members of a corporation? Let us all ponder this since we have often compared our Government to a large corporation. Mohd Rashed Badarudin http://www.straitstimes.com/ST%2BFor...ry_225194.html the all peasants god what is responsibility it's not even in the L337 dictionary... how can peasants get.