‘Stop playing nice guy and do your job. There is no need for you to continue defending and shielding as your actions are harming both yourself as well as the country.’

On VoxPop: 'Let's not pay 2008 income tax'

CK Chim: The rakyat and foreign investors are fed up and have totally lost their trust in the justice system as well as the ability of Abdullah to arrest the current crisis of confidence in the country.

If BN wants to be relevant, Abdullah needs to stand up and exert his authority to implement immediately the following:

1. Revamp the entire police force in accordance to the recommendations of the recent police royal commission findings.

2. Implement fully the Judicial Appointments Commission which is independent of the executive and answerable to a parliamentary committee

3. Suspend all top officials who have been implicated in the Anwar and the Altantuya cases.

Abdullah, stop playing the nice guy and do your job. There is no need for you to continue defending and shielding these guys as your actions are harming both yourself as well as the country.

Your recent actions show your indecisiveness and inability to do what is right as a PM.

Our advice to you is either to step up to the job or step down and pass the baton to Anwar. It is not business as usual.

JKS: The refusal to pay the income tax suggested here is a legitimate method of civil disobedience advocated by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American naturalist, philosopher, and author of the book Walden and an important essay ‘Civil disobedience’.

Thoreau had a major influence on leaders of non-violent resistance, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tax resistance on a large scale may be difficult to organise for now, but if the government deteriorates into a police state that fans racial or religious emotions, civil disobedience, including tax resistance, may be the only way to go for Malaysians to organise effective resistance while avoiding deep scarring of the society.

J Bao: I do not think Malaysians should waste anymore time and effort to argue or convince other Malaysians that the present BN government and all their machinery are corrupt as hell.

If there is still any doubt after the last 25 years of abuses, then either they are locked permanently a state of denial or a basket case.

The only Malaysians who still believe this government is credible are those who are corrupt themselves and have benefitted unscrupulously from the massive leakages all these years.

We should put all our resources in supporting the PR to boot out this corrupt government before we sink deeper end up like Zimbabwe and Myanmar.

If the BN MP's are still undecided on crossing over, then we should strongly persuade them to do so by all means. A suggestion to stop paying taxes until this govt is removed can also be explored.

We can't do this alone but in numbers we can. Instead of street demonstration, why not take leave from work. They can't sack us all if all of us were to act. We are given a second chance to change things and our destiny.

If we fail to exercise our rights and choice at this opportunity, then be prepared to live another generation of misery and abuses. It boils down to a simple choice, really. God will not help us until we start helping ourselves.

Percy Chan: What a brilliant idea! Why should we pay for anything that we do not want or do not receive?

Our legal eagles should look at a novel class-action suit against the government for wrongful and deceitful action, for specific non-action in our consumer protection act.

Check precedents in Australian courts. Get a Court sanction to stop the payment of income tax.

May not win but certainly would highlight the issues and tell this government that the power lies with us.

Clippy Mee: No doubt it is our responsibility to pay taxes, but we have paid it into the wrong hands of the government. Malaysia must be the only country that penalises the opposition as no other, literally tit for tat.

It is so obvious that Penang has been denied the projects promised during the election campaign by the BN. I suggest the income tax department be under the control of parliament.

Whoever rules the country has to abide by the laws of parliament to account for the taxes collected from the people.

On Tee Keat gunning for MCA No 1

My View: I welcome Tee Keat's intention to contest for MCA No.1. He is a rare leader with a 'righteous' mind in MCA, and this explains why he is still in parliament after the March 8, 2008 GE.

But I don't agree with Tee Keat that it is his right to contest MCA No.1 only after both Ka Ting and Kong Choy made known their intentions of not defending the No.1 and No 2 posts.

MCA members should think that it is their right to contest for any post in MCA, despite whether party leaders choose to defend their posts or not.

For an organisation to flourish, we need healthy competition.

The mentality of not contesting for the sake of ‘preserving unity’ only brings a superficial unity. That is why MCA fared badly in the last GE. For MCA to rejuvenate, it needs competition.

On IPP association clarifies numbers

KSB: We are aware of how 'creative accounting ' can make figures look reasonable, and this particularly applies here.

If you take these IPP ‘figures’ and work out whatever the profit, return, etc., then you will surely arrive at the conclusion that these profits are reasonable as per market expectation. If not, then there must be some mistake in the computation.

The main issue is how much do we trust these ‘figures’. During the early days of the electrical privatisation, during the Mahathir era, a TNB chairman was forced to step down because he refused to sign the PPA.

The reason was because of the exorbitant tariff which TNB had to pay (15 sen a unit as compared to 11 sen a unit) as well as other unfavourable terms in PPA eg, take or pay clause.

Are the IPPs prepared to reveal their PPAs and their cost of investment, expenses, expected returns, etc., so that it could be verified by some independent study whether those figures were inflated or not?

If the IPPs are genuine in that their ventures only provide a reasonable rate of return, as they claim, then they should welcome others to examine their figures, since there is nothing to hide. Otherwise, why claim something and not be prepared to prove it?

One thing is sure: whatever the outcome of this issue, there is no shortage of IPPs fighting for these privatisation projects.

At the end of the day, the consumers have to pay without the knowledge of what they are paying for. Nobody looks after the consumers’ interests.