Thoughts of Chua Soi Lek

Thoughts of a former minister: Horror!

IN Chua Soi Lek with a post titled “Anwar’s DNA” which is reproduced below in full:

Allegation against Anwar for sodomy continues to dominate the headlines of local press. It is surprising that Anwar had refused lab test to be conducted in order for the DNA profile to be constructed. Normally this will be the easiest way to prove his innocence. DNA profiles do not lie. So, I do not understand why Anwar deny himself of this opportunity to clear his name. If you’re worried about fabrication, then you should get an independent medical team to supervise the collection of blood and the profiling of DNA. If you do not avail yourself of this opportunity to prove your innocence, then it is not convincing to prove your innocence. It is not easy to fabricate DNA evidence.

   Take Chua’s short post, break it up and then see if his prose makes sense.

   Chua: It is surprising that Anwar had refused lab test….

   Given the history of treatment at the hands of the police, doctors and prosecutors how should Anwar’s reaction be “surprising” to Chua? And Anwar is not refusing a lab test: he is refusing to hand over pathological samples, his tissue and fluids, under duress and to the police, one of the last institutions to be trusted, not just by Anwar but down almost every home, in almost every street, in almost every town.

   Chua: the easiest way to prove his innocence…

   How does a DNA profile, in and of itself, prove innocence in a charge of sodomy? Easiest?

   Chua: DNA profiles do not lie.

   Nor a stone; nor a tree. And who says, and what science says, DNA does? The issue with Anwar is not about the veracity of a DNA, but what might the police do with the fluid and tissue samples.

   Chua: DNA profiles do not lie …. It is not easy to fabricate DNA evidence.

   See the contradiction? “It is not easy to fabricate”, which is to say it is possible. Hence, once fabricated, then is not the evidence, the DNA profile, a lie?

   Chua: If you’re worried about fabrication, then you should get an independent medical team to supervise the collection of blood and the profiling of DNA.

   What we have is a man hijacked in daylight, at gunpoint, spirited away, forcibly moved to a hospital, and Chua is suggesting the same man could dictate terms on when and how samples are taken and tested.

   Chua: If you do not avail yourself of this opportunity to prove your innocence, then it is not convincing to prove your innocence.

   Since when has – and what law says – the innocent has to prove innocence, or the guilty has to prove guilt?  “Avail yourself”? Tell to the dead in the police lockups. “If you do not avail yourself… then it is not convincing…” Is this a new kind of tautological idiocy from Chua?

   All this is to suggest that every line in Chua’s 120-word prose is so full holes, you wonder therefore about the intellectual level and capacity that goes into the management of Malaysia, into its governance, into its political life, everything. Small wonder Malaysia, with the like of Chua in government, is today run to the ground. Reading Chua, one is reminded of the judgements delivered from Augustine Paul. 

   At this point, the question has to be asked: why even bother with a rebuttal? And, Chua is given the credit of a “Top Blog” in Malaysiakini. Top Blog?

Culture Without Education, Language

An uneducated culture: What kind of a culture is that? A language-less culture? Below, a man writes of education and language and not know what is said.

MALAYSIAKINI has a letter, dated July 17, 2008, from one Kashminder Singh. Pertinent parts:

… I can also understand and agree with the need to preserve the positive aspects of our own rich culture. However, I am not sure that the issues of education and preservation of cultures need to be tied together. …

I believe that Singaporean Tamils have used other means, and apparently quite effective means, to preserve their culture and language. At the same time, by joining the mainstream education system, Tamil students there appear to me to have done as well as their peers.

The US is another place where Indians have migrated to and they have studied in the English-based education system there without many of them compromising their culture.

I reiterate again that everyone involved needs to be a bit dispassionate and examine if maintaining Tamil schools (and yes Chinese schools too) is the only way to preserve the community’s rich heritages.

   Kashminder Singh writes on two cultures – Tamil and Chinese – that has nothing to do with him. That is, he has no stake in either. This raises a number of questions about his motivations: is he an Anglophile? When he says “mainstream” education in Singapore does he mean an English colonial-handed down system? But we shall ignore that for the moment.

   Singh’s premise and conclusion wrapped into one is this: culture is independent of education, specifically education by the mother tongue language. This is also to say, it doesn’t matter what medium of instruction is used, or what system is used; either way, culture is preserved. People find a way to do it.

   If Singh is correct, then why bother, in Singapore, to offer the choice of an English colonial handed-down system or a Tamil system? Why not convert all schools to a Chinese system, found for example in Taiwan, and make mandatory all medium of instruction in Mandarin? Why, in Malaysia, bother with a national education policy pivoted on the Malay language? Why not force the likes of Mr Singh, Tamils and all Malaysian Indians into schools that use Malay and Malay only? After all, according to Singh’s grand theory, culture can be preserved (intact? in totality?) without the pertinent language use in the school?

   These questions raise even more questions that, collectively, leave behind holes into Singh’s argument. What does he understand in the meaning of and by the word culture? According to the Singh theory of a culture that’s independent of education, then education is not a part of culture? In the extreme, the Singh theory says even language is not a part of a culture, since language can be preserved (in its totality?) without education. And if language preservation is independent of education, and education is independent of culture, then language preservation can be made independent of culture? Each of the three stands alone?

   Consider Singh’s phrase: “by joining the mainstream education system, Tamil students there (in Singapore) appear to me to have done as well as their peers.” In that line, Singh is implying a certain superiority in the English colonial handed-down education system; so superior is it that he found it necessary to suggests how “well” Tamils have done compared to the peers. What peers? Truth be told: Singh loves an Anglo-Saxon culture, that is, he is an Anglophile.

   Note the qualifier – only – in Singh’s penultimate sentence: “I reiterate again that everyone involved needs to be a bit dispassionate and examine if maintaining Tamil schools (and yes Chinese schools too) is the only way to preserve the community’s rich heritages.

   That was not his assertion in the beginning. In the beginning he said, you could do without education in the mother tongue to preserve culture (whatever he chooses it to mean). Then he goes on to try and show proof, without telling what the proof is, other than making more assertions: see, the Singapore Tamils have preserved their culture. (Really?) Now, at the end of his letter, education by mother tongue is not the “only way” in culture preservation. If that is not only way, what are the other ways? And if it’s one way, why is Singh quibbling with a different assertion in the beginning?

   Kashminder Singh is very confused; he is got it to back way around. More than that, he has through himself, and through his letter, showed evidence of a culture and a language lost by his love of an Anglophile education system. Only he doesn’t realise it; hence the letter. Poor chap.

 

In Pakatan, What Kind of a Government?

Who shall govern Malaysia? Why, when, what for?

Does it matter who governs? 

 

IN Lim Kit Siang, there is the Jul 9, 2008, post that transcribes a discussion segment from a radio forum at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Journalists, west or east, are very weak, even inept, in reading events, digesting and comprehending them and then extrapolating for outcomes. It is no different at the ABC; hence, much of the transcription essentially rehashes old news. But two points from a guest (not a journalist) in the forum, Clive Kessler, is worth regurgitating because they are revealing into Malaysia’s immediate future.

 

   Point #1, and this is the premise:

Clive Kessler: The situation in Malaysia at the moment is remarkable and that the brave hopes of independence have turned into an unbelievably sordid soap opera and the popular feeling among many people on the streets is precisely that. That in the sense they find the politics unbelievable, damaging and destructive and they see that more clearly than many of the political principles themselves.

   Point #2, which is the conclusion:

Clive Kessler: The likelihood of a coalition misunderstanding becoming a political understanding and political crisis becoming a public, public order crisis seems to be fairly high. And it’s in that context that the police and army came out last week publicly to say well they’ve already got the contingency plans in place and they’re doing the dry run, more or less, to have a polite authoritarian solution to the politicians and the chaos they’ve created. I think that is the prospect that seems to me to be in the offing, rather than continuing democratisation.

   The last part requires clarification for no reason other than that an extemporaneous narration has no amplification. Worse, it is subject to a variety of interpretations (for a flavour into the variety, read the comments section in the post and note how commentators missed the point in the conclusion.)

 

   Hence to rephrase Kessler:

The likelihood of a coalition misunderstanding becoming a political crisis becoming a public order crisis seems to be fairly high. It’s in that context the police and army came out last week publicly, doing the dry run. They are saying that they’ve the contingency plans in place. (The response to a public order crisis is) a polite authoritarian solution to the politicians and the chaos they’ve created. This (the solution) seems to me to be in the offing, rather than continuing democratisation.

   Question #1: What exactly is this political crisis, and how does it become a public order crisis?

 

   Question #2: What is meant by a “polite authoritarian solution” that is likely to be applied in a public order crisis?

 

   The answers require extrapolation into Kessler’s premise, which is in Point #1. More than that, they require one to agree with him, that is, his conclusions. But, first, to clear the deck on some concepts and for brevity’s sake the academic definitions are avoided.

 

   Political crisis: There is no stable central government hold on Malaysia.

 

   Everywhere in the newspapers, in announcements and in the political websites, the assumption is that either (a) the Barisan Nasional (BN) government keeps its majority or (b) there’ll be enough defections to form a new Pakatan Rakyat (PR) government. This assumption is predicated, in turn, on the notion that everything is settled in one swoop. Thirty legislators jump ship or nobody jumps and all is settled.

 

   Because of the rise of online news, both the newspapers and the government media have now only a limited or little influence on public opinion. The loss of control on the one side, therefore, tilts the influence towards the other side. This is crucial because the domination of online news, which is on the side of PR, means that no one is told that the efforts of Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader, to bring about defections in Parliament is dicey. It breaks not only an ethical principle of politics, but the defections can go the other way. Hence – and this is the more likely scenario – parliamentarians may be defecting back and forth between the BN and PR. This leaves a situation where legislature is in a constant state of flux.

 

   In that regards, the first point of note is that one of PKR’s inner circle members, Ezam Mohd Nor, has already taken the leap. Ezam has numerous precedents, Nallakaruppan, Chandra Muzaffar, to name just two. This suggest that many politicians inside the PKR, including those seconded from the non-governmental organisations, are opportunists. They are there because they see an opportunity, the opportunity being their interests rather than in the public service.

 

   Second point of note: Sabah’s SAPP is gallivanting between BN and PR, and somewhere neither. Its party chief says one thing today; one of its legislators says another, nearly to the contrary, another day. Note, that seldom, if not rarely, is there discussion on this issue, that is, not everybody is taken in by Anwar Ibrahim. And one has to ask the difficult question: Why not?

 

   In this scenario, which is to re-affirm Kessler’s implication, the central authority is highly unstable. Countless problems bounce from it: who shall run this ministry and that; how shall budgets get approved; who shall run the various state companies; why should anybody take any orders from anyone in the government; why should the police continue to patrol the streets; what shall be the policy on immigration; and, so on. A political crisis has all the effects just cited and these, collectively, mean a public order crisis. It doesn’t merely mean 20,000 gathered in a stadium, shouting down the government. They can shout all they want inside a stadium, so what?

 

   Some commentators (such as Malik Imtiaz) have said that the accusations in the paper work of two, once obscure personalities, P Balasubramaniam and Saiful Bukhari Azlan, reflect a collapse in the rule of law. This seems true: the law is no more sacrosanct; it is exploited; it is abused; it is used in anyway that anybody sees fit; it is used contemptuously. In Parliament, where law in written form originates, its long-standing member Bung Mokhtar Radin is a repeated testament and a personification of the contempt.

 

   But a collapse of the rule of law is not at all the same as lawlessness, as stated here. Lawlessness happens amid the end of public order situation, such as described earlier. The law might be treated with contempt – who gives a shit, is the colloquial phrasing – but nobody observes authority and everybody does as pleased.

 

   To internalise these meanings, imagine for a moment the daily conduct of taxi drivers extracting fares from their passengers; the snatch thieves, the municipal health officers, the policemen waiting and all others who make their daily rounds. Multiply that to every facet of life and to all walks of life. Count in bloggers like Tian Chua and Susan Loone who writes anyway it pleases them, thereby contributing to the lawlessness. That, in totality, is lawlessness.

 

   The cause or causes of this lawlessness is not at issue; that all agree. But once the army is out on the streets, the perception of lawlessness changes nearly immediately. More than that, the conduct of the taxi driver could perceptibly change. The snatch thieves hide for the first time in five years, and so on. All that would be the implied consequences of a “polite authoritarian solution”: show the face. There is another way to describe the meaning. It is this: talk softly but walk around with a big stick.

 

   The presumption all along (implied also in Kessler) is that a “polite authoritarian solution” will be the work of the BN government. Now, suppose Anwar gets what he wants: a simple majority government. He will be standing on the exact same shoes as the BN government today.

 

   Who is to say the defections stop immediately and not go from PR to BN? Who is to say Anwar’s government will last 24 hours? Who is to say there won’t be rallies in stadiums and on the streets of Johore, Pahang, Perlis and Malacca where the BN has a substantial majority in the state legislatures? Who is to say there shall be no more issue of statutory declarations? What will the PR central government do? Who is to say that a million civil servants will obey Anwar, the PKR and the DAP and the ministries they control? Will Mr Chua and Ms Loone still preach human rights? Or will the PKR restore rule of law and not use a polite authoritarian solution? An Islamic solution, perhaps?

 

   The point in the questions is this, any government, either way, is going to be weak. And note that neither the DAP nor the PKR has supplied the vaguest notion of how they shall sustain such a government. If they are going to have trouble in government, then what’s the point of being there? Point again: the authority of governments is not absolute. This is exactly what the PKR and the DAP have been trying to show in the last few months.

 

 

PKR, DAP: More Spittle than Tea

Commentary

A RISE in the number of a certain type of commentaries at Malaysiakini is revealing into, not the state of the National Front government, but the state of the opposition - the alliance of socialist DAP, Justice PKR and Islamic PAS - that have been given a chance to rule. They have five states, three heavily populated ones and these are the centres of industries. They want more, and they want it all right away - the federal government. They don’t see the opportunity to govern these states as a sort of a probation, like a trial run, which should be natural considering that they (Anwar Ibrahim excepting) have never before managed a country.

   Hence the preoccupation in politics since securing these states have been to bellyache, to give speeches and to stage rallies. All politics and issues of governance are centred on the parties, rather than on the state governments and on generating good ideas to run the administration and to relieve the pain of living the life as Malaysian. Quiet administration, diligent work, innovative methods are all boring stuff and they take time. But the time and the opportunities given these parties hankering after “change”, how do they use them? Read the blogs of the DAP and PKR people; the answers are all there.

   And this continuing waste of energy, intellect, effort and resources is summed up and captured in the Malaysiakini commentaries and letters. These say something nearly pitiful, and they are reproduced here for the future. At the sites of the DAP and PKR people and their sloganeers, their mouthpieces and their drum beaters, you will never find these letters.

   Who then are those in the DAP with more spittle than tea (Cantonese proverb)? Oh, the list is long, very long and it starts from Lim Kit Siang, extending to their supposedly intellectual muscles like Tony Pua, Jeff Ooi, their lawyers and so on. A man makes his own enemies, and in opposition politics the task was easy to go after the enemy. Good governance is a different thing. For proof, sample the headline items in the DAP home page (中文).

   The PKR? Its ineptitude covers the whole gang, but start with Anwar Ibrahim and Tian Chua, their chief propagandist - they live quarrelsome lives in perpetual fighting, not governance. At the PKR site, same thing.

   Yes, the ruling federal government is in “denial syndrome” (opposition words), but they themselves are worse than being in denial: they just don’t get it. Maybe the letters below will help.

Letter from Malaysian:

Friends and relatives of mine who voted for the opposition have openly voiced among us their error, and that they wanted to just have more opposition in Parliament. Consider it as an exercise gone wrong, and the next election, it may be the other way round - everyone voting for the ruling party to avoid being one of those who contributed to this error.

So far this error was a good thing, but the opposition has shown that even in government they have an ‘opposition mentality’. Street demos, rallies and so on. Comments by none other than the ‘Demo and Rally King’ Azmin Ali.

What do they do when they rule the state? Organise rallies and 15 to 20 thousand people is a big deal of a turnout. We millions stay at home. Count that, it is an even bigger a number. …

Things were good before this error happened , and nobody knows better than that one opposition leader who now runs a state who said, ‘We never expected this, we only expected to have more reps in the state assembly’.

Crucify me or agree with me but we have to go on with life and when a better life is promised, than we should work towards that. As each election comes and goes extend your gains.

Having crossovers to get to run the federal government is only allowing more Ezams to run our country. Does that sound good to all of you who condemn the government?

Again, below,  in Malaysiakini where, one suspect, its people believe or want to believe that the voices represented herein are in favour of the opposition rather than the opposite …. Hence, the dubious headline, Politicians greedy for power.

From Shafiq Alhabshi:

Where are we heading with all these bickering? By next week it will be four months since the legislators have assumed office and yet the political scene is far from stable.

Whilst we are facing a myriad of economic and financial issues, which remains unrequited, we are also faced with numerous issues and problems which could arguably cause a snowball crisis effect.

The dramas which unfold almost on a daily basis are of no help in the likelihood of a crisis. No doubt when it started, we were pleased because it appeared to keep the ruling party on their toes. …

We, the citizens/netizens had elected our representative to air our grievances, issues, concerns and problems for them solve - not to be our ‘entertainers’ with all these antics.

In conclusion, should I be accorded with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet leaders of both BN and PR, I would like to hand them each with a huge banner reading ‘Buat Kerja’.

From JD Lovrenciear:

The report after report and the retractions, denials, and sordid allegations is tearing this nation apart.

For the love of this nation, its crown and the citizens, can someone please stop all this and help us get on with nation-building seriously?

It is crystal clear that someone has got to tell this - do something. Lead, follow or get out of the way.

From Jude Manickam:

I think we are on the threshold of a new Malaysia. Whether for good or worse is another matter. The soap operas have got to stop.

And ultimately, the power bestowed upon the PM is there to be used for the good of all, not a selected few.

In this context, Pak Lah must take charge and do the right thing for the nation - not for Najib, Umno or the man who lives down the road.

For heaven’s sake man, take charge!

 

A Dead Body & Dead Silence Among the Critics

One is repeatedly harangued by words, justice, freedom, human rights, save the constitution. But suddenly the fine words fall silent over one dead Elangesvaran Benedict. Here, below, is to explain the failure of politics over a dead body and what this might mean.

 

ON the North-South Federal Expressway, you are certain to miss Parit Buntar. On the old federal north-south Route 1, the town is the last out of Perak state and before you enter Nibong Tebal in Penang.

 

   Elangesvaran Benedict rests in the Parit Buntar district hospital dead – by one account, he killed himself – and still stuck between two religions, two courts, and between a family seeking a Hindu burial and two inept governments. The two religions are Hinduism and Islam; and, one court is Syariah or Islamic and the other is civil and secular.

 

   Elangasvaran’s case, excepting for the details – how he supposedly came to convert, whether he was Muslim until death, and the degrees of agony of a wife and family seeking the body – is not new. Before him, there was Moorthy, a decorated soldier who climbed Mt Everest. In between there were numerous other cases that, to all intents and purposes, centred on the fundamental issue: who has right of way? Who has the last say for someone to be Muslim or Hindu or Christian?

 

   Common-sensically, it would be the individual. But not always in Malaysia, and not especially if Islam is at stake.

 

   The court cases over Lina Joy, Subashini, et al, although they vary again in details, were hardly definitive. Moorthy’s case and those of others had paved the way for Elangesvaran in an acute sense because the person at stake is dead. In Lina Joy’s case, she is alive and the State still had the final say, a point already reaffirmed by the highest court of the land. What more then in Elangesvaran when dead?

 

   Now, under the state – the word here to mean a unit of a federalist government – would be the various religious departments. The departments report to the various state governments and are financed by them. In Moorthy, Subashini and Lina Joy – to cite the most controversial – the various Islamic departments were seemingly free to pursue their religious agenda as they pleased. Both they and the state governments were heavily criticised. Critics would not challenge the Constitution for being self-contradictory and, therefore, defective.

 

   The critics came in many shades, but mostly they were on a campaign against the government of the day, at both federal and state levels. At both levels the governments were run by the National Front coalition parties of prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Among the critics too were numerous bloggers, pining over human rights violations and loss of religious freedom and unconstitutionality, things that parallel the opposition politicians making the same criticisms.

 

   Today and after March general elections Penang and Perak are run and governed by the same group of critics – in particular, the opposition politicians from the Democratic Action Party (DAP). Penang is especially noteworthy because the DAP has swept the state and Elangesvaran converted in Penang. Hence, the demand to bury the man came from the Penang Islamic department while in Parit Buntar, it is the hospital authorities that have refused to let go the body.

 

   Here then is the farce. While families and the state fight over dead bodies and individual beliefs – expending enormous amounts of money and emotional energy at the same time – opposition campaigns over the fight were given an ethical flavour. Let the people go. Free the people. These were the implications. The critics and the opposition especially made such conversion/Islamic issues into a political issue by sidetracking the underlying problem in the constitutionality. And, of course, the courts exploited the problem to the hilt.

 

   The politics was especially virulent because the causes in such cases were traced back to the government, especially to the state that had legal, financial and authorial jurisdiction over the Islamic departments. If the state had stayed its hands, there would be no court fights. In other words, if the religious departments were to just live and let live, everybody might just be better off. After all, what’s a dead body worth or the lives of a handful who wanted to visit another god?

 

   But now that the state governments – Penang and Perak – are under the opposition, one finds silence all round. It is not difficult to guess why, for a number of reasons, the two governments are inept in dealing with the body of Elangesvaran. Still, the ultimate effect remains unchanged. Earlier, in this site, the question was asked if the DAP will pass the dead man’s test. The answer is this, the DAP failed. They had implied promises to sort out matters, they got voted in and they failed. What then is the difference between a state run by the Pakatan Rakyat, to which the DAP has the largest share in each of the two governments, and the National Front?

 

   There’s worse. The DAP’s silence extends to their cohorts in their political blogs, in particular Malaysia Today, People’s Parliament, Elizabeth Wong, Susan Loone  – the list is long, very long, and a few of whom are now in positions of relative power.

 

   Silence in the DAP blogs: Lim Kit Siang, Jeff Ooi, M Kulasegaran, Fong Po Kuan, Chow Kon Yeow. All five serve Penang and Perak states and were elected there. No time for a dead man? Busy over Bala?

 

   Extracts from a newspaper report, dated Jul 5, 2008:

GEORGE TOWN: A dispute over the right to claim the body of a man between the religious authorities and the deceased’s family has taken on a new twist.

   The matter was supposed to be decided at the High Court here yesterday afternoon, but the religious authorities jumped the gun and obtained a declaration from the Parit Buntar Syariah Court in the morning.The Syariah court declared that the deceased, Elangesvaran Benedict, was a Muslim.

   The matter was decided by the court despite the fact that Elangesvaran’s wife, who had been named as a respondent in the case, was not present in the Syariah court. This raised the wrath of Elangesvaran’s family who had gathered at the High Court here.

   Karpal Singh and R.S.N. Rayer, who represented Elangesvaran’s family, expressed outrage over the underhanded manner the case had been handled. They raised the matter with High Court judge Datuk Balia Yusuf Wahi when the case was heard in his chambers.

   “We made it clear that it is not proper for them (the religious authorities) to have gone to the Syariah Court in the morning, knowing very well that this matter is going to be heard at the High Court in the afternoon,” said Karpal.

More details on Elangesvaran and precedent cases here.

 

 

Killing the Evidence; Saving Ourselves

The opening lines in a statutory declaration: “I, Balasubramaniam a/l Perumal (NRIC NO: xxxxxx-xx-6235) a Malaysian Citizen of full age and residing at xxxxx, Selangor do solemly and sincerely declare…”

AFTER the VK Lingam video surfaced to suggest former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, lawyer Lingam and others had fixed the judiciary the problem for those implicated was to get at the evidence – the video itself. This was next to impossible not only because the clip could be duplicated a million times over, but also the contents that had existed in the past were not erasable. And the video maker was at the time anonymous. Then, also, the contents are in the persons named in the clip, Lingam et al. Even after taken into consideration all that, there was hardly a motive to want to get any or all the three parts of the evidences – the clip, the maker of the clip, and the contents. Reasons are these: the Chief Justice named in the video is no longer the country’s top judge, nor is the prime minister the prime minister, by now a hated figure.

   Now comes a statutory declaration dated July 1 made by one P Balasubramaniam. Like the VK Lingam video, there are again three parts to the statutory declaration or the idea itself:

• the prescribed declaration form;
• its maker; and
• the contents.

   The declaration itself is protected by law. How then does one get rid of a legal instrument, not just the physical form but the idea itself? This is what is reported from Bala’s nephew (in Malaysia Today), a man named Kumaresan:

“Kumaresan also disclosed that on July 1 after his uncle had prepared first statutory declaration (two days before it was released at the PKR headquarters), his uncle had met and given the original copy to his brother for safekeeping.”

   Bala, evidently, thought that a physical copy is important. This seems a perfectly natural thought, like it were his passport, his identity card. Bala’s first declaration is proof of something existing – in this case, his statement with the allegations of certain events.

   When another statutory declaration was made, dated July 4, in effect repudiating the first, the answer to the question (cited earlier) became self-evident. (Repudiating a declaration by another declaration has other implications, which will be tackled later. This is because one declaration does not annul another without mutual self-destruction. It’s like saying, my name is P Balasubramniam and I now declare by name is not P Balasubramniam.) But, the physical copy, if still in the hands of Bala’s brother, becomes useless. And this is what counts.

   Here’s the problem with trying to kill the past, or reality: the evidences of the past are also in the maker of the declaration. After all, the declaration is purely a summation, or a sworn testimony, in written form, of events witnessed or heard or seen by the maker. In the Lingam video, the maker is the recorder of events; in Bala’s first declaration, he is verifying under law, he is the evidence. Or, at the least, he is a part of the evidences. Now Bala is missing, in the sense neither family nor friends know where he is.

   To kill the one declaration is to issue another. But to the contents of the statutory declaration – and this is the difficult part - how do you kill the events mentioned therein? Bala’s second declaration of July 4 had merely deleted the parts implicating powerful figures - assuming them true - but, if so, what about the past itself.

   Recall the sodomy allegation against Anwar Ibrahim, and also the Lingam video. One of the rebuttals offered by the government was not Anwar’s denial, that is, not his denial of the accusation. The government then asked, and reiterated by Umno Putera, did the event occur? This is what sticks in the throat. In the Lingam video, the Royal Commission investigating it, the question it asks itself was, did such a phone conversation take place – never mind the recording itself? The answer was, yes.

   Facts are erasable, but truth is fungible. The allegation that powerful figures were involved in the murder of Altantuya becomes mere allegation if they are not verifiable. Truth, or the assertion of it, must answer the question: how do you know? This is the paradox that has occupied some philosophers trying to distinguish between truth and science. Any verifiable truth matter must be, not verifiable, but falsifiable – that is proven false. All swans are white is a true statement because there had never been a black swan, not in a thousand years. One day, a black swan turned up in Australia. This says that truth is tentative and must allow itself to be falsifiable.

   Bala the declaration maker being missing, hence, removes the link between the events and the statutory declaration. The July 1 declaration has been dealt with, by another declaration and rendered useless. (All arguments over what or which is believable are as pointless and as they are unproductive to the outcome or effect derived from the first declaration.) But the actual events?

   The events are the contents in the declaration. The events float in the consciousness. Bala, by the first declaration, has now suggested the truth in those events. A missing Bala goes a long way to alter the truth – the black swan is missing. The assumption all along is that the forces involved in Bala’s July 4 declaration are also involved in his disappearance.

   But, also notice the cavalier attitude and the complete absence of precautions taken to protect Bala after he made public his first declaration. It is as if Anwar Ibrahim was waiting for Bala to be taken in by – no, literally handed him in to – the opposing forces.

   Here is Raja Petra Kamarudin’s testimony:

“I met Bala on 2 July 2008 and was with him for about six hours from 6.30pm. He was jovial and chatty and joked that my SD (statutory declaration) two weeks earlier had stolen the thunder from his. Now, his has become the second SD instead of the first as he had hoped. After the press conference of 3 July 2008 we had lunch and he was still as jovial and chatty as the night before. He was now the superstar and he was relishing every minute of it. We agreed to meet on Saturday night (tonight) to party and celebrate the ‘success’ of his SD. Then, yesterday (July 4), the bombshell.”

   No talk of protection; no protection; only partying. That’s only the ostensible part.

   Now, if Anwar or Anwar’s party, the PKR (Justice), has Bala, or is protecting him, then this is a swan he can’t let go. Declaring one declaration against another does not repudiate the events, assuming them true. That is, actual history, the past, does not allow itself to be changed. Bala is the evidence; he may change his story and so on, but he is still the evidence.

   If Anwar’s opposing forces has Bala, then - again assuming his statements true - they have the black swan. The last time somebody of some significance disappeared, the body was found in tiny, powdered unrecognisable bits.

The happiness or unhappiness of a man is hardly the point. Yet commentators, typically for Anwar Ibrahim (extreme right, picture right), bellyache endlessly over which statutory declaration, Jul 1 or 4, is true by pointing to the demeanour of P Balasubramaniam in between the two dates of the photos taken Jul 3 with Anwar and Jul 4 (picture left), after the second declaration was issued.

   Malik Imtiaz is probably not the first person to suggests that, in Malaysia, the rule of law has collapsed but he is one of the first lawyers to state so categorically and openly. His colleagues at the Malaysian Bar, and the Bar itself, have toyed with the word, collapse, by substituting it with words to the effect as, ‘undermine the rule of law’. It is as if, somehow, all the institutions are still intact and they are not a wreck, only damaged. They can be saved. But here is one more among the latest pieces found in the wreckage: authorities choosing their court of justice.

   In the circumstances, life will be fought on the streets. Forget especially people with grand words - justice, freedom and so on - and preaching “do not speak about freedom of speech if you are not prepared for the consequences.”  They say these things knowing they don’t have to live with the consquences. Give them freedom, you never know what they will do with it. This is to say that people, some ostensibly on the side of virtue(try looking for bloggers with top hits), also lie. Bala, a former policeman, is proof. One day on the side of truth, on the side of law, another day neither; he has now said he lied. They were Balas before and Balas today and they will be Balas waiting to show themselves in the future. That, for Malik Imtiaz’s benefit, is the true meaning of the collapse of the rule of law. We are each, individually, on our own. 

 

 

 

 

Seize the Day! Seize the Day!

Police at Parliament

What is to done? After all that’s happened, what is to be done? The answer is self-evident. Between the government and the people, back the people.

THE riot police had arrived at Parliament, and not for the first time, on Monday, Jun 30, 2008. The purpose was to prevent a group of people from non-government organisations from entering the building or its premises.

   Now, among those who campaign politically, the NGO people constitute the easiest bunch to have to deal with. Most of them, if they are not obnoxious, they are like weeds. They are easily manipulated, they are soft, they bend over readily - you need only the right words, not reason.

   To have to despatch the riot police to stop the NGO people, therefore, is quite nearly a joke. But that’s only the ostensible purpose. Review again the photograph (from AFP). It is highly symbolic of what has happened to-date to government, to institutions, to the country - Malaysia is a country at the end of the ropes.

   This present federal government has with malice, with impunity, without shame, without hesitation, without just cause, without decency, and without virtue has made itself an enemy of the people. It bullies without end, it kills, it thieves - and few of these are small, isolated incidences. This has become a growing pattern, culminating today in the March general elections, to things happening in court rooms, in government offices, at police stations, in Kajang, to Mageswaran, to Lina Joy, Altantuya, Anwar, and so on. Behind and alongside the executive government is the police. Symbolic in the photograph is that the police - as equal to the executive - has begun to run the country like the two are a junta. Parliament is dismissed as a sideshow, to be put down at any time the police chooses.

   There is an article in AFP. It alludes to sometime which its reporter missed. And then there is a letter in Malaysiakini from Amir Hamzah. Together the two carry almost the same message.

   The time has come. Seize the day.

 

Kafka in Malaysia, visits Anwar

Before the law is the doorkeeper - Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

How do you prove innocence?

 

AFTER the video clip of VK Lingam was uploaded last year, Malaysian prime minister Abdullah Badawi promised retribution. Abdullah upon seeing the video was least concerned about the matter beforehand, that is, the video’s contents: lawyers, judges, politicians and businessmen conspiring to line up their own circle of people in the bench. He was more eager to find the person who made the recording and the person who subsequently exposed the conspiracy, Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader.

Said Abdullah:  “If the evidence show what transpired in the video was not the truth, action should be taken against those who released the video, as well as all those who lodged ACA reports.”

   Today nearly a year later, Abdullah would reverse the logic in his argument. One man named Saiful Bukhari Azlan, 23, had lodged a police report of sodomy against Anwar. The table had reversed. Thus, when Abdullah was asked about the veracity in the Saiful’s accusation, his reply on Jun 29, 2008, and reported in the New Straits Times whose allegiance is always to the government of the day was this:

“The police are the ones who will determine whether the report is true or not. It is not something that we can determine. He will definitely deny it. That is common for someone who has been accused.”

   In last year’s VK Lingam case Anwar had brought the accusation against the government, after which a panel of judges have confirmed the video’s veracity. But nothing so far yet has happened to Lingam et al. Today, in the reversal of roles, the sodomy case against Anwar is pending and he must run.

   Anwar had been warned. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) had written extensively about a legal and bureaucratic institution that is as vile as it is relentless and faceless. He wrote that nearly a century ago. Anwar, it is apparent from his remarks to Malaysiakini, had read of the warnings. “Welcome,” he said, “to Kafka land.”

   In The Trial (published 1925), Kafka had preceded Abdullah in nearly the exact same words that the latter would use almost a century later. Below is the relevant part in the novel in which Kafka put those words into the mouths of Josef K (in many of the man’s works the protagonist is never fully named).

   But, before that, this is how Kafka, who always had great opening lines, starts the book:

“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K. because, one morning for no good reason he was arrested.”

   Anwar must have found that very familiar. Then, near to the novel’s end, when K., already worn down by an arrest that didn’t quite make sense and worn down by the police, the lawyers and the courts, he goes to see a priest. For a man in that state, one would expect confession and even solace in prayers. But there was none of the sort because confession and prayer presuppose guilt.

“What are you holding in your hand?  Is it a prayer book?” the priest asked.

“No,” answered K., “it’s an album of the city’s tourist sights.”

“Put it down,” said the priest.

K. threw it away with such force that it flapped open and rolled across the floor, tearing its pages.

“Do you know your case is going badly?” asked the priest.

“That’s how it seems to me too. I’ve expended a lot of effort on it, but so far with no result. I do still have some documents to submit.”

“How do you imagine it will end?”

“At first I thought it was bound to end well,” said K., “but now I have my doubts about it.  I don’t know how it will end. Do you?”

“I don’t,” said the priest, “but I fear it will end badly. You are considered guilty. Your case will probably not even go beyond a minor court. Provisionally at least, your guilt is seen as proven.”

“But I’m not guilty,” said K., “there’s been a mistake. …

Said the priest: “That is how the guilty speaks.”

   Kafka puts it more eloquently than Abdullah of course. Suppose Anwar goes to court, again, this is what Kafka has warned about justice.

“Don’t fool yourself,” said the priest.

“How would I be fooling myself?” asked K.

“You fool yourself in the court,” said the priest. “there is self-deceit in the opening paragraphs to the law. In front of the law is a doorkeeper.”

   Kafka then goes on to write that the passage of a case through the courts goes through many doorkeepers because there are many doors. Saiful is Anwar’s doorkeeper; after that the Inspector General of Police; Gani Patail, the Attorney General, and onwards to Abdullah. Note that the first doorkeeper is Saiful, a man they say is a coffee boy.

   Welcome to Kafka land, did you say Anwar? This, below, is the Malaysiakini report although not entirely well captured because of the fragments in Anwar’s remarks:

“It’s surreal that this is happening,” said Anwar…. “You would think that the authorities would be chastened by the shocks dealt them at the general election last March such that they would not stoop this low to defame me this time. Well, welcome to Kafka land!”

   Accused of raping a man, nearly thrice his age, there is little escape. Anwar, you see, your guilt is already proven. This is because innocence is not for proving. Innocence is not provable.

   Josef K was, in the end, sentenced to death, by stabbing. The novel’s concluding paragraph:

“The hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.’s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek, close in front of his face, watching the result. “Like a dog!” he said, as if the shame of it should outlive him.

 

Endnote

With police report and arrest pending, Anwar’s plans now look badly derailed. Between two critical dates, Jul 5 and Sep 16, were to be a series of scheduled events. Saiful’s police report on Jun 28 is a serious disruption to the plans.

• July 5: 1 million-strong rally against high petrol prices
• July?: Final confirmation to lodge report against Inspector General of Police and Attorney General for fabrication of evidences in 1998-99 trial of Anwar (this has now been brought forward).
• August?: Parliamentary seat vacated, Anwar to contest.
• August?: First group of MPs to publicly join Anwar and Pakatan Rakyat, the coalition of opposition parties.
• Sept?: Third and final session of Parliament for the year resumes.
• Sept 16: Deadline for all crossovers to Anwar and Pakatan.

Postscript
HORROR: Kafka Revisionism. Found in the New York Review of Books:

“It is now necessary to state some accepted truths about Franz Kafka, and the Kafkaesque…. Kafka’s work lies outside literature: it is not fully part of the history of European fiction. He has no predecessors—his work appears as if from nowhere—and he has no true successors…. These fictions express the alienation of modern man; they are a prophecy of a) the totalitarian police state, and b) the Nazi Holocaust. His work expresses a Jewish mysticism, a non-denominational mysticism, an anguish of man without God. His work is very serious. He never smiles in photographs…. It is crucial to know the facts of Kafka’s emotional life when reading his fiction. In some sense, all his stories are autobiographical. He is a genius, outside ordinary limits of literature, and a saint, outside ordinary limits of human behaviour. All of these truths, all of them, are wrong.”

On Anwar & How the Media Lies

THE notion of ’spinning’ is often used to describe reports in the mainstream media, The Star, RTM, the NST and so on, in an attempt to alter or reverse the effect that reported events may have on the reader. Spinning suggests or connotes an attempt to turn a positive thing negative, or vice-versa. Synonyms of ’spin’ would be ’slant’ and ‘twist’.  This notion is not always right. Consider the following case, running on the latest sodomy allegation against Anwar Ibrahim, the political opposition leader.

   In The Star, with a headline posted Sunday June 29, 2008 MYT 8:21:03

Anwar receives death threats, in hiding (Update 3)

   Two concepts are pertinent: (a) death threats, and (b) in hiding.

• The report beneath the headline does talk of “death threat” and this talk is attributed, without quotation, to Wan Azizah, Anwar’s wife and president of the PKR (Justice) party. Nothing else. Exactly what did Wan Azizah say? Bernama: “Friends told us to take care of him and that his life was in danger.”

Malaysiakini’s headline in contrast: ‘PKR fears Anwar an assassination target’.

• On the concept of “in hiding”.

Again Bernama quoting Azmin Ali, the party’s vice-president: “The decision to shelter Datuk Seri Anwar at a safe place was made at a meeting attended by PKR leaders.”

   On both matters, death threat and in hiding, Anwar has issued two statements right from the start, that is before the headline. They are plainly stated on both counts, his whereabouts and why. He openly said he had taken refuge at the Turkish embassy because of the possibility of what certain forces might do to him, that is, kill him. To be ‘in hiding’ is to suggest secrecy, disappearance, going underground. Yet in plain statements it is none of the three elements.

   Death threat suggests a direct contact made, an intention announced, to kill a certain person with an explicit instruction coming. It comes in particular from the person intending to carry out the threat, or a representative thereof. Instead, Anwar and the Justice party were tipped off into a possible action - he might be killed. It is a tip-off, an alert, in contrast to a threat directly or indirectly issued by the person or persons wanting to kill so that assassination is the correct word.

   Now for the question: Were the editors at The Star spinning out of bad English and editorial incompetency? Spinning infers you have to be good in your language and vocabulary. But it can’t be bad English that they wrote the headline because many of the facts to the contrary are everywhere and Anwar had issued written statements. If they were good in language or of passable standard, then were they spinning? The conclusion has to be this: no. If The Star editors were not spinning, then were they trying to lie or to paint over the truth of unfolding events? Lying or attempting to do so is not spinning.

   Moral of this brief note: watch the language, the lying is starting.

   This conclusion raises another question. What’s the effect of saying Anwar has a death threat and he is in hiding? The sense of the headline is that it is an individual matter. He has enemies of an individual, private nature so that hiding reinforces that perception. But the cruz of Anwar’s statements and those by his associates say the opposite, which is that a conspiracy (including the police report of sodomy made against him) is unfolding, culminating possibly with his killing or assassination.

   This fear of a conspiracy is not without basis. Accused of sodomy ten years ago, he was arrested and then beaten nearly unconscious - in a police station, by a policeman. Such is Malaysia where people, otherwise healthy young people, die in the custody of the police, without explanation, without investigation. They just die.

  After the police and the judiciary, the media must be laundered clean one day.

 

 

Three Months Later: Probation Performance Appraisals

Ye shall know them by the company they keep. Take that principle, twist it a little, and ye shall know them by the blogs they keep.

IN the old days, PKR (Justice party) was nearly non-existent. The DAP (Democratic Action Party) parliamentary and state assembly members were so alone in the sea of the government backbenchers, its policy initiatives and institutions, you feel sorry for them. Their alone-ness is reflected in their blogs: alot of pedestrian stuff, some whining over this failure and that, and little entries of no great significance with the occasional call to arms.

   Now they are in power. Not enormous power, not power at the federal level, but some, and its considerable in hind sight, relatively, and at one level, state. Above all, they have numbers now. Its people are no more alone.

   The DAP along with the PKR crucially share legislative power in three states, Penang, Perak and Selangor.

   One of the things that strike you in the demonstrations to remove a blockade that would divert Makhota Cheras traffic to pay tolls - a form of forcible tax for private benefit - is nearly the powerlessness of the DAP. The Makhota toll road runs in a part of Selangor. The issue had been brewing more than a year before the 2008 general elections. The fact that it resurfaced, accompanied by violence and police brutality soon after the elections illustrate almost a sense of ineptness by the state government to which the DAP is a part thereof. Worse, a part owner of the toll road company is also the government. This is almost an incredulously ironic episode, seeing DAP legislators functioning like opposition lawmakers, tackling the police on the streets rather than working to get them sacked, and quietly. Makhota showed it was back to the old days.

   Some things also passed on from the old days. The DAP members keep blogs. Ye shall know them by the blogs so that it is possible to see if the DAP and PKR legislators together do the job they are elected to do - run the states, manage (or interfere in) the institutions, sort out problems especially because they are so many around and the federal authorities are utterly incompetent, even if they act. In other words it is possible to gauge DAP and PKR performances in legislature and in governance in their blogs. This gauge is not definitive but it offers a glean, a sense of what they have managed to do or not do.

   It’s been a 100 days - three months - so that the blog entries and the issues addressed in them will show the level of their imagination, the skill in their politics, the intelligence in their administrative and managerial conduct. This is also to say the blogs offer a series of snap shot records into their ground level accomplishments (or none whatsoever) and that’s with the benefit of whatever the authority already vested in them.

   This series taken from the last 100 days are important because they can be benchmarked against early entries prior to the March general elections. Their latter-day performances need not be revolutionary, even groundbreaking, but the blog entries the past months should have move forward from the banalities produced in the early and lonely days.

Waiting for Godot: One sense that the DAP is waiting, waiting, waiting for the man on the left. If so, that dependency will in years to come turn the DAP into Gerakan today; only the shell is left.

   Below let the record speak, state by state. Mostly, it is a record of DAP members. Forget PAS. The latest entries or near latest entries are used. They show an amazingly low level of governance. How so? In tone, language, substance, and ideas, these benchmarks in the blogs reveal little effort if any. Instead, we read them talking and talking and talking, and whining. Those entries don’t show work, and above all don’t show the drive to accomplish something concrete, anything. Perhaps the best, the most efficient, are those without blogs. After all, if there’s time to blog then governance and administration must be a easy life.

SELANGOR

• Tony Pua: For that entry, he calls that “progress” in municipal PJ.
• Ronnie Liu: He wants answers to a letter about buses from questions borrowed from an enemy. Sigh.
• Hannah Yeoh: She is impossible - why on earth is she in a legislative assembly?
• Charles Santiago: He tries so hard but national politics is a different kettle of fish to NGO activism. The latter is all you hear.
• Elizabeth Wong: Like Santiago, two of a kind. She might not have heard of “public administration”. Lots of yada, yada, yada.
• William Leong: Doing good work in Kuang, for example. But blog doesn’t show it.

PERAK

• M Kulasegaran: From him, reams of speeches. For crying out loud, please…
• Fong Po Kuan: It is the same song and dance routine nearly every day.
• Wong Kar Woh: Again, speech after speech after speech. 

PENANG

• Jeff Ooi: No solutions, no answers, no ideas - but lots of rehashing of material.
• Chow Kon Yeow: Working hard yes, only by default. Band aid solutions are not substitutes for fundamental change.
• Chong Eng: Nice, fancy blog. Still pounding the pavements. Just go out and kick some butts.

SPECIAL MENTION

• Fong Kui Lun: Yes, way to go. And it’s back to the basics.
• Jenice Lee: Always meeting constituents. Finding out, collate information. Understanding, then act.
• Teresa Kok: Concrete, imaginative piece of work. Forget the authorities, they are against you.
• Xavier Jayakumar: Hardly profound, but quietly working. At some point, the gift giving has to stop. 

Horror! The Test, The Test

AT LAST, The Test. This will be the test of the Pakatan Rakyat Perak government made up of the socialist DAP, the Justice PKR and the Islamic PAS parties. DAP has 18 of the 32 Pakatan coalition seats, PKR eight (in a total of 60). PAS has the least, six, but it holds the chief minister (Mentri Besar) post that has the capacity to influence and act on the state Islamic religious department.

The statement below, dated June 24, 2008, was issued by the Malaysia Hindu Sangam. It details the replay of an old story and an old theme. It is also self-explanatory. On the same day of the statement, the Sultan of Perak was reported to have said, inter alia, that people should “not … test or challenge religious issues to the extent of creating uneasiness among society”. His exact words were not produced (see, never trust the media), so the message and its implication are as ambigous as they are wide. Hindu Sangam, meanwhile (to which this point must be added - Hindu Sangam in the person of A Vaithilingam might have been easier, or softer, faced with the predecessor government):

We refer to the report in the Malaysia Nanban on Tuesday, 24th June 2008 (page 3) regarding the turmoil faced by the family of the late Elangesvaran.

We understand that the late Elangesvaran allegedly converted to Islam at some point. He has now committed suicide, and his body is at the hospital. The Islamic authorities say he died a Muslim, but his family members and friends say that Elangesvaran continued to profess and practise Hinduism all the way through until his untimely death.

The Malaysia Hindu Sangam extends our deepest condolences to his family in their time of grief on the untimely and early demise of Elangesvaran.. We are also saddened that yet again a grieving family is being put through torment because Islamic religious authorities are threatening to snatch away the body of their loved one away.

We have today written to the Menteri Besar of Perak urging him to ensure that the civil courts are allowed to determine the religious status of the late Elangesvaran. Therefore, we urge the Islamic authorities not to prosecute claims in the Syariah court for the bodies of the dead who are in the custody of non Muslim next of kin. If a non-Muslim is a party to the dispute, the Syariah courts should not deal with the matter.

We also urge the Perak State Government to recognise the constitutional right of a non Muslim who may have converted to Islam for some reason to revert to his original religion, or to some other religion. A person’s right to profess and practice the religion of his choice should not be unnecessarily interfered with by the State.

This test of the Pakatan is relatively straightforward, which is also to say the exam requires no great legal nor intellectual skills. This is purely a test of wills. And as straight as it is, the test will decide:

• (a) the ultimate nature of a Pakatan coalition. By nature, it is to mean the extent of the inter-party relationship, whether, for example, convenience in the relationship can be extended to governance? Is it substantive? Can it hold?

• (b) the future course of all Pakatan governments, present and future, including especially any possibility of a federal government

If the test fails - however defined - then it proves that putting aside disagreements when opposing parties had prior chances to sort it out is never a lasting principle for coexistence. In truth, then, there is no fundamental difference between a Pakatan coalition and the ruling National Front (BN) coalition. For decades, the BN wanted it both ways; the result is what we get in the Hindu Sangam statement and numerous parallel and similar cases prior to it. Now, this has to be decided once and for all time not by the constitution because the judiciary has been pussy-footing with it and the constitution itself is contradictory in parts. The test then is purely political, hence (a) and (b).

This issue has been haunting the DAP ever since there is a DAP except that now, in a different set of circumstances, in a position of relative power, what has it to say? Nothing, nothing, nothing. The People wait.

The Enemy of the State

NEWS report dated June 24, 2008

KUALA LUMPUR: A policeman was detained for allegedly forcing a 17-year-old girl to perform oral sex and raping her in a police station in Selangor recently. It was learnt that the policeman, in his 20s, had stopped the girl and her boyfriend, who were riding a motorcycle, while making his rounds about 5am on June 18. Upon questioning, the policeman, who was with a colleague, discovered that the girl’s boyfriend did not possess a licence and the couple was taken to a police station for further questioning. Sources said the couple was later interrogated separately in different rooms. While being interrogated, the girl was allegedly forced to undress and threatened.

   Without the need to ask them or to hear their answers, one could recite with precision the likely responses from the Inspector General of Police and the state chief police officer CPO Khalid Abu Bakar. “This is an isolated incident. Nobody is above the law; we will act,” they would say. “It’s just a few bad apples; the majority of the police are hardworking, dedicated enforcers of the law.” The same platitudes.

   They said the same last year, the year before that and ten years ago. Last year, ten persons died in police lockups without explanations. How many before that? With the police, life is dangerous. In 2006, Altantuya was stuffed with explosives and blown up. There are more, but people do not lack poor memories. Incidences like the experience of the teenage girl, and those endured by countless others in all forms, each time involving the police, have happened and will continue to happen with such regularity and frequency, there is only one conclusion: this isn’t a case of injustice or corruption. It is far, far worse, and it is systemic. It is one more testament on top of countless others that the police is an unmitigated evil force.

   The socialist DAP and Justice PKR parties must sit down to discuss a strategy and conceive a master plan to rid this evil from the nation for all time. There should be no comissions, truth commissions, and amnesties. The problem is deep; it has gone past with the likes of problems in Hong Kong where the police in the sixties and seventies was after money in the main. So deep is it in Malaysia that the police must be overturned, roots first, sleeves pulled inside out. Note that in the teenager’s case, no mention is made of the colleague of the policeman suspect. Interrogating kids over a licence? There is silence concerning the officer-in-charge at the police station at the time. The CPO, like the officer-in-charge, will also walk free, without accounting for the conduct of their subordinates, without responsibilities and without any legal or internal procedural liability.

   One policeman goes to court, the rest goes on with life as usual, and then the nation waits for the next rape, next robbery, or next murder by yet more policemen. It will happen. More routinely, they will wait behind a tree at 5 am for the next motorcycle to come along. The policeman suspect was “making his rounds”? Sure he was. It may not be a girl the next time, it could be money instead. Same thing, different mode of payment, different price.

   While the DAP and PKR clean up the politics, the police must be on the top of the priority list of things-to-do; the police is afterall also a political force today. Finish with all the talking. The planning must start right away and completed to await the moment of execution. It must be detail to the extent of including:

• the setting of an auxiliary force drawn from the army, airforce and navy to take over for a fixed period the street duties of the police;

• the creation of a database containing a compilation of names of policemen and women, the districts they served, to be prosecuted for dereliction of duty; a list of policemen to be dismissed, without pension, starting from the top. A former IGP has already given a benchmark number for culling: 40 percent of the police force and that is a starting not the end point;

• the creation of a special tribunal or court to hear and expedite serious cases, a serious case defined as affecting any or all of the loss of life, limb or property; anything less is subject to internal disciplinary procedure and loss of the job, without pension, is minimum penalty;

• the reconsitution of the police training academy and a special recruitment drive and training programme for new officers and rank-and-file men and women to start duties within nine months from date of admission;

• the setting up of a special interview team to readmit or to rehire on a fixed-period contractual basis first rate police officers who have retired or have left early but in possession of a scrupulously clean service record, accompanied by the highest and most trusted recommendations; and

• the setting up of a special legal team to review for the purpose of redelineating all statutory powers vested with the police and an overhaul for the purpose of reconstructing all internal procedural and administrative matters.

There is not a second to waste in the planning - it is incumbent of the parties as part of good governance to act now - because the police have demonstrated repeatedly, over and over again, as the enemy of the state and its people. They rob, rape, beat up people and they murder while senior officers sit on their hands offering platitudes year-in, year-out because …. they, too, hide crimes?

 

DAP-PKR: What is it like to govern?

Penang, Selangor and the Perak governments are throwing money at their peoples. The assumption in their acts is that a government equals a party; hence, what is good for governance is good for the party. Corruption starts in governance, not outside it.

WITHIN a hundred days, the governments of Penang, Selangor and Perak have given out money, water, and considered waiving parking fines. This is also to say, in the abstract, they have been doodling with physical matter, life and morality.

   Anwar Ibrahim, the man who glues together the three-party faces of the government - the socialist DAP, the Justice PKR and Islamic PAS - is busy meanwhile trying to usurp another government, the Barisan Nasional (National Front). He knows, therein, in Putrajaya, real power lies. Suppose he succeeds, it would mean a minority government standing on a platform of people not elected to any of the three parties, PKR, DAP, PAS. Is this democracy, the fantasy word given so much mythological creed by Anwar and the DAP? Is this not the corruption of democracy?

   For the purpose of usurping the Barisan government, the DAP, which for decades would oppose, in principle, any parliamentary member from crossing aisles has chosen outright support for Anwar. Power is also within their reach and why not? Lim Kit Siang – in order not to contradict his stated position – has let the issue be shouted from a small divisional office in Sarawak. Still, it is the beginning of corruption. And this beginning was not even a baby step in the path towards power. It has to do with the fundamental issue in politics and governance: credibility in the character of the leader.

   The corruption of the principle has seen other corruptions prior to it. The most glaring is in the choosing of the chief minister of a state on grounds of ethnicity rather than on the basis of party politics – or, if one would prefer the word, democracy. Common voters are asked to vote across ethnic lines but once they did so, politicians in the three parties end up choosing a government head on purely ethnic lines. Three assumptions are attached to explain why party policies or principles change or are subjugated and corrupted, even as the parties stay the same.

• Constituency: the people to be governed are not the same as those who voted the party into power. To stay in power, which is the purpose of political parties, and to appeal to a constituency larger than its own electorate, the DAP caves in to an interest that is larger than its own party tenets, philosophy and mission - that is, serving equality, social justice, and democracy. In elections, constitutencies matter; in governance, other constituencies matter as much or more.

• Realism: it is the fact that the party in opposition is not the same party in government. The latter is up against a set of demands, such as the state consititution and the royalty, that are unique to a situation only when in the government. A party alone cannot cope. So the DAP again gives in on the further assumption that its electorate will tolerate and accept yielding to a larger, national interests. Better therefore to be real with politics than to live on the fringes of power, alone in a principled but illusory world.

• Discrimination: to treat all with equality is never to discriminate. But governments discriminate all the time; they have to because not all are equal. The children costs more money in education, which demands a greater imperative and so fetches more weight than spending money on submarines that has few places to visit. This requires discriminatory budgets. A party policy in oppostion is not the same as the principle of governance.

   All the instructions on government – the three points above – are not new. The Alliance, and after that the Barisan, stood on the same glorious political principles and party tenets. Why else was the New Economic Policy constructed? In time, of course, the parties that constructed it broke every rule, every principle and every party tenet.

   The DAP, the PKR and PAS would each consider as tests of governance equality, justice, transparency, moral uprightness and so on. And this raises a question.

   No, the question is not whether they will become another creature of the society they govern, as Barisan has become. Rather it is, why pretend otherwise? That is, why pretend to be indiscriminate? Why pretend as if it leads an ideal government not a realistic one? Why hammer away at talk of justice and being corrupt-free when individually each party has already corrupted its party principles, even if out of necessity?

   These are questions of philosophical abstracts so that the likely answers are answers in the making. Hence, they tend to be normative, prescriptive in nature, in that they answer to different situations. For the moment, one answer says that the likes of Khalid Ibrahim and Lim Guan Eng have not yet fully absorbed the internal dynamics of government. Or, to phrase it another way: to internalise, to comprehend the meaning of government. This is not the same as saying they are inexperienced. Abdullah Badawi, before he became prime minister, was never an experienced prime minister – a tautological truth. But he has experience in government. Whether or not the experience has instructed him well that is another matter for discussion, but the experience lasted through the duration in government up until his present tenure.

   In another way of saying, Lim Guan Eng, going from party secretary-general to state chief minister, must become another Lim Guan Eng. Being another person takes him outside the party ideology. (As an aside but related point, the notion that a person could change a system from the inside is to assume the person won’t be changed by the system.) In a similar vein, Tony Pua as Member of Parliament should not be Tony Pua as CEO or DAP economic adviser. Conversely, a Khalid Ibrahim, a former Umno man, has to be a different Khalid Ibrahim as a PKR chief minister.

   But none of them has changed, and for a variety of reasons. They want to maintain their morality, keep to their party tenets and their individual philosophical principles. One sees examples all over: giving money, giving water free, and giving out dress codes. PAS remains PAS, PKR remains PKR and DAP remains DAP, each trying to maintain the façade of their political principles, especially if the principles had been corrupted already.

   Charles Santiago would say free water is in keeping with the socialist egalitarian principle that all poor, and only the poor, should be deserving of free water. But that is to act with discrimination in order to produce a certain outcome – free water for only the poor – whereas PKR would be truer to egalitarianism on principle by not discriminating between a family earning RM700 and RM701 if RM700 is taken as a cut-off point to qualify for free water. (This way of arguing has not even taken account of the fact that family sizes vary.)

   Santiago, therefore, argues on the point of view of politics – who gets what and how much.

   To say that RM10 cash in the hands of a poor family is better than RM10 in kind (water in this case), Tony Pua argues on the basis of economics – rational consumer behaviour – or as a business executive would see it.

   But, both Pua and Santiago forget or fail to see that the fundamental issue in free water starts with neither economics nor politics, either of which is already prescribed in party mission statements anyway, hence no novelty there. It starts with governance instead.

   All constituents will know, without the need to say so, that money in cash or kind for the people of Perak, Penang and Selangor is a reward, or more politely a thank you gesture, for voting in the three parties. Unless it is RM1 million per family, the other gestures serve no other function, regardless of the language used and the justifications deployed. Will the gestures add to, subtract from, or make no change to the public perceptions of the three parties? Regardless of the answer, the gestures remain transient; they offer no fundamental change to how life is lived with or without the three parties.

   Anwar once made the declaration that he wishes to see a fundamental change towards how people perceive government. This is because the Barisan government is, in more ways than one, a very oppressive government. But clearly half the electorate in the peninsula don’t agree with Anwar, so that cash or free water does not ameliorate the perception. As to the other half of the electorate that voted in the three parties, life – at work, in schools, and in public – is surely oppressed by a government, any government. If this is the case, then the first task of the Pakatan Rakyat government is to withdraw a distance from people’s lives and leave behind a framework instead that speaks of good governance. This framework, in the water case, is to recalibrate existing policies and reset the administrative apparatus.

   Both Santiago and Pua are ignorant to the reality that free water or no free water is not an issue of policy. To have to agonise over that decision is a sign of an intruding, patronising government when, clearly, most of everybody else is waiting to see if the state is going to be administered well. One start to good administration is, in the water case, to ensure water is piped to every home, available without interruption, and after that codify the affordable rates to last for a whole generation. Infrastructure and rule making are efforts in administration, not doling out money. This is because, in doling out money, Khalid is replaying the issues of special dispensations previously played out under the bumiputra, non-bumiputra dichotomy. He knows all that too well, or should know, he is repeating history, only in another guise.

   Khalid has not change from his Umno philosophical mind. Consider this part in a news report:

Abdul Khalid, who was speaking after the opening of the Selangor People’s Economy (MES) service centre at the state secretariat, denied that the move to collect funds from companies had soured relations between PKR and Pas.

   It is Umno all over again, treating companies like they are petty cash in the most benign instances and like milking cows in the worse. Nor has Santiago, Pua et al gone beyond their party politics to see themselves as part-governors and administrators in a society. They have all along assume that what works for the DAP as a party can be applied, with best efforts, to all of Selangor.

   The task of governance by the DAP and PKR has hardly begun because their officials still live in party and NGO rules. It is small wonder a PKR legislator is now partying with buddies from his former party, Umno. Good governance is selfless and so it is seldom a man’s calling in politics. A hundred bucks in the wallet and water free for a year are hardly substitutes for good governance and proper and virtuous administration. That difference is the same as the difference between handing out fish and teaching how to fish. Or, in Confucian language, between handing out fruits of a tree and in the ploughing of the field and seeding new trees. Democracy is useless in matters of governance. And governance teaches political parties that corruption begins with the principles because principles are corruptible - they are afterall meant to serve men, not the other way around.

   The dilemma for Lim Guan Eng is that growing a tree takes years. Khalid should know, he was a rubber plantation man. But politicians, once tasting power, are in a hurry. In the hurry, they shoot themselves in the foot.

 

 

Hollywood against the Chinese & the Moralisation Thereof

AMONG the first was Richard Gere, via Wiki:

   In September 2007, Gere called for the boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to put pressure on China to make Tibet independent. On the March 14, 2008 The Situation Room, Gere spoke against China’s crackdown on the uprising in Tibet.

   CNN, which hosts the The Situation Room, would, on the footsteps of Gere, later label - on air for all the world to hear and see - the Chinese as a race of thugs. On 9-11, and after jihadists had flew planes into New York and near Washington, and America was honouring the 3,000 dead, Gere told America to forgive the jihadists. His father and mother weren’t in the two towers. While Tibetans looted bicycle shops, a bakery, broke into a bank and burned alive five girls (a Tibetan among them), Gere calls the acts an “uprising”. Forgiveness there, again.

   After that came Sharon Stone. From TMZ:

When is a natural disaster a good thing? When the afflicted country commits human rights violations — at least according to Sharon Stone. (She) gave an interview while on the red carpet at Cannes this weekend in which — after recounting all of China’s atrocities — she wondered, “All these earthquake and stuff happened and I thought, ‘Is that karma?’ When you are not nice that bad things happen to you.”

   People in her country see her this way, hence, there is little need for elaboration: read Kenyon Farrow, for example. The photograph inclusion is to bear testimony to her true value; whether as flesh or celebrity artiste, they are the same (she says, by the way, the Dalai Lama is her friend).

   Now, it is Steven Spielberg (Manjit Bhatia, or so it seems, has powerful friends in Hollywood):

After careful consideration, I have decided to formally announce the end of my involvement as one of the overseas artistic advisors to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games.

In anticipation that this day might one day come, I left unsigned the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games contract presented to me nearly a year ago. Since that time, I have made repeated efforts to encourage the Chinese government to use its unique influence to bring safety and stability to the Darfur region of Sudan. Although some progress has been made along the way, most notably, the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1769, the situation in Darfur continues to worsen and the violence continues to accelerate.

With this in mind, I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue with business as usual. At this point, my time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies, but on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur. Sudan’s government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these on-going crimes but the international community, and particularly China….”

   Note that all three utter the most irrational things. Because of his conscience, Spielberg would not do certain things… Because of his conscience, because of Iraq, why is he even in Hollywood, in America…? Note also that Gere would support a nuclear bomb by India. What on earth does Gere thing a nuclear bomb is for? Killing ants? But yet he would say, let’s forgive the jihadists. Each time the Hollywood type speaks up, whether it is about ethics or politics, they show their stupidity.

   There is another thing or two common to all three: there are liberals, they are do-gooders. Honour them and they spit in your face because - truth be told - they consider themselves the high cultural, moral type, others are lowly. Africa is their latest pet poodle project. They preach, others listen. They harangue, others bow their heads. They make your money, others queue up to give. Hollywood has had that impact. All three make money out of China, if not, then near China at some misty mountaintop in Nepal. Such are the people whose fathers before them colonise the world, and after that pleaded if was for their god and morality, and for the sake of savages.

   In one response, below, to all that’s gone on, it showed the Chinese has had enough. After all, how do you converse, debate, dialogue with people who believes a man can walk on water? An essay appeared, followed by an interview with the author named Sima Nan (司马南).  The published version is dated June 13, 2008. Full version in Chinese at the Economic Observer.

经济观察报：如果我们把普世价值内涵界定为民主、法治、自由、人权，你
还会反对吗？

　　司马南：我不反对，原来也没有反对这些东西的念头。但是我会问，这些概
念是谁提出来的？概念之下实际的内涵是什么？比方说人权，人应该有人的权利,
人不应该像猪一样的生活，但是怎样落实人权呢？按谁的标准来判断符不符合人
权呢？执行死刑是否就没有人权呢？堕胎是否侵犯人权呢？颠覆国家安全罪在某
国属罪不当恕，在某国属民主义举，用谁的标准来格式化呢？50年前西藏政教合
一黑暗残暴，何来人权？今天西方政治家把它描绘得像一首田园诗？怎样确定谁
说的正确？人权各有殊见不能统一标准当如何普世呢？本人有机会2000年在日内
瓦世界人权会议期间，见到过某些民族败类的丑恶表演，实话说，正是包括这些
人在内的无耻，催生我写下你说的那篇文章。人权的说法很美，但是我们没有看
到这个现实世界上有什么平等人权。人权当中第一位什么权？是生存权吧，每天
在这个世界上有很多人因为营养不良而饿死？某国因为大兵的到来，许多平民被
无辜炸死。某国追求霸权，武器产量占了世界的一半，他只要拿出生产武器所用
资金中的一点点，那么，世界上就不会饿死人了，但是，没见他按人权标准去行
动啊。给非洲的援助往往都有附加条件，请问如此前提下，怎么理解人权的普世
行呢？

再看自由，自由权利中有一项叫迁徙自由权，很好啊，司马南和一些非洲朋友想迁徙到美国加州去生活，我不怕那个地方地壳变迁闹地震，但是我们去不了, 为什么？因为美国不给我签证。看看，美国制度虚伪吧，他抡起来打人的所谓人权、民主、自由等东西抽象地说都很好，但是他自己不准备实行之。当美国准备打别国的时候，他说人权高于主权，当司马南们申请要到美国去自由迁徙，享受一下自由迁徙权的时候，他说主权高于人权。类似的逻辑悖论他们用起来一点不脸红。

   Translation of the relevant excerpt, above, by eastsouthwestnorth blog, titled The Earthquake, The Internet and Sima Nan:

Q.  If we define universal values to consist of democracy, rule of law, freedom and human rights, would you object?

A. I wouldn’t object.  I have never had the idea of opposing these values.  But I would ask, Who proposed these concepts?  What is the meaning underlying these concepts?  For example, in the case of human rights, people should have human rights and not live like pigs.  But how do you implement human rights?  According to whose standards do we decide when something violates human rights?  Does the death sentence violate human rights?  Does abortion violate human rights?  Why is subversion of national security unpardonable in one country but it is a democratic uprising in another country?  Whose standards are used to classify them?  Fifty years ago, the political-religious state in Tibet was corrupt and cruel.  Where were the human rights?  Today, the western politicians describe that Tibet like a pastoral poem?  How do we determine who is right?  During the 2000 World Human Rights Congress in Geneva, I witnessed the ugly speeches of certain Chinese scums.  Frankly speaking, it was the shamelessness of these people which motivated me to write the essay that you mentioned.  It is a nice thing to talk about human rights, but we have yet to see any equal human rights in the real world.  What is the first of the human rights?  The right to live.  Everyday, many people starve to death from malnutrition in the world, right?  In a certain country, invading soldiers come and many innocent civilians are killed.  A certain country seeks hegemony, and it produces half the number of weapons in the world each year.  If that country donates even a tiny fraction of the weapon production money, then there won’t be any famine in the world.  But that country has not taken such action according to human rights standards.  The aid that this country gives to Africa often includes additional conditions.  Under such premises, what are we suppose to understand by the universality of human rights?

In the freedom rights, there is the right to relocate.  That’s very well.  Sima Nan and some African friends want to relocate to live in the state of California.  I don’t even mind the fact that there are earthquakes over there.  But we cannot go there.  Why?  Because the United States of America will not issue visas to us.  Do you see how hypocritical that system is?  The so-called human rights, democracy, freedom and other abstract principles sound wonderful, but they are not prepared to implement them.  When the United States gets ready to invade someone else, they claim that human rights transcend sovereignty.  When Sima Nan and friends apply to relocate freely to the United States to enjoy their freedom to relocate, they say that sovereignty supercedes human rights.  They don’t even blush with these logical fallacies.

 

Lying English Lies

At the Bangkok Post, owned by a Malaysian company that also owns South China Post in Hong Kong:

(BangkokPost.com) - Insurgents