Sirul should make a clean breast of the truth about the 2006 murder of Altantuya – admit to being one of the two killers, demonstrate true remorse and spell out the outrage that he is sentenced to death while the murder “mastermind” is allowed to get away scotfree

Former police special commandore Suril Azhar Umar should stop hiding and running which he had been doing for the past nine years but to take a honest stand to make a clean breast of the truth about the 2006 murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu – admit to being one of the two killers (together with Azila Hadri), demonstrate remorse at the heinous deed “under orders” and spell out the outrage that he is sentenced to death while the murder “mastermind” is allowed to get away scot-free.

The time has also come for Sirul to make a public declaration of his first confession to the police on November 9, 2006  on the Altantuya’s murder.

Although his confession to the police was declared inadmissible by the Kuala Lumpur High Court during Sirul’s trial in July 2007, Sirul must now declare whether his confession represented the truth.

On Feb. 3, 2009, a tearful Sirul had asked the court not to sentence him to death for Altantuya’s murder, saying he was like “a black sheep that has to be sacrificed” to protect unnamed people who have never been brought to court or faced questioning.

“I have no reason to cause hurt, what’s more to take the life of the victim in such a cruel manner,” Sirul said. “I appeal to the court, which has the powers to determine if I live or die, not to sentence me so as to fulfil others’ plans for me.”

In his Nov. 9, 2006 confession to the police, which had been ruled inadmissible in the Altantuya murder trial, Sirul said his boss at the time, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri who is also charged with Altantuya’s murder, had talked about a reward of between RM50,000 and RM100,000 if the case was settled.

According to Sirul’s confession to the police, Sirul and Azilah went to Malaya Hotel in Kuala Lumpur (where Altantunya was staying with two other Mongolians) a few days before Altantunya’s murder but decided not to kill the three women “because of the presence of CCTV (closed circuit television cameras).”

Ultimately, according to the confession, the two went to the house of Abdul Razak Baginda (confidante of Datuk Seri Najib Razak, at the time Deputy Prime Minister)  where “there was a Chinese woman (Altantuya) who was causing a commotion.”

The two, with the help of a Malay woman, Lance Corporal Rohaniza Roslan, Azila’s former girlfriend, bundled Altantuya into a red Proton Wira and drove her to where Sirul’s jeep awaited.

“Along the journey, Azilah asked me to find a place to ‘shoot to kill the Chinese woman.”

Eventually after she was driven to Sirul’s house to pick up the military explosives that would be wrapped around her body after she was dead, she was then driven to the Punchak Alam forest reserve near the suburban city of Shah Alam.

“I saw Azilah outside the jeep carrying a bag containing an M5 weapon and silencer from the jeep that was located at the foot rest of the passenger seat and gave it to me ordering me to ‘shoot to kill’ the Chinese woman who was inside the jeep.”

They took her jewelry and other articles, Sirul said, and “I saw that she was in a state of fear and she pleaded not to kill her and said she was expecting.”

Nonetheless, Azilah wrestled her to the ground, apparently knocking her unconscious, and “I opened fire towards the left side of the woman’s head. After the Chinese woman was shot, Azilah removed all her clothes and I took a black garbage bag and Azilah put all the Chinese woman’s clothes into the bag.”

Azilah, he said, “noticed movements in the Chinese woman’s arm and ordered me to fire another shot but the gun did not fire. I then emptied the weapon and loaded the gun again and fired another shot at the same area which was the left side of the woman’s head. I then took a black plastic garbage bag and with Azilah’s help put the bag over the Chinese woman’s head to prevent blood from spilling.”

With Sirul holding her arms and Azilah holding her legs, they carried Altantuya into the woods.

“Azilah then carried the bag containing the explosives and handed it to me. I took the explosives and attached them to the victim’s head while Azilah attached the explosives on the victim’s legs up to the abdomen.”

After attaching a wire to the explosives, they blew her up.

After returning to the Bukit Aman police station, “I had a bath and changed clothes and put the clothes that I wore during the incident together with the victim’s clothes into a plastic bag. After that, I entered the jeep and drove the jeep to a rubbish container in the Bukit Aman area near a construction site. I threw some of the victim’s belongings and the wire that was used to detonate the explosives together with the empty bag that contained the explosives into the container.’

Then he went home and went to sleep.

If his confession was not the truth, let Sirul explain why and how he could provide  such graphic and horrific details.

If he had not killed Atantuya together with Azila, is he saying that Azila was the one who solely committed Altantuya’s murder.

Furthermore, Sirul should also “tell all” about what transpired in the nine years from his arrest and being charged in court for Altantuya’s murder and his conviction and death sentence by the  Federal Court from November 2006 to January 13, 2015, whether he had been promised at any time, and by whom, that he would be spared the consequences for his act “under orders” to kill Altantuya.

Sirul clearly had no motive to murder Altantuya as he did not know her (continuing to describe her as “the Chinese woman”, never knowing that she is Mongolian) and also did not know Abdul Razak Baginda.

If Sirul is not prepared to finally make a clean breast of the truth of the heinous Altantunya murder in October 2006, it will be difficult for decent and well-meaning people, whether in Malaysia, Australia or world-wide not to be cynical and ambivalent about his cries of outrage and injustice at  being sentenced to death while the murder mastermind is allowed to get away scot-free.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 22 February 2015, 9:40 am and is filed under
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Survey: M’sia’s polls boundaries worst in world

Malaysiakini

Feb 21, 2015

Malaysia has the worst electoral boundaries in the world and among the worst set of election laws, the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) found.

 This places Malaysia among countries with ‘low electoral integrity’ ranking 114 out of 127 nations surveyed along with the likes of Angola, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, and Egypt, EIP’s 2014 report said.

 It trails far behind neighbour Indonesia, which ranks 51st for its presidential elections. The Philippines and Thailand ranks 91st and 88th place respectively.

Malaysia was dragged down by its score for voting boundaries, where it scored 28 out of 100 – the worst in the world. The average global score was 64.

 International and domestic experts who responded to EIP’s survey after GE13, said Malaysia’s electoral boundaries discriminated against some parties, favoured incumbents and were not impartial.

 Similarly, Malaysia was in the bottom five in electoral laws by scoring a dismal 33, far behind the global average of 64, the report found.

 It was only better than Syria, Belarus, Tajikistan and Equitorial Guinea.

 Repondents were asked to rate Malaysia’s laws for fairness to smaller parties, whether the laws favoured governing parties and restricted citizens’ rights.

 Malaysia, however met the world average for voting process, with respondents saying there were few cases of violence during polls or fraudulent votes case, a simple voting process, and option to vote for overseas Malaysians.

 All 127 countries surveyed were measured on electoral laws, electoral procedures, district boundaries, voter registration, party and candidate registration, media coverage, campaign financing, voting process, vote count, results, and election authorities.

 Analysing Malaysia in greater detail, EIP’s University of Sydney researcher Max Gromping said malapportionment and “other irregularities” have been said to be the reason for BN’s victory.

“In particular, rural constituencies – traditionally strongholds of the ruling party – are advantaged compared to urban ones,” he wrote in Australia National University’s journal The New Mandala.

“Electoral reform has stalled, perhaps due to the stark polarisation of the electorate.”

The EIP is based in Harvard University and University of Sydney.

                This entry was posted on Sunday, 22 February 2015, 3:30 pm and is filed under
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After Ananda Krishnan loan, 1MDB now needs government cash

BY THE EDGE FINANCIAL DAILY

The Malaysian Insider

23 February 2015

1MDB was not only helped by billionaire T. Ananda Krishnan to settle its RM2 billion debt to banks, but it may also require a cash injection of as much as RM3 billion from its owner, the Ministry of Finance (MoF), say sources.

They say the controversial debt-laden outfit is facing a cash crunch as income from its power assets is not enough for debt servicing and it has run out of borrowing options, as shown by having to turn to a businessman for help.

Ananda provided a 15-month RM2 billion loan to enable 1MDB to settle its loan with a consortium of local banks on February 13.

Sources familiar with the matter confirmed this with The Edge Financial Daily and also expressed their surprise that 1MDB president and group executive director Arul Kanda Kandasamy had dismissed media reports about the loan from Ananda as mere speculation.

Arul had announced on February 13 that 1MDB had settled the RM2 billion owed to the consortium led by Maybank and RHB Bank Bhd which was first due on November 30, 2014. The loan was settled in time to prevent the banks from declaring a default.

Arul did not explain how it raised the money in his February 13 statement, but in an interview with Mingguan Malaysia two days later, he said reports that AK lent the money were pure speculation.

“Ananda has never said anything about this matter. This is speculation by third parties,” Mingguan Malaysia quoted him as saying.

“I don’t know how he (Arul) can claim that (AK did not help),” says a source.

“It was a simple, clean loan (with no conditions) as AK did not want to be seen as taking advantage (by setting tough conditions).”

In reply to questions by The Edge on why he could not just come out and disclose how 1MDB raised the money, Arul said: “The facts on the (settlement of the) loan will be revealed in the appropriate forum/time i.e. our next set of accounts. To demand any different is to set a different standard for 1MDB which is not only unfair, but also ignoring our right and that of our stakeholders to legal and commercial confidentiality”.

Paying off the RM2 billion debt does not solve the problem for 1MDB, which has total debts of more than RM42 billion and annual debt servicing of RM2.31 billion and a negative cash flow of RM2.25 billion in its financial year ended March 31, 2014.

Sources say that MoF is aware of 1MDB’s cash-flow problem and knows it may have no choice but to step in with a RM3 billion injection.

But in order for that to happen, approval has to be given by the Cabinet, given the large amount of money involved and all the controversy that 1MDB has generated.

The government had on February 11 and 12 raised RM2.1 billion through two treasury bill issues that money market dealers say were unusually large amounts. Sources say the MOF could be getting the money ready should it go ahead and come to the aid of 1MDB.

The cash injection will have to be done before 1MDB’s next financial year close on March 31, 2015 – which is just five weeks away.

Despite concerns raised  by so many parties, MOF officials have always insisted that 1MDB was financially healthy and that the government only had to put in RM1 million as initial capital because the company was strong enough to borrow to fund itself.

Arul, in a February 18 press release on its strategic review, said 1MDB would stop borrowing from now.

Sources say the truth is that 1MDB can no longer go to the market to borrow – whether through bank loans or bond issues.

“The size of its debt of RM42 billion, the massive negative cash flow it has experienced in the last two years plus its struggle to pay the RM2 billion makes it difficult for any bank to lend to them,” says one banker.

“Bond investors will also shy away from any new debt it wants to issue.”

1MDB recently called off a RM8.4 billion Islamic bond that it had planned to raise cash to finance the 3B power project.

Bankers say it was cancelled because of lukewarm response. Sources say bankers have also taken note of the fact that 1MDB has had difficulties proceeding with its plan to float its power assets to raise cash. – February 23, 2015.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 23 February 2015, 10:00 am and is filed under
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Call on all Pakatan Rakyat leaders, including PAS President Hadi Awang, to focus single-mindedly on how to save  Pakatan Rakyat and discourage efforts and elements within our ranks who are prepared to destabilize and even destroy PR

In my Chinese New Year Message on 17th February, I had said that many issues will jostle as the top Malaysian concerns and conversational topics during the Chinese New Year.

This is the third day of the Chinese New Year, and I confess that I had expected  Anwar’s conviction and five-year jail sentence for Sodomy II  by the Federal Court and his fourth incarceration in his 47-year political struggle as   the No. 1 conversation topic of all Malaysians in the Chinese New Year.

I was however wrong, for another issue caught up and  gained  an edge over Anwar’s conviction and 5-year jail sentence to compete for the No. 1 Chinese New Year top conversation topic – another  Federal Court decision   concerning a nine-year-matter, the heinous murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu and the blowing up of her body with military C4 explosives in the Shah Alam bushes on Oct. 19, 2006.

On the day I issued my Chinese New Year Message on 17th February, Sirul Azhar, one of the two convicted murderers of Altantunya who had absconded and is seeking asylum in Australia, told Malaysiakini that he was mulling over the possibility of “telling all” about the Altantuya murder  as he was only acting “under orders”.

The fast-paced  five-day developments of the Altantuya murder case from the Sirul perspective, threatening to reveal “all” in a video conference from Australia tomorrow (Monday) morning, catapulted the issue into a greater cause celebre during the Chinese New Year family re-unions, get-togethers, discussions and coffee-shop talks than the Anwar case – although both these cases were unchallenged as the two  top-most first and second conversation topics in the Chinese New Year.

These two high-profile  cases highlighted a common defect in our system of governance – a deep rot in the leadership of the 130,000 strong police establishment in not  allowing the men and women in blue to  act efficiently, independently and professionally to  uphold what is right and lawful  rather to be subverted to glorify “might is right”’  and the shocking lack of commitment and quality of performance by the political leadership and public service to provide good governance.

I am thoroughly shocked and outraged at the failure of our system of administration of justice in  both these high-profile cases in keeping with the maxim to ensure that “justice is not only done, but seen to be done”.

There   were several burning issues which qualify to be described as the  concerns and top  conversation topics of all Malaysians on the occasion of the Chinese New Year of the Goat in the past few days, and among those competing for the second tier level of the Chinese New Year concerns and top conversation topics are:

3.	Agriculture and Agro-Based Industries Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri’s racist call to Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses and the impotence and lack of political will and commitment to 1Malaysia by the Najib premiership to resolve the issue in a satisfactory and acceptable manner despite the passage of some three weeks.

4.	Former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s intensification of his campaign to topple Datuk Seri Najib Razak as Prime Minister of Malaysia and UMNO President. People are speculating whether Najib could survive as PM till the end of the year, or even by mid-year or even earlier.

5.	The massive  1MDB Scandal;

6.	The continued educational, economic and environmental decline in the country and the unchecked deterioration of all the indices of good governance, threatening to end up with Malaysia as a basket case joining the ranks of the “failed states”.

7.	Rearing of the ugly heads of extremism, bigotry and intolerance in the public domain, with the voices of moderation remaining muted and silent, resulting in the country seeing the worst racial and religious polarization in the nation’s history.

8.	Unchecked corruption, greed and abuses of power in top decision-making circles.

9.	The far-reaching consequences of the  implementation of GST from April 1.

There were other ongoing developments and issues competing for attention as the top Chinese New Year concerns and  conversation topics, including:

1.	The fate of Pakatan Rakyat, with Anwar back in jail and the death of Tok Guru Nik Aziz, whether  PR component parties could take stock, regroup and reunify to “return to the basics” to be guided by the two fundamental principles of PR Common Policy Framework and consensus operational principle which had brought success to PR in the 12th and 13th General Elections, or whether PR would explode and disintegrate.

2.	 The escalation of crackdown on human rights and fundamental liberties as witnessed by the arrest of human rights lawyer, Eric Paulsen, cartoonists Zunar, social activist Lawrence Jayaraj, student leader Adam Adli Abdul Halim, DAP Penang Exco and Wanita DAP chief Chong Eng,  PSM Secretary-General S. Arutchelvan and impending arrest of DAP MP for Taiping, Nga Kor Ming.

It is most outrageous and scandalous that the Malaysian police showed neither respect nor sensitivity whatsoever when three cops appeared at Perak Pakatan Rakyat Chinese New Year Open House in Ipoh this morning to publicly serve Nga with the official notice to show up at Bukit Aman police headquarters tomorrow at 11.30 am to have his statement recorded with regard to a sedition probe against him.

Why such high-handedness, selectivity of treatment and even harassment of PR leaders when police want to conduct investigations as compared to the servile and submissive police attitude when faced with  UMNO Ministers, a former Deputy Minister and pro-UMNO activists who were  accused of making racial and religious hate statements or speeches?

The UMNO/Barisan Nasional would be  sorely mistaken if the think they could cow and subdue patriotic critics and dissenters with such boorish and insensitive attitudes.

Clearly, the country needs a change but the past 18 months after the 13th General Elections have exposed one stark reality – that  such change is not possible under the present Umno/BN government, whether Najib or anyone else.

In fact, we have one of the weakest Prime Ministers in the nation’s history, as Datuk Seri Najib is even weaker than his predecessor, Tun Abdullah Badawi. But he is a powerful UMNO President who is not easy to be dislodged or removed inside UMNO. And if Najib can continue as UMNO President, his position as the sixth Prime Minister is safe.

Najib has lost the  sense of national direction, as exemplified by the fact that he now  hardly talked or promoted his three key official programmes – the 1Malaysia Policy, the National Transformation Programme founded on a New Economic Model (NEM) and  his initiative of a Global Movement of Moderates.

This is why there is even greater  hope among Malaysians that the Pakatan Rakyat would be vehicle for national change among Malaysians of all races, and that the 14th General Elections would provide such an opportunity after it was stolen away in the 13th General Elections because of undemocratic electoral constituency delineation despite  the Pakatan Rakyat winning a majority of 52% of the national vote.

However, the Pakatan Rakyat is facing the greatest crisis in its seven-year history, which has been aggravated by the imprisonment of Anwar Ibrahim and the death of Tok Guru Nik Aziz.

Can the Pakatan Rakyat ride through the crisis and emerge even stronger than ever or would it disintegrate and die?

This a question awaiting answer  not only by Pakatan Rakyat leaders but supporters as well.

I want to appeal to all Pakatan Rakyat leaders, including Pas President, Datuk Seri Ahmad Hadi Awang, to focus single-mindedly on how to save  Pakatan Rakyat and discourage efforts and elements within our ranks who are prepared to destabilize and even destroy PR.

The latest political developments and the death of Nik Aziz has revived the UG (Unity Government) idea of certain UMNO strategists out to divide and destroy PR and it is most likely that UMNO will not contest the Chempaka by-election in the Kelantan State Assembly arising from the death of Nik Aziz.

In today Mingguan Malaysia, UMNO’s mouth piece, former Chief Justice, Tun Abdul Hamid Mohamad said PAS and Umno must unite to save Barisan Nasional (BN) should Pakatan Rakyat (PR) win the 14th general election, making the baseless and  wild allegation that the  DAP will destroy the rights of the Malays and Islam’s special position if it gained power.

It is most irresponsible for UMNO quarters to stir up and indoctrinate Malays particularly in the rural areas with  racist smears and racialist outrages as in the rural areas there are inadequate  access to internet,   which is one reason why they are so vulnerable to such false and base attacks.

Who will be the next Opposition Leader?  It is premature to talk about it now, as under the Constitution, Anwar is still MP for Permatang Pauh and Parliamentary Opposition Leader.

However, if there is need for a new Opposition leader, I believe there is no shortage of talents from three  PR parties to helm this position.

In DAP, there is Lim Guan Eng Penang Chief Minister and the coterie of young but tested DAP leaders; in PKR there are  Dr. Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, Datuk Azmin Ali, Nuruk Izzah; and in PAS there is Hadi Awang and new generation of PAS leaders.

The paramount task is for  every PR leader to jointly save PR  by adopting an Eight-Year Roadmap reaffirming the secret recipe of  the PR success in the 2008 and 2013 general elections, namely adherence to the PR Common  Policy Framework which binds all three parties and the operational principle of consensus requiring the consent of all three parties before any policy or issue could represent that of PR.

There have been dissenting voices, like those who said that the immediate implementation of hudud cannot be compromised and must be effected.

This is why PR  will miss Nik Aziz greatly. Firstly, it was because of his staunch opposition to UG idea that the concept did not get very far.

Secondly, Nik Aziz will be able the see the Big Picture on the need to endorse the eight-year PR Roadmap to ensure the survival, success and victory of PR in the 14th General Election.

Nobody doubts that Nik Aziz  would himself want to see the immediate implementation of hudud, but  he is realistic enough to know that it was not part of the PR Common Policy Framework and  that any insistence without arriving at a PR consensus to implement it would lead to the disintegration of PR.

Nik Aziz would have understood the arguments that the implementation of hudud is not a top priority issue as compared to ensuring the survival and success of PR,  the defeat of Umno/BN and  in capturing Putrajaya Federal Government  in the 14th GE to immediately implement policies which will restore freedom, justice, human dignity and good governance in Malaysia.

Nik Aziz had given great support to the formation and sustenance of PR, although hudud is not part of the PR Common Policy Framework.

This is why I cannot  buy the argument that it will be going against Islamic principles if hudud is not implemented, for it would mean that Nik Aziz and all Pas leaders and members had betrayed Islamic principles for six years from the  12th to  13th General Elections when the issue  of the implementation of hudud was not presented as one of the core principles of PR in the 13th General Elections.

I earnestly hope that the PR leaders can single-mindedly work on a formula to save Pakatan Rakyat, which will at the same time save the country as well as save Anwar from five-year incarceration followed by another five years of disenfranchisement of his civil and citizenship rights to stand for elective office and even to cast his vote.

Let us do what we can to achieve three Ss – Save Pakatan Rakyat, Save Malaysia and Save Anwar!

Speech at the Penang DAP Chinese New Year Open House  held at Penang Chinese Town Hall on Sunday, 22nd February 2015 at 8.30 pm

                This entry was posted on Monday, 23 February 2015, 4:16 am and is filed under
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Get it right this time, Tun M

Fa Abdul |	February 23, 2015

Free Malaysia Today

COMMENT

Mahathir has so far been wrong in his choice of deputies and handpicked successors.

When I was eight, I used to utter bad words. “Basket” was my favourite, if you get what I mean. Mom would first warn me. And the second time, I’d have chilli paste all over my mouth.

I grew up learning that it is okay to make a mistake once. But when you repeat it, it is no longer a mistake.

However, some people tend to make mistakes over and over and over again, especially when they can get away with it.

This reminds me of Tun M. He first chose Musa Hitam as his deputy. It did not work out. He then chose the late Abdul Ghafar Baba. Also did not work out. And then, it was Anwar Ibrahim. But that ended tragically.

Frustrated and having to make a decision, he handpicked Pak Lah. Big mistake. Accusing him of betraying his trust, Tun M told Pak Lah to step down. However, this isn’t anything new in our political scene. Tunku at one point did express his regret over choosing Tun Abdul Razak. And Tun Hussein Onn also regretted his choice of Tun M as his successor. So Tun M regretting his choice of Pak Lah is completely understandable.

While the others were discreet about how they felt about their successor, Tun M, who is clearly not a respecter of cultural norms, did not. But then, no one expects Tun M to behave like the rest because he is clearly a man of his own standards.

With Pak Lah stepping down, Tun M did what none of his predecessors did. He once again stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and handpicked Pak Lah’s successor, Najib. Perhaps he did not think Pak Lah was capable of making that call. Or perhaps Pak Lah was too weak to even make that call. Whatever.

But surprise, surprise. Tun M made the wrong decision. Again.

Tun M was so right when he said, not too long ago: “Actually this is my fault. I am not good at choosing my own replacement.”

Thanks to Tun M and his mistakes, Malaysia has suffered and is continuing to suffer.

A local journalist once said, “This battleship is now a battered ship.” She was so right.

And whose fault is that? I shall refrain from answering that question but if you think it was Tun M, I won’t disagree with you.

Integrity and competence

As a man who took Malaysia from an agricultural country to a highly developed Asian megastar, picking a good reliable successor with integrity and competence should have been a piece of cake.

But sadly we ended up with two lousy prime ministers. One was too weak, and the other has a bad habit of making too many mistakes. Wow, looks like Najib has got something in common with Tun M after all.

Or perhaps there is no one in Umno who is fit to pick up from where the great Mahathir Mohamad left off.

But I think the fault in Pak Lah was that he was a yes man to people around him. And Najib seems to have the same problem.

Was Tun M overshadowed by Tunku or Hussein Onn or anyone else during his premiership? I don’t think so. He had total freedom to do whatever he wanted. He had an authoritarian style and in 22 years no one dared to challenge him.

But the prime ministers who took over Putrajaya after Tun M seem to have a thorny road ahead. Every single move they make is closely monitored and scrutinised. Who is capable to perform when they constantly have to deal with the headaches that come from being observed like a hamster running on its wheels?

So is it the prime minister’s fault for having no guts to stand up for himself or is it the ex-prime minister’s fault for plenty of them?

All our six Prime Ministers took a solemn oath to fulfill their obligations with honesty and strength, to be loyal to Malaysia and to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

Sadly, most of them failed.

Our current Prime Minister has failed miserably in navigating the ship. Our economy is flagging. Our society is racially divided. Our coalition parties are destroying themselves.

With Najib as the captain, the ship is now sinking. Well, obviously the people are not happy, but who cares about the people anyway. The important thing is that Tun M isn’t happy.

As the ship sinks, every Malaysian head is turning to Tun M, yearning to know who’s next. I wonder if Najib has the courage to pick his own successor, or he, like Pak Lah, is leaving it to Tun M to decide.

Whatever it is, the burden is once again on Tun M’s shoulder. Well, maybe not a burden, since Tun M seems to be enjoying the limelight.

So have you got your shortlist yet, Tun M? Or are you still cracking your head? Or maybe you wanna pick the “Malay first Malaysian next” dude standing right in front of your eyes, going “Me! Me! Me!”?

As a concerned citizen, I would like to offer my assistance by giving you some pointers. Don’t worry, I won’t splatter chilli paste over your mouth if you get it wrong again. The good news is that even if we are unclear as to who is the best guy for the position, thanks to all your mistakes to date, we certainly know who will be a total no-no.

1. The seventh Prime Minister should not be a puppet. He should have a mind of his own.

2. He shouldn’t be struggling with sickness which prevents him from carrying out his duties (eg sleep apnea).

3. He shouldn’t be queen controlled. A man who can’t lead his wife definitely can’t lead the nation.

4. He shouldn’t have had his back scratched by others in the past because then he would have to scratch too many backs when he is in power.

 vegetables).

5. He shouldn’t make promises he is not willing to keep (too many to give examples).

6. He shouldn’t be stupid (like demanding gratitude for the price decrease of certain vegetables).

7. He shouldn’t be a hypocrite who stands up for racists (or hides from them).

8. He shouldn’t get his priorities wrong (like playing golf during critical times), or at least have some common sense to pretend the people always come first.

 9. He shouldn’t be a wimp.

There you go, Tun M. Now please get it right this time.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 23 February 2015, 10:19 am and is filed under
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Remembering ‘Tok Guru’

— Clive Kessler

The Malaysian Insider

February 16, 2015

FEBRUARY 16 — We go back a long way together, Tok Guru and I.

To the beginning, each of us after his own prior apprenticeship, of our ensuing public careers in our closely intertwined fields of work.

Two synchronous starts

His work, that is, of pursuing and exemplifying an identifiably “traditional” and committed Islamic life within the modern political world; and mine — born of a conviction, held against the grain and bias of prevalent academic attitudes at the time, that efforts such as that of Nik Aziz to “make Islam real in modern political life” needed to be understood — as a scholarly analyst of and commentator upon such things.

I was convinced that the new, and newly assertive, politics of Islam within, and even against, the modern world had to be studied, not dismissed as a mere relic of an earlier, now waning pre-modern political era. He, on his part, believed that that kind of Islamic politics needed to be pursued and deepened. Both of us took the matter seriously, and each of us was committed to his own part of that task.

The two parts were complementary, but not symmetrically so. His side of the challenge did not need me or mine; my part made sense, and could only exist, in relation to his.

Our careers came together as they began. As we began those two public journeys and careers, he as a noted Islamist politician and I as a student and observer of Islamic politics, in Kelantan in 1967.

By then I was at last getting down to the project of field research that I had begun to think of in about 1962: a ground-level village-based anthropological study of the sources of the then unusual, even paradoxical, mass support that the Islamic party PAS had managed to mobilize and retain in Kelantan from shortly after Malaya’s achievement of national independence.

In 1959, PAS had dramatically won — at the expense and to the great discomfort of UMNO and its Alliance Party coalition — 28 of the 30 seats that then comprised the Kelantan State Assembly. In defiant opposition to the national federal government, PAS had captured state power in Kelantan.

And, after many delays and setbacks, I was by July 1967 beginning what was to become about two years of field research centred in Kelantan’s Bachok district, leading up to and beyond Malaysia’s fateful 1969 elections.

1967, a busy year for PAS

And 1967 was to be a big year for Islamic politics in Kelantan. PAS had survived the 1964 elections, held at the peak of Indonesia’s Konfrontasi against the new, expanded Malaysian Federation, and, though with a significantly reduced majority, retained its control of Kelantan.

But, with its improved position, UMNO was now hopeful of defeating PAS, and “seeing it off” from the national political scene, at the next elections due in 1969.

This guaranteed that politics in Kelantan between the two rival parties competing for popular Malay support (and the political credibility and legitimacy that it provided) would, in the interim, be keenly, even tenaciously, contested.

The entire Malaysian opposition, especially the parties of the radical left, had been accused (notably in a government “white paper” entitled A Plot Exposed) of sympathy with and complicity in Indonesian confrontation and — based upon the connection of PAS through its President, the pre-war radical leader Dr. Burhanuddin Helmy, with the “old Malay left” — PAS too was under enormous pressure. In him, the radical or “populist nationalist” side of the PAS leadership was “put out of play” and detained as a risk to national security.

Meanwhile, the more Islamically-minded (or “ulama”) side of the PAS leadership had also been dealt a savage blow from which it had not yet recovered. The party’s pre-eminent Islamist political intellectual, Ustadz Zulkifli Muhammad (born 1927), rising from his connection with the new Kolej Islam in Kelang, and while serving as the federal MP for Bachok, had been killed in an automobile accident in 1964.

The party had fallen into the crisis custodianship of the Islamically educated radical nationalist Kelantanese politician, Mohamad Asri bin Haji Muda (1923-1992).

As 1967 began, the religious side of the party’s leadership was, if not in disarray, then in eclipse. There was a gap there be filled, an opportunity to be seized.

Two more events in 1967 were soon to shape dramatically the political contours of Kelantan and PAS. First, in July, the “firebrand” PAS MP for Pasir Mas was murdered outside the PAS headquarters in Kota Baru. There were murmurings of political conspiracy, but personal animosities may well have been the main motivation. A heated by-election was held to replace him.

No sooner was that by-election completed than the member for Kelantan Hilir (or “down-river” Kota Baru), one of the old PAS ulama (religious scholars) also died, and in November a by-election was held to replace him.

The candidate that PAS, somewhat surprisingly, produced was Nik Abdul Aziz bin Nik Mat, a well-known and widely respected religious teacher in the area but, until then, not a man publicly identified with PAS.

On the contrary, he came to PAS candidature from his previous employment as a co-ordinator of programmes of rural extension (“adult education”) religious teaching offered by the UMNO-led federal government through Kemas, the Jabatan Kemajuan Masyarakat (or Department of Social Development), generally seen as a kind of government-housed UMNO rural outreach instrument. All Kemas employees, it was assumed, were either explicitly pro-UMNO or else decidedly neutral and non-political.

With his emergence as candidate, Nik Aziz — to the surprise of many, since he had been a conscientious but politically undemonstrative servant of Kemas, but amid grumblings about disloyalty and deception from some UMNO functionaries — declared his true political colours and allegiances.

Starting gradually, Nik Aziz, or simply “Tok Guru” as people would come to refer to him, over the following years became a major political personality in Kelantan, a high-profile PAS identity nation-wide, and a powerful force and focus of the reassertion of the ulama presence and their power within PAS.

Nik Aziz and Bachok politics, 1968-1969

From the time of his election to parliament and as the 1969 elections approached, Kelantanese politics became increasingly heated. Partly this heightening of tension reflected national-level developments, as Malay discontent grew and found expression in agitation over such issues as Malay as the national language, education policy, and the obstacles to Malay bumiputera economic advancement.

But it was also in response to local, village-level developments too. In Bachok district it certainly was. In 1968 the State Assembly member for North Bachok died, and another by-election had to be held.

As I have noted elsewhere, “In this, the third by-election caused within a year by the death of a PAS incumbent in Kelantan, the UMNO was again eager to capture a PAS seat and thus promote a flood of defections to its side before the approaching general elections of 1969. Though it had twice increased its share of the vote in PAS strongholds, the UMNO had been denied the dramatic victory it sought. Rating its chances better in North Bachok than in the earlier contests, the UMNO decided to pursue victory aggressively” (Islam and Politics in a Malay State: Kelantan 1838-1969, Cornell U.P., 1978, p. 151).

And it proved brutal.

UMNO deployed enormous power and resources in this third contest, now concentrated within a small, state assembly constituency area. It brought to bear a full range of government instrumentalities, an enormous government-provided “war-chest” to fund offers and inducements, and overbearing social pressure as well.

Humble villagers were approached on a near daily basis by teams of UMNO operatives and “grandees”, who sought politely to “win their hearts” but also socially to cajole, shame, humiliate and overwhelm them. To pressure them to say, just once, as a way of getting some relief from the sustained onslaught, that, yes, they would vote for UMNO.

Once they did that, they would find it difficult, under unrelenting daily reinforcement, not to deliver their vote on the day; and, meanwhile, having promised to do so, they would often find themselves cut off and shunned by their fellow villagers who, having resisted such blandishments, still supported PAS.

And, when PAS people tried to persuade those who had wavered and wilted that they might still vote their own minds and consciences, they would find the prospective defectors surrounded and protected by young UMNO supporters and “enforcers” who were determined to keep the “new recruits” isolated from their own village friends and to keep PAS operatives away from them.

In these circumstances, interpersonal tensions rose rapidly, and soon escalated into overt violence. When that happened it was generally the UMNO side that found its position upheld by the police, and the PAS partisans found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Things became very ugly. Especially in certain villages identified and targeted by UMNO as “ripe” for breaking open and capture.

How was PAS to respond to this onslaught? It lacked UMNO’s vast material resources, its access to government infrastructure, and its ability to rely on police support.

It could turn only to what we might term “moral resistance”.

To hold the situation, and hold their supporters together (and out of UMNO’s easy reach), PAS sent out to those “beleaguered” villagers a number of its religious teachers and ulama operatives — not just for an afternoon’s pep talk but to stay and live with them, in their houses and villages, for days on  end, until polling day.

These men would stay with the PAS-supporting villagers, provide a focus of attention and activities, talk with them and tell stories, lead prayers, give religious lectures and offer personal assurance and advice. They came to be and also stay with their party’s local supporters, holding them together in tight social and political cohesion, bound together in exemplary Islamic terms by what many were ready to regard as “the rope of Allah”, of divinely encouraged Islamic solidarity.

The Nik Aziz political paradigm

Under the guidance of the party’s ulama emissaries, the Kelantan villagers came to see and experience themselves as part of the core drama, and moral paradigms, of Islamic politics and Islamic struggle, not just in Kelantan in the 1960s but at all times and places. They became, in their own eyes, true believers engaged, in full standing, in the defining drama and struggle of Islam itself.

As I have noted: “What had happened in their parish, they were instructed, was no obscure dispute in a remote village on the fringe of the Muslim world, but part of the whole fabric of Islamic history, woven from the warp of unending oppression and the woof of a responding intransigence. Islamic history was not simply the ancient, almost legendary events of distant Arabia, but a process in which, through unyielding commitment, they had participated on a basis of salvationary equality with all who have suffered for Islam. ‘What is Islam,’ mused one villager, ‘but a community of suffering? We here in our own way have been fully inducted into the ranks of the Faithful’” (Islam and Politics in a Malay State, p. 155).

And it was — in the year or so following his election as Kelantan Hilir MP and based upon his experience as the programme organizer for the Kemas adult education and outreach activities — Nik Aziz who conceptualiszaed, devised, headed, developed and promoted those live-in ulama teams, their modus operandi and techniques. And what we would today call their persuasive “form of discourse”.

Nik Aziz did not just devise and personally oversee this programme of Islamically-informed “moral resistance”, of modern Malay politics in a locally accessible Islamic idiom. In doing so, he created or recreated himself as Tok Guru. As the prototype and archetype of the Kelantanese and Malaysian Islamic politician. As the persuasive template and identikit of the Islamic man of faith in action: not in the madrasah or in party political conclave but “out in the world”.

A lot of facile nonsense is uttered these days about “public intellectuals”. Well, Nik Aziz was something similar but also entirely different. And, of that specific social type, he was “the genuine thing”. He was the living epitome of the “public alim”: an exemplar of “ulama politics” who personally embodied and projected a powerful vision and doctrine about how the everyday challenges of Islamic politics — of “being and doing Islam in the world” — were to be faced as a single, coherent, ubiquitous and paradigmatic form of struggle.

How did he do it?

From Ustaz Nik Aziz to Tok Guru: it was a remarkable transformation or image “remake”.

How did he do it?

My answer to this key question comes not from talking to the man or any similarly close and privileged insight into him in those years but from observing him publicly. From watching and being fascinated by his presentation of himself and by his projection, through his austere persona, of his political outlook and message.

And I was not alone in seeing him as this often remote, aloof and ascetic yet compelling man or living symbol.  A leading international journalist who stumbled upon one of his political rallies in a Kelantan kampung during the 1986 national election was similarly struck — but in his published report greatly offended his admirers by likening Nik Aziz, his aura and demeanour to “Uncle Ho”, Ho Chi Minh.

It has become a commonplace for people to tell their stories of how modest, open and approachable — often to their great surprise — they found Tok Guru on meeting him.

But, early in his public political career, I did not find him easy to approach. Though generally of gentle and withdrawn demeanour, he could be fierce, even terrifying — especially when denouncing UMNO and inveighing against what he saw as the arrogance and abuses of those who represented it and projected it into village life.

In those days, to be honest, I suspected him of being a committed but quietly spoken fanatic. When our paths crossed, as they often did, in the Bachok villages, I suppose he wondered what I was doing there, suspecting that, whatever my purpose, I was (from his point of view) up to no good. And I also recognised that, given his politics and attitude to the kind of thing that I was doing there, he was probably right to think so. Hence I always felt awkward in his stern and forbidding presence.

So I did not pester or intrude upon him. I simply observed and listened to him, watched his “performative” social presentation of himself and attended closely to his words, their patterning, their subtly calculated and accumulating, even cascading, effects.

Until his election to parliament in 1967, Nik Aziz was what was technically known at the time, via the standard Arabic term, as a mubaligh, meaning not just a religious teacher or “propagandist” but an exponent of balaghah — of the arts of rhetoric, argument and persuasion.

Balaghah has always been a key component of the curriculum of the so-called Sekolah Arab religious schools in Malaysia, as elsewhere. Mastery of the traditional skills and art of public speaking and argument, of balaghah, has always been fundamental to PAS campaigning, and has long been the basis of its persistent ability to “out-argue” and “out-persuade” UMNO on the ground in kampung-level Malay politics. In its title, one famous pre-war guide to Kelantanese argument characterized this verbal jousting as Tikaman Bahasa, as stabbing with words, or verbal dagger-work.

Ustadz Nik Aziz was a master of those verbal skills.  These, in his own case, had been further sharpened by his overseas studies, in this aspect more significantly at the formidable Dar Ul Uloom Deoband Academy in India than by his later studies at Al-Azhar in Cairo. As he now emerged as Tok Guru, he created and defined himself through their masterful deployment within the brutally uncompromising intra-Malay politics pitting PAS against UMNO in Kelantan in and from the late 1960s.

Rhetorical style and technique

When Tok Guru addressed a Kelantan village audience, he did not only speak in the local Kelantan dialect. He also adopted a “folksy” — replete, elaborated and locally accessible — narrative style. (Some insight into these processes is provided by Farish A. Noor, “The Localization of Islamist Discourse in the Tafsir of Tuan Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat …”, in Virginia Hooker & Norani Othman, eds., Malaysia: Islam, Society and Politics, ISEAS, Singapore, 2003, pp. 195-235.)

As he talked about, and drew political lessons from, the life of the Prophet, the stories that he told became “real” and immediately apprehendable in local terms, to local audiences. Related in a recognizably Kelantanese Malay “verbal register” and style, the struggles of Mekkah and Madinah centuries ago became recognizable to Kelantanese, in ways familiar to them.

This narrative technique not only had the effect of placing his Kelantanese listeners in the midst of the conflicts that shaped the Prophet’s career in Arabia; it also, as he told those stories in richly Kelantanese idiom and style, brought the Prophet and the whole cast of characters from his life-story into Kelantan. They became people just like the neighbours of these Kelantan villagers. It made sense in a new way to many Kelantanese, a familiar and recognisable Kelantan kind of sense.

This narrative technique produced — as in that villager’s comment about the impact of the brutal North Bachok by-election — a merging, a collapsing and folding together, that worked in two directions, not just one. It transposed the painful and harrowing conflicts of a small and remote Kelantan village into the heart of the Islamic world and experience, into the formative events and meanings of Islamic history. And, as presented by Tok Guru, it also brought that history, its events and validating meanings and messages to the PAS-supporting faithful in those far-off villages, making those struggles coherently graspable and endowing the lives of those caught up in them with rich Islamic meaning.

Sacred history and local anecdote became one. Ancient Arabia and Kelantan — Mekkah and Medinah and Bachok — were fused together by a unifying narrative. What was happening in Kelantan occurred, or so it was made to seem, in the same time, place and moral space as the careers of the Prophet and his companions. Accounts of their travails and triumphs were made to provide object lessons, parables, and instructive precepts and action-paradigms for Tok Guru’s listeners. He made what was happening in Kelantan seem a part, or a refraction, of all that had happened elsewhere at other times, notably in the life of the Prophet himself.

Mekkah and Madinah became, for Tok Guru’s listeners, places whose challenges were not altogether unlike those faced by them in their own villages and state. And, not that Tok Guru was in any way an image or model of the Prophet, through his example and words people felt they might begin to imagine how the Prophet might have lived and conducted himself.

It was powerful stuff, that, to be up against. If you didn’t believe it you had only to ask UMNO, whose more locally attuned leaders and operatives saw how hard this process was either to crack, on PAS’s side, or to replicate on UMNO’s. And how hard, in fact near impossible, it was for them to undo the profoundly adverse effects these processes had for UMNO’s hopes of ever winning and holding onto Kelantan by ordinary electoral means.

In this way, via Tok Guru’s artful balaghah, the Kelantanese were made to sit four-square within the formative and recognisable history of the ummah generally; and that history, centring upon the life of the Prophet — thanks to his narrative ingenuity and agility — was brought to bear upon and sit with them in the midst of their tribulations in confronting the massive and intimidating force mobilised against them by UMNO. Tok Guru brought these often demeaned Kelantanese into the paradigmatic history of Islam, and he brought that grand history to them, in locally comprehensible verbal and moral idioms, to clarify, dignify and in that way also to strengthen their struggle.

If Tok Guru could do this, could invoke and “make real” for these poor Kelantanese the very essence of Islam — make it an immediate and almost palpable presence in their often deprived lives — then who might possibly and plausibly deny that PAS, through Tok Guru, was making Islam real for them, literally making it “come to life” with clarity and compelling coherence, in their lives?

Certainly not UMNO, with its all too “political” politicians (so dramatically unlike the master “anti-politician” Nik Aziz) and its legions of politically ambitious and self-regarding party-religious ideologues.

UMNO leaders and operatives never quite grasped that, for the PAS-supporting villagers of Kelantan, the struggle of PAS was the struggle of Islam itself: not (as UMNO always imagined) because of some lies or misrepresentations or simply verbal tricks that PAS offered; but because experientially, in those unrelenting village conflicts and through the power of that narrative technique (identified above all with Nik Aziz), those villagers came experientially to “know” and become part of and “at one with” Islam through PAS. Hence they came to see PAS not just as toying with or “conjuring up” the presence of Islam but in fact representing it. PAS somehow made Islam real, for them, in their lives.

Focusing on Kelantan

Many of the accounts of Tok Guru’s career that have appeared in the days since his death suggest that in 1986 he opted to abandon federal politics and to focus exclusively on Kelantan.

This is inaccurate.

The 1986 elections — held when Dr. Mahathir had risen high in his early ascendancy, and before any of the major problems of his prime ministership had asserted themselves — was also the first election held after the young Shari’ah-minded Islamists around Hadi Awang had seized control of the party from Datuk Asri Haji Muda.

It was not a good campaign for PAS, and it was made worse by the fact that it offered a strenuously Shari’ah-minded platform that owed much to recent revolutionary events in Iran. And still worse, unprecedentedly, it was held during the “haj season” when many devout PAS-supporting Kelantanese were away overseas and unable to vote.

PAS had assumed that it could hold onto Nik Aziz’s parliamentary seat (the old Kelantan Hilir, now known as Pengkalan Chepa) but it wanted to make sure of winning neighbouring Bachok with a strong candidate. So the party found a new candidate for Pengkalan Chepa and Nik Aziz stood for PAS in Bachok where he was widely known, respected and liked. But strangely, in that very strange election, he lost, by a small margin but (despite the absent pilgrimage people) on a huge voter turnout. Many newly enrolled military voters may have been added, for the first time, to the Bachok rolls.

Nik Aziz lost in Bachok. Sad, but no matter. He did not greatly like federal parliament, where his presence was largely decorative and suited his adversaries’ purposes, not his own. So he was content to be the state assemblyman for Semut Api, now named Chempaka, and to concentrate on Kelantanese matters.

UMNO ended up paying a heavy price for defeating Tok Guru in Bachok. With his energies now exclusively focused within Kelantan, he did the groundwork that enabled PAS — which had ruled Kelantan from 1959 to 1978 and then been ousted from power by high-level UMNO manoeuvering using a disaffected faction within PAS — to return to power in the state. UMNO had won Kelantan in 1978 and then held it, in Dr. Mahathir’s first two national election campaigns in 1982 and 1986. But now, Nik Aziz was back on the case. PAS once again won control of Kelantan in a stunning victory in 1990 — and so began Tok Guru’s 23 years as Chief Minister (and also Mubaligh-in-Chief, as it were) of Kelantan — and it has held onto the state through the succeeding elections of 1995, 1999, 2004, 2008 and 2013.

While many in PAS these days, along with powerful elements within UMNO, eagerly look to the imminent possibility of a rapprochement between UMNO and PAS to establish together a “Malay Bumiputera Islamic government” whose preferred terms all other parts of the nation will have to accept, within PAS Nik Aziz was an adamant and powerful opponent of any such initiative.

He had basic disagreements within the Pakatan coalition with the late Karpal Singh over the implementation of hudud law punishments. But they were allied in resisting the clamouring from some elements within PAS for it to leave Pakatan and make common cause once more with UMNO. Nik Aziz not only remembered all too well the bitter partisan rivalries throughout the Kelantan countryside of the 1960s. He also recalled with pain the treachery, as he saw it, of UMNO’s co-opting and then betraying of PAS in Kelantan in 1978 and the years that followed.

Asked why he opposed pursuing any second rapprochement with UMNO, his pointedly bitter reply was that it would be stupid “to allow oneself to be bitten twice by the same snake coming out of the same hole”. A pithy Kelantanese village locution once again.

Whether such a rapprochement will soon become irresistible now that both Karpal Singh and Nik Aziz have departed from the mundane field of political battles is one of the large questions of the present moment and immediate, pre-GE14 future.

Tok Guru, my teacher too

Tuan Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat, or Tok Guru, will likely prove unique in Malaysian political history. He was the product of a complex combination of historical circumstances that are unlikely ever to recur.

He stands there, seemingly alone and on his own. As so many people have said lately in so many different ways, you did not have to agree with him to recognize his personal modesty and courtesy, his self-evident integrity and his own authenticity — all of them grounded in the Kelantanese Islamic politics, society and culture of his time.

He became known almost universally as Tok Guru, and he was my teacher too.  He taught me a lot (though I am sure that it was not what he would have wished me to learn from him and his commitments) that has stayed with me throughout my life and career as a scholar for almost half a century now, since I first began observing him and how he operated.

Above all, I learned from him, from his example and by watching him carefully, about the great force that — when effectively personified and presented, performed and projected — Islam can be and can generate within, and also against, the modern world: against the distinctive “package” of benefits and challenges and “trade-offs” that “modernity” may present.

I learned from Tok Guru how, in the name of a faith and a sacred history “made real” for everyday folk, the agenda of an over-confident and heedlessly advancing modernity may be decisively obstructed and resisted.

* Clive Kessler is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of Islam and Politics in a Malay State: Kelantan 1838-1969, Cornell U.P., Ithaca NY, 1978.

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What can I do to free Anwar?

William Leong Jee Keen

Member of Parliament Selayang

23 February 2015

Time for Decisive Action

Tonight is the 13th night Anwar Ibrahim, a prisoner of conscience, with mosquitoes feeding on him is forced to sleep with a spinal injury on the cold hard floor of Sungai Buloh prison. A suffering he has to endure for another 5 years. Like Prometheus, Anwar is punished for giving Malaysians the fire of Hope, opening their eyes to the Truth and unlocking their minds from Prejudices.

Tonight is the 13th night we are holding this vigil to bring to light the injustice Anwar is suffering. They jailed him fearing they will lose the next election. But aiming to free him, will spur us to win.

However, we must work hard. We have fewer than 150 weeks to the next election, fewer than 1,000 nights to put Anwar back, fewer than 25,000 minutes to take firm and decisive action to free Anwar, to free Malaysia.

The 4 Challenges:

Anwar dedicated himself to fight oppression, corruption, inequality, and injustice. There isn’t and never was a Malay problem, Chinese problem, Indian problem, Kadazan or an Iban problem. It has always been a Malaysian problem. And only when we all think and act as Malaysians can we solve this problem. But there are those who do not. They want to keep us apart, separated and divided. They ask the young to sacrifice for their race while they reap the profits from the discord sown.

In the days ahead we have to surmount difficult challenges and we must be prepared to meet them. The elections are not free and fair; they carry out gerrymandering, malapportionment, change the boundaries to their advantage, the electoral roll is not clean, we are denied media access while the media is the mouthpiece of their propaganda, they arrest and jail our leaders, charging them for sedition, prevent us from holding rallies, while they get away with calling for the burning of bibles, disparaging other races and religions, creating anxieties and tensions.

To achieve victory requires a level of opposition mobilization, unity, skill and heroism far beyond what is normally required for victory in a democracy. To snatch victory from the jaws of defeat we must first overcome 4 challenges.

The 1st Challenge: Creating Political Awareness in the Social Media Users

The first challenge is creating political awareness in social media users. We have, today, in our hands the social media. The internet has toppled dictators in the Arab Spring, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia but it has also failed in Belarus to remove the authoritarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, the last dictator of Europe. It failed in Iran.

The social media is the most powerful tool for mobilizing and disseminating information against authoritarian regimes but only if there is political awareness by the users. Otherwise, social media remains an insipid medium for commerce, social affairs and entertainment. Little political change can happen without dissemination and adoption of ideas even on the internet. To win the hearts and minds of the uninformed, access to information is not as important as access to conversations. People’s minds are changed when friends, family members and colleagues share and echo political opinions. Casual participants cannot hope to succeed in creating political change merely by clicking on “like”- it is no more effective than a bumper sticker- long on sentiment, short on any useful action. Commenting and sharing showcases people’s opinions, leaving a stronger effect than merely liking an idea. A better world comes only when committed actors use the social media effectively for real world action. Steve Jobs said: “It is not faith in technology. It is faith in people.” Long term democratic success or failure depends upon people not technology.

Putting the Judgment into the Full Glare of Public Scrutiny

The battle in social media started even before the Federal Court Judges finished reading the judgment and sentencing. They always try to censor, intimidate and spread disinformation. They know the judgment cannot stand up to close examination.

Even now, Khalid Abu Bakar @KBAB51 is watching you, the IGP is monitoring Facebook and Twitter, investigating our MPs who tweeted or commented about the Federal Court decision. The Chief Justice, Tun Ariffin Zakaria and the Attorney-General, Tan Sri Abdul Ghani Patail warned the lawyers and the public not to criticise the judiciary. Shafee Abdullah wants Christopher Leong and Ambiga Sreenevasan, the present and past Bar Council president to be charged for contempt on their remarks about the court judgment.

Yet, Shafee Abdullah and the UMNO youth are going around, unmolested, holding forums and seminars to defend the indefensible and attack Anwar, who cannot be there to defend himself.

The Chief Justice and AG say that criticism must stop as it will erode public confidence in the administration of justice. I say the criticism must continue so injustice can be corrected and public confidence restored in the administration of justice.

They may have power inside the country to intimidate us and to bury the truth but they are powerless outside the country and cannot prevent the truth from being exposed. The governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, the European Union and many others immediately criticised the court decision. The embassies and high commissions of these countries sent observers to cover Anwar’s trial. They all concluded that Anwar should not have been charged, much less convicted.

Likewise, respected international human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Federation for Human Rights said the same thing. The International Commission of Jurists and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) also condemned the court’s verdict. Mark Trowell, a Queen’s Counsel who represented IPU, LAWASIA and the Law Council of Australia said the Federal Court decision lacked a detailed analysis of the facts. He said the court rejected or ignored evidence that raised serious doubts about the reliability of the evidence and credibility of the complainant.

These comments and criticisms are all over the internet. We must forward to, pass on and share these comments and insights with our family, friends and colleagues, so that Malaysians will know the truth and can make the final judgment. Truth must prevail.

Evil prevails when good men stand by and do nothing. We will be complicit to injustice if we keep silent on Anwar’s case. There is no contempt when we criticise a judgment in good faith. Proceedings in an open court is the basic foundation of transparency and public confidence in the judiciary. The rule of openness entails that reasons for the judgment are public information and therefore subject to scrutiny of the parties, the media, bar, legal scholars and ultimately the public. The public must be allowed to discuss and publish accounts of the proceedings, examinations and decisions. Lord Atkin explained in the Privy Council case of Andre Paul Terence Ambard v The Attorney-General of Trinidad and Tobago [1936]   AC 322 at 335:

“Whether the authority and position of an individual judge, or the due administration of justice, is concerned, no wrong is committed by any member of the public who exercises the ordinary right of criticising in good faith, in private or public, the public act done in the seat of justice. The path of criticism is a public way: the wrong-headed are permitted to err therein; provided that members of the public abstain from imputing improper motives to those taking part in the administration of justice, and are genuinely exercising a right of criticism, and not acting in malice or attempting to impair the administration of justice, they are immune. Justice is not a cloistered virtue; she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even though outspoken, comments of ordinary men.”

Jeremy Bentham, the 19th Century English philosopher said: “In the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest in every shape, have full swing. Only in proportion as publicity has place can any checks, applications to judicial injustice, operate. Where there is no publicity there is no justice”

If the judgment accords with the facts, law and justice there should be no fear for the judgment to be held up to the full light of public scrutiny and the blazing glare of public criticism. It is only where there is disrepute, dishonour, disingenuousness, dishonesty and injustice must it be hidden in darkness and silence. We must not just click on “like” but we must click on “share” so Malaysians can pass the final judgment and hold those responsible to account.

The 2nd Challenge: Fear of Futility

The second challenge is the fear of futility. It is the fear that there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the array of forces; money, machinery and media at the disposal of those we are up against.

A few nights ago, I was distributing oranges in the night market as part of our Chinese New Year greetings to the people. A young girl came up to me and asked “What can I do to free Anwar?”

I told her the best thing she can do to free Anwar is to stand up against injustice. Stand up for your rights. When we stand up and speak up for what is right you remove the power of those who oppress us, those responsible for putting Anwar Ibrahim in jail. An oppressor’s power is ultimately dependent on the support from the people. His moral authority and power rests upon the co-operation and support of the people. If the people support an oppressor then the oppressor is powerful but if the people withdraw support then even the biggest oppressor will disintegrate.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the coloured section of the bus to a white. Rosa Parks’ act of defiance became a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement. President Lyndon Johnson in his speech “We Shall Overcome” asking Congress to approve the Civil Rights Bill said: “The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety, and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this nation. His demonstrations have been designed to call attention to injustice, designed to provoke change, designed to stir reform. He has been called upon to make good the promise of America.”

The Civil Rights Bill was passed in 1965 and in 2008 America elected a president based on the content of his character and not the colour of his skin. The courage of one woman awakened the conscience of a nation.

What is needed is for one young girl, like the one who accepted my mandarin orange, to stand up. Each time a man or a woman stands up, he or she creates a ripple of hope and when a million stand up the ripples become a mighty current that can sweep away even the strongest wall of oppression.

The young girl with the mandarin orange, like Rosa Parks, is ready to stand up and create her the ripple, will you stand up and start the ripples of your own?

The 3rd Challenge: The Danger of Inertia

The third challenge is the danger of inertia, the lack of resolute commitment. Very often I am told by well-meaning supporters why don’t you say this or that. We are waiting for someone else to say it or to do it. We are always waiting for someone else to lead while we cheer and support from the safety and comfort of our living room sofa.

We all know the stories of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. They are our heroes. Where are our Malaysian heroes they ask? Karpal Singh was killed in an accident last year, Anwar Ibrahim is in jail and Tok Guru Nik Aziz passed away a few days ago. Are we to sit quietly by waiting for the next Messiah or the next hero to show up or do we make a stand now?

I was at a forum in Ipoh some months ago, a member of the audience asked where is Malaysia’s Martin Luther King? Where is our Gandhi? I told him the Malaysian Martin Luther King or next Gandhi is standing right in front of us. All of us can be leaders and all of us can be followers, if we can find the courage and commitment to stand up and speak up against injustice. It is not just the leader who must stand up and speak. It is all of us.

In 1936, Mahatma Gandhi started a 248 mile trek to illegally make salt from the sea with 79 other ordinary Indians to protest British Colonial Rule. This grew into thousands by the time he reached the sea. At the Dharasana Salt Works, ordinary Indians who did not raise even an arm to fend off the blows were beaten by the police. The ensuing publicity attracted world attention to the Indian independence movement and brought into question the legitimacy of British rule in India. India obtained independence in 1947.

Gandhi did not undertake the salt march on his own. He could not have done it without the thousands and millions who joined in. It was the resolute commitment of ordinary Indians that succeeded in winning independence against the might of an empire where the sun never sets.

Malaysians of all walks of lives have to find the resolute commitment to fight for change.  You have to decide which side of history you want to be on. There is always the danger and temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths and let others take the road less travelled. We are now at the cross-roads, it is the time for choosing. Everyone will ultimately be judged by the effort and contribution he or she has made towards the new order. You would want to tell your children and grandchildren that you were there and contributed towards bringing down the walls of oppression.

The 4th Challenge: Lack of Courage of Conviction

The fourth challenge is the danger of a lack of moral courage, a lack of the courage of conviction. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues and the wrath of society.

Every day we see injustice. In the office, in schools, in dealing with government departments and agencies. It is not easy to speak up against injustice. If we speak up we may face injustice ourselves. We fear retribution, disapproval, damaged relationships. However, simply being offended when we see injustice is not enough. We must summon the courage and commitment to confront our fears and take action. If we just keep quiet we become part of the injustice.

Moral courage to coolly carry out non-violent resistance is far more difficult to muster than physical courage in the heat of a battlefield. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the nation. We will have to draw deeply from this quality when we face those who oppose change and who would use all in their might to prevent change. They fan the flame of emotions, suspicions, and hatred, they chained the unsuspecting and uninformed by playing on their fears of race and religion; they do this because this is the only choice for those who reject calm reason and rational acts of minds free to the demands of justice. The demands of justice is that no man should be judged by the colour of his skin or the faith which he believes in. This is a battle against discrimination, prejudice and bigotry.

Let no man think that he is fighting this battle for Anwar or for others. He is fighting this battle for himself and for his family and for the future of his children and so do we all. When today you abet those who rule to deprive a man of his liberty, his property, his dignity because of the colour of his skin or the beliefs he holds then tomorrow you may also suffer when those who rule turns against you and find other reasons and differences to exclude you in favour of his own. We must let go of these chains.

Robert Kennedy said: “Our liberty can grow only when the liberties of all our fellow men are secure; and he who would enslave others ends only by chaining himself, for chains have two ends, and he who holds the chain is as surely bound as he whom it holds.”

We must reach out to each other to break the chains that bind us. This was done in South Africa. In 1948, the ruling party of the South African Government started the system of racial segregation known as apartheid. In 1949, the youth wing of the African National Congress advocated a programme to overthrow the white authority through a series of mass campaign. The government then declared a state of emergency. More than 18,000 people were arrested including leaders of the ANC and the organisation banned.

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years but the struggle did not end with his imprisonment. Resistance to the apartheid system came from various sectors of society; organizations dedicated to peaceful protests, passive resistance, armed insurrection. It came from both black activists and white activists. It came from student movements, trade unions. It came from Churches, Hindus and Muslims. It came from the Black Sash, an organization of white women who opposed apartheid. In 1994, apartheid ended.

In the struggle by Gandhi for India’s independence, Martin Luther King’s black civil rights movement in America, Nelson Mandela’s fight against apartheid in South Africa, it is the ordinary people who exercised extraordinary courage.

The time has come for us Malaysian to find the courage and conviction to make the change we dream of into a reality. Freedom, Equality and Justice will not be given to us as a gift and it will not fall from the sky. The fight for freedom, equality and justice of Malaysians must be by Malaysians for Malaysians.

Seizing the Moment

Anwar has made his sacrifice for Malaysians. It is time for us to make ours. Our struggle has reached a decisive moment. I call on all Malaysians to seize this moment. We have waited for fifty-eight years, we cannot wait for another fifty-eight. The door to freedom and equality is right before us. One final push is all that is needed. One final effort will break open the door. One final rally and we will be there. We have come too far to stop now. Let us march together to freedom, shared prosperity and a better Malaysia.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 23 February 2015, 12:05 pm and is filed under
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Will the Chief Justice of Malaysia be leading Federal Court judges to go on nation-wide roadshow to justify and win in the court of public opinion their   decisions against Anwar which have not found support among the majority of thinking Malaysians

Will the Chief Justice of Malaysia be leading Federal Court judges to go on a nation-wide roadshow to justify and win in the court of public opinion their  decisions against Anwar which have not found support among the majority of thinking Malaysians?

This will the next sequel to the unprecedented, unhealthy and undesirable national  roadshow by Tan Sri Muhamad Shafee Abdullah, the lead prosecutor of Anwar Ibrahim’s Sodomy II trial, to character-assassinate, vilify and smear Anwar’s reputation and character although Anwar is languishing in Sungei Buloh prison.

In the second stop of Shafee’s nation-wide road-show  on Saturday night in Permatang Pauh, the media were told that they were banned from reporting the event – which was even more unfair to Anwar as it meant that Shafee was at liberty to say anything he liked against Anwar  as he was hiding under protection of secrecy from media reports!

Mohd Azmi Abdul, the president of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organisations, in his article in Malaysiakini “Let’s stop this ‘Sodomy Politics’, now” summed up not only the objection but the repulsion of ordinary decent Malaysians, Muslim and non-Muslim, at such depths plumbed by those in authority in the vile campaign of character-assassination against Anwar, when he asked:

“Shafee’s character assassination of Anwar at the forum, with Anwar having no opportunity to defend himself, was despicable, unethical, unIslamic and cowardly.

“How can one sink so low! The roadshow shows how disconnected Shafee and Khairy (Jamaluddin) are from the teachings of Islam, resulting in them losing their moral compass.”

The Shafee nation-wide roadshow to character-assassinate and smear the name of Anwar was the brainchild of none other than the  UMNO Youth Leader and Minister for Youth, Khairy Jamaluddin who announced at the first stop of the roadshow in Kelana Jaya  last Tuesday that the Barisan Nasional was launching a nationwide roadshow, featuring Shafee, to explain the Federal Court judgment on Anwar’s Sodomy II case as it had “kept silent for six years because the trial was in progress”.

Although a few UMNO leaders have expressed reservations about UMNO/Barisan Nasional sponsoring a nation-wide road show for Shafee to character-assassinate Anwar, with even the Deputy Finance Minister, Datuk Ahmad Maslan claiming that the Shafee roadshow to smear Anwar is not funded by UMNO or government, who is a Deputy Minister or unnamed UMNO leaders to rebut the announcement and admission of full Minister like Khairy Jamaluddin?

Unless the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister are prepared to come out openly to deny Khairy’s claim that the Barisan Nasional is behind the Shafee roadshow against Anwar, Malaysians can only conclude that the UMNO/BN leadership is continuing its vile and vicious vendetta against Anwar even after sending Anwar back to incarceration for the fourth time in Anwar’s life.

Shafee’s roadshow against Anwar to have a second bite of the cherry as he cannot win in the court of public opinion is also an admission that the Federal Court’s 5-0 unanimous opinion convicting Anwar in the Sodomy II case and sentencing him to five year’s jail lack credibility whatsoever.

Although the five Federal Court judges found Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan a credible witness, the court of public opinion does not find the Federal Court decision a credible one, which also means that the court of public opinion does not agree with the Federal Court and holds that Mohd Saiful is not a credible witness.

As UMNO leaders find that the Shafee roadshow against Anwar is “backfiring”, which means he is not making any headway in the court of public opinion to win back support for the Federal Court decision against Anwar, is there a possibility that the Federal Court judges headed by the Chief Justice might consider a roadshow to achieve what Shafee clearly has failed to do?

It is indeed quite unthinkable that the Federal Court judges would go on a nation-wide roadshow for a third bite of the cherry in Anwar’s Sodomy II trial, but it was equally unthinkable that the lead prosecutor of Anwar’s Sodomy II trial would go on a national roadshow for a second bite of the cherry to win support in the court of public  opinion.

Malaysia has become a very strange and abnormal country, where strangest of things can happen.

How can the Malaysian public be assured that decency and basic notions of fair play and justice have returned to govern affairs of state in  the public domain, and that there would  not only be no possibility of the Chief Justice leading Federal Court judges on a nation-wide road show to convince Malaysians of correctness  of the Federal Court decisions  against Anwar in Sodomy II, but that the Shafee roadshow would be halted immediately.

                This entry was posted on Monday, 23 February 2015, 6:31 pm and is filed under
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Has IGP completely lost his sense of priorities – setting up the world’s first police special unit on sedition for him to twitter instructions to harass PR leaders and NGO activists while overlooking the big national threat of Islamic State extending its tentacles to vulnerable young Malaysians including 14-year-old girls?

Many Malaysians must be asking whether the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar has completely lost his sense of priorities in setting up a special sedition unit called D5 for him to twitter instructions to the police officers attached to the unit to investigate and harass Pakatan Rakyat leaders and NGO activists while overlooking the real big national and international threat of Islamic State (IS) extending its tentacles in the country to vulnerable Malaysians, including 14-year-old girls?

Neither Parliament nor the country had been informed that sedition crimes have become so serious and ubiquitous that the Police have deemed it necessary to set up a special unit called D5  with special police officers who can and must respond immediately to the IGP’s twitter commands to act against PR leaders and NGO activists on sedition and whole variety of other  speech crimes.

Undoubtedly, Khalid has made a name for himself in the international fraternity of No. 1 policemen in the world, for he must be the first head of police in a country to set up a special unit on sedition, as if Malaysians have just set a new world record as the most seditious people in the world!

At a time when the IGP’s eye must be unfailingly focused on the new real crime and threat not only to Malaysia and the world – the rise of Islamic State with its siren appeal to Malaysian Muslims for a Muslim Caliphate stretching beyond national borders and space – Khalid’s focus is fixed in the wrong direction.

This has caused him to set up D5 and arrogating to himself the supreme task of roaming the cyberspace so that he could tweet directives to  D5 police officers  as to who are the PR leaders and NGO activists to harass and investigate, and undoubtedly, laying down a deadline when the D5 officers have to comply to report to him as to how they had carried out their instructions.

As a result, with the IGP’s eyes off the ball of the threat of Islamic State, the Malaysian police have failed to give due and proper attention and priority to the extent that even a 14 year old school girl from Johore  could be influenced to attempt to join the IS terrorists in Syria and Iraq.

What is worse was the  Home Minister, Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s recent shocking and questionable disclosure of a Islamic State plot to kidnap wealthy Malaysian Chinese for ransom and to stage bank robberies in the country to fund their terrorist activities.

Zahid may think that such revelation of the escalation of the threat by Islamic State in Malaysia will be powerful arguments to drum up support for tough provisions in the government’s anti-terrorist laws which is to be tabled in Parliament next month, except he had overlooked antoher important point  – that the escalation of the threat by Islamic State in Malaysia over the months is proof of his failure to nip in the bud  the threat of Islamic State in Malaysia, which reflects very badly on him as Home Minister.

The threat of Islamic State has become even greater over the months to not only lure Malaysian Muslim youths and even 14-year-old girls to join them in their international terrorist activities in Syria and Iraq, but to able to operate their cells in the country as to plot the kidnap of Malaysian Chinese towkays and to stage bank robberies.

What type of a Home Minister and IGP do we have?

It bespeaks of a police force which is not up to the task of eliminating the threat of Islamic State inside Malaysia, not to mention outside the country.

Has IGP got a special unit to fight the Islamic State threat in Malaysia and has he ever tweeted action to keep the threat of Islamic State in check, like his ceaseless tweets to D5 police officers  to investigate and harass PR leaders and NGO activists?

There has been a  spate of police arrests and investigations whether under sedition or other speech crime laws, where the police have acted completely out of character from  their past behavior where  the police officers were invariably very civil, genteel and correct in the manner they  conducted themselves.

Under the first five Prime Ministers and the whole host  of previous IGPs before Khalid, there were never instances like the  three cops gate-crashing into the Perak Pakatan Rakyat Chinese New Year Open House showing utter disrespect and insensitivity to diverse cultures and customs in a plural society to serve a police notice on DAP Perak State Chairman and  MP for Taiping Nga Kor Ming to give a police statement in Kuala Lumpur, or forcing Nga to travel 250 km from Ipoh to Bukit Aman to record a statement the next day, when the statement could have been taken in Ipoh itself?

Why have the police officers acted so uncharacteristically rude, disrespectful and insensitive?  Why the need to flaunt such power, which is actually a gross abuse of power!

My guess is that all this is because of Khalid and his  D5 sedition unit he had set up and his obsession with PR leaders and NGO activists, wanting the D5 officers to submit their investigation reports by arbitrary deadlines fixed by the IGP on pain of insubordination.

The IGP is barking up a wrong tree.

The statements and speeches by PR leaders and NGO activists may upset or even by a stretch of imagination threaten the political  security of the UMNO/BN leaders, but they do not in any manner threaten the security of the nation.

The IGP’s obsession should be  with the growing threat of Islamic State in Malaysia and not the democratic exercise of the freedom of speech of PR leaders and NGO activists.

The IGP should get his priorities right or he would go down into history as the Malaysian  “IGP with the Wrong Obsession”!

An IGP worth his salt must fight real criminals and not to turn patriotric and civic-minded Malaysians, whether PR leaders or NGO activists, into  imagined enemies of the state and criminals.

Malaysians want an IGP who can fight real criminals, and not one busy creating imaginary “criminals”.

When will Khalid start focusing on the real criminals and the  Islamic State, or  is  he influenced like the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak who had a secret infatuation  with Islamic State which he accidentally made public  at an Umno function last June?

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 February 2015, 3:17 pm and is filed under
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Have an opinion? Stuff it!

Fa Abdul | February 24, 2015

Free Malaysia Today

How come freedom of speech is limited to a select few who can say what they please while the majority spend a night in the lock-up for doing the same?

COMMENT

When I was growing up, reading the daily newspaper and watching the 8pm news was a must in my home. And every day during family time, my dad would open the floor for discussion. We used to discuss (and sometimes debate) various issues – politics, social, religion, entertainment, the works. Sometimes we got too excited over certain issues that we continued the same discussion for a few days.

Thanks to my dad, my brothers and I grew up having the ability to form our own opinions on matters that concerned us. And having strong opinions meant standing up to it as well.

But lately, I’ve begun to wonder if my dad made a big mistake having raised us the way he did. Because of my dad, I now have a tough time keeping my thoughts to myself and my mouth shut.

Like the other day, when I wrote about why I wasn’t offended by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons – I received piles of hate messages.

And then there was one time when I politely advised the security guards in my apartment that it was against the law for them to hold a visitor’s important documents – and the head of security raised his baton over my head.

Since when did freedom of speech and expressing oneself become an offence?

This reminds me of an acquaintance of mine who was arrested recently on a sedition charge for criticising the Federal Court judgement over the Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy case.

All he did was to post his opinion of the case on Facebook. He had to spend one night in a lock-up filled with creepy crawlies simply because he had trouble zipping his mouth. I bet he too was raised to stand up for what he believed in.

Looks like we can no longer call a spade, a spade. Freedom of speech can get us into lots of trouble these days.

Freedom is becoming obsolete

I wonder if the right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression are becoming functionally obsolete these days. In fact, if you break it into its parts and examine it, there isn’t much to it anymore.

I mean if you cannot share your opinions, express your thoughts or even criticise in any public way, what is left of our rights to freedom?

The weird thing is, freedom of speech isn’t something that exists out of nowhere. All it does is reinforce our existing viewpoints. What is the point of stopping a person from having his/her voice heard if you cannot stop them from forming that opinion in the first place?

The law can only stop people from sharing their viewpoints but not forming them. And banning people from having opinions is like banning gravity.

Lessons I have learned

As ridiculous as I think limiting freedom is, I have no choice but to adapt myself to the system and change my thought processes according to the way our society works nowadays.

So far I have learned that having an opinion is okay but to let it be heard is wrong.

Like when a national bowler charged with raping a 12-year-old girl was let off the hook because he was deemed to have a bright future, many were pretty upset with the judgement. If I thought it was a ridiculous judgement – that’s fine. But if I were to update my Facebook status condemning the judgement, that would be unacceptable. Have I got it right?

Another example would be the case where a kindergarten teacher charged with raping a 4-year-old girl went unpunished because the judge thought “women have a tendency to exaggerate”. So it is okay for me to wonder how many 4-year-olds the judge knows of who have the tendency to exaggerate about having sex but questioning the decision in public would be a no-no. I think I am on the right track.

Ah, finally I get it now. I think.

But wait a second. Why then is it okay for certain people to exercise their freedom of speech and express themselves while it is unacceptable for the others to do so?

Like why is it okay for certain people to make racist statements on TV but it is not okay for me to make racist jokes on social media?

Why is it okay for certain people to rally around the country for what they believe to be the truth but it is not okay for me to rally on the streets of Kuala Lumpur for what I believe is the truth?

Why is it okay for certain people to make press statements condemning others but it is not okay for me to write an opinion piece which could offend part of society?

Clearly, my understanding of freedom of speech and freedom of expression is something that I’m still struggling with.

I used to think freedom of speech as the foundation of a functioning democracy. I guess I was wrong. Perhaps freedom of speech only applies to those in power to freely tell us (the people) to shut our pie holes and do as told.

But what would I know. I am pretty much still confused.

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 24 February 2015, 9:21 am and is filed under
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