What Happens When You Try to Kill All the Lawyers

The impossible has happened - the BN has lost its two-thirds majority for the first time since 1969, and the Opposition controls 5 states and all Parliamentary seats for the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur (which is not a State).

The DAP, PAS and Keadilan will, operating as a loose coalition, form the State Governments of Penang, Kedah, Perak, and Selangor. In addition, PAS will rule Kelantan with a much stronger majority than it obtained in the last election in 2004.

As President Musharraf discovered much to his dismay when he decided to Kill All the Lawyers - figuratively speaking - Abdullah Badawi's BN has realised, too late, what happens in any functioning society which wants to maintain at least a semblance of democracy: when you find yourself trying to put down (well, at least ignore or denigrate) street protests mounted by lawyers, you are at the deep end of the pool and will drown in the next election.

A tip for politicians in future elections: be careful how you treat the professional class. You start dumping them in jail, it's a good leading indicator that you will fare poorly at the next (honest) polls.

For a better idea of what I'm talking about, go here and here.

And of course, Mr Shakespeare's famous line about Killing All the Lawyers, which when read in context was actually a Major Compliment to the Legal Profession, can be found here (Act IV, Scene 2, Henry VI Part 2).

One compliment to the ruling party though; the Malaysian elections were by and large, free and fair, and allegations and fears of rigging were basically unfounded, going by all currently available evidence.

Unfortunately, as Musharraf discovered in Pakistan, if you rig the vote you lose the elections no matter what the official outcome may be, and if you don't rig the vote then you lose the elections fair and square - either way, you lose.

Like I said, don't put the lawyers down, or you are looking at losing the next polls.

Now, some will say the BN hasn't actually lost the polls, at least not in the way that Musharraf was wiped out in Pakistan. Musharraf wasn't actually up for election; his party lost big and lost all control of Pakistan whereas Badawi WAS up for election, and the BN managed to retain all of East Malaysia and the southern and eastern regions of Peninsular Malaysia. But I say the BN very obviously lost in the sense that despite having gerrymandered election seats over many years in its favour, lopsided media coverage, the devotion of massive resources to a PR campaign, and the detention without trial of its most extreme recent critics (Manoharan & company, of HINDRAF), the BN received an absolute whopping in states it had considered reasonably safe - Selangor, Perak, Kedah - and in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, previously divided between Opposition and BN but as of yesterday TOTALLY Opposition (bar 1 seat). AND the BN lost Penang, was wiped out in Kelantan, AND lost its 2/3 majority - the holy grail of Opposition politicians. The Barisan Nasional has NEVER been beaten so badly since Independence. In Malaysian terms, it counts as a certain defeat.

For the first time in all recorded history, we have 5 Opposition Menteris Besar - one each from Keadilan and the DAP, and 3 from PAS. My congratulations to them all. I just hope they don't waste the chance to Just Change It!



and, for good measure: MAKKAL SHAKTI!!!

- Lawman -

SHOOT THE MALAYSIAN POLICE NOW!!!

Waylaid Couple Assaulted, Woman Gang-Raped

It's time to shoot the cops - publicly and immediately. Time to pull a few monkeys in the Royal Malaysian Police aside, try them for dereliction of duty, and have them shot in public and the bill sent to their families.

I want to ask our highly devoted and super-efficient ROYAL policemen exactly how much shit they expect the average Malaysian civilian to take before they will move their sorry little cholesterol-filled, corrupt, overpaid and underworked arses to actually do more than just stop people for driving with tinted windows and Singapore licence plates.

I am of course referring to that bit in the above article which states: "...the girl's brother who was driving around Taman Perling searching for his sister, chanced upon a police patrol car."

"...the policemen in the car listened to the girl's brother before driving off."

In other words, they did ABSOLUTELY nothing.

So the girl gets gang-raped by 4 men in Taman Tampoi Indah in front of her boyfriend, who is himself slashed in the legs with a parang.

The Chinese papers contain more information on how the police completely SLEPT with their eyes, ears, hands and legs wide open (begging to be assaulted, I suppose). It seems that the various police stations in the Johor Bahru area passed the complaint on from one to another, each station unwilling to actually take the report.

WHY are you afraid to act, hmmmm? Are these 4 men YOUR OWN perhaps?? I really want to know - but I'm sure I'll never find out, because short of yet another Commission of Inquiry - and how many of those do you our beloved men in blue actually want before anything changes in your sorry little decrepit excuse for a police force?? - YOU will never really investigate this "little" offence - your men are too busy taking RM100 bribes to settle RM300 compounds and shaking down honest businessmen for their money.

Is this an isolated incident? AM I over-reacting?

Weeeel, try the above article on for size - see the last bit which states: "The family called the police around 4am but Salima said a patrol car only arrived at her house about 7.30am. Kulim district police chief Superintendent Abdul Majid Hashim said he would look into the allegation that the police were slow in responding."

Yes, go ahead, look all you like. You won't find anything - because YOU are PART of the problem, not the solution.

Want to learn some real policing? Go see your neighbours down south. But that's not all, I think at least some of you require some brain surgery first. Radical brain surgery. Involving the complete physical separation of brain from body, in a clean-cut manner.

LMT.