1st Priority: Reign in the Civil Servants

... and moving on from Election Day, the first priority of our Opposition State governments and the now very substantial Opposition bloc in the Federal Parliament, is to REIGN IN the Civil Service - with particular emphasis on the POLICE who must be brought to task, reformed, re-engineered, re-trained and otherwise re-organised to reduce the country's crime rate.

Corrupt and inefficient officers interested only in bullying HINDRAF lawyers and booking cars with Singapore licence plates in the hope of earning a fast buck must be punished - in clear, certain and painful terms.

Forensics training, and the mastery of other types of basic evidence gathering, retention and delivery for the purposes of successful prosecution must be the order of the day. No more reliance only on informers, anonymous "tip-offs", and the extraction of doubtful confessions under torture.

Makkal Ossai, Makkal Shakti!!

Lawman

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 -

TODAY'S EDITORIAL
November 29, 2006

Defenders of the six outraged imams removed from a Minneapolis flight last week want people to think that airline officials overreacted by removing them from the plane -- that all the imams were doing was trying to pray. But listen to what they did. It wasn't just praying.
The imams left their assigned seats shortly before takeoff in violation of the rules -- and then formed the same seating pattern that al Qaeda uses to test in-flight security. They switched "to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks -- two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin," Audrey Hudson reported in yesterday's editions of The Washington Times. In the course of this episode they prayed loudly -- this is the part the imams are now focusing on -- shouting in voices that even the gate agents outside the plane heard. But the praying isn't the issue.
The provocative seat-switching is. Now, there's a chance that it wasn't a deliberately provocative act. There's also a chance that pigs might fly, or that beer might fall from the heavens. We've never heard of a Muslim religious tenet that requires worshippers to occupy the entry and exit routes of an airliner. That's because there isn't any.
Was this an orchestrated ploy to intimidate airlines -- to exploit American civil-rights law? We can't peer inside the hearts and minds of these six men. But considering the details unearthed this week, that's where the evidence points.
To hear these imams' defenders, you would think that the freedom to pray is the issue. Here's Mohammed Abu Hannoud of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic advocacy group: "I think we should be smart enough to distinguish between peaceful Muslims and terrorists."
The imams should be smart enough -- we certainly think that they are smart enough -- to know that if they engage in seating maneuvers that mimic al Qaeda's, they will be under immediate suspicion and will be removed from the airplane.
There is no civil right to disobey airline seating rules, occupy the exits and entries of an airplane and shout loudly. Not for Muslims or Christians or anyone else.


OK OK I know : infringement of copyright here. Material reproduced without any permission whatsoever from the Washington Times. Lack of a profit (or a profit motive) and clear attribution are not a carte blanche to infringe. But I just couldn't resist. If you want to, visit the Washington Times yourself for more.

LMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061121/ts_nm/religion_iran_azerbaijan_dc_1

This is the reason for my extreme displeasure. Whatever happened to Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance? The clerics - the ones who (one would hope) would be the best equipped to reply in a rational manner - word for word, point for point, intellectual to intellectual, concept to concept, fact for fact - have instead called for death.

All this fellow did, like Salman Rushdie, was to write. He did not kill or incite anyone to kill anyone, Muslim or otherwise. But his detractors haven't bothered to meet him on the battleground of ideas; instead, they have decided that he should be silenced with extreme prejudice.

This makes me wonder: perhaps they want him killed because their own ideas are intellectually and morally bankrupt, perhaps his views are more valid than theirs, and they know that they cannot prove otherwise. Therefore their reaction is to kill him, so as to preserve their own monopoly on spiritual knowledge and prevent any better view from gaining the upper hand. A sort of "If you can't beat him, then kill him" approach.

I wonder when they'll issue a fatwa against me?

LMT

Kidnap of 150 at Baghdad institution

http://f332.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.rand=fneqh61op28e6
http://article.wn.com/view/2006/10/01/Gunmen_Kidnap_26_Workers_in_Baghdad_s/

This must be the saddest thing. Academics - who could be more harmless? And yet, this war is all about ideas. The ideas of an unenlightened, Dark Ages mentality attempting to return the entire Arab and Muslim (including sizable non-Muslim population - but since they are something less than human it's ok to ignore them) world to some mythical Golden Age that never existed, against the ideas of modern day 20th Century nations (including sizable - yes, very sizable - non-Anglo-Saxon, non-Caucasian populations. I don't see your average ethnic Tamil, Japanese or Chinese looking very "Whitey", do you?

Removal from the human gene pool in a violent, permanent and highly prejudicial manner appears now to be the only practical solution for the kidnappers and their ilk, once caught. We can hope for neuron-synapse-brain-wave-altering technology, but the current state of the art in this area just isn't there yet.

LMT.

The Old Man Must Learn to Let Go

The Old Man has to learn that his time is past. When he was PM he created a culture of fear. Operation Lallang was his doing. Anwar's sodomy trial and related actions were his doing. Twas he who sacked Tun Salleh Abbas. So Malaysia is no less an oppressed society now than when he was at the helm.

The Old Man can be praised for doing great things. I won't go through the list of his achievements here. No space. Suffice to say that when Al Gore came to KL and insulted the entire nation at a dinner at which he was the guest of honour and we were the host, I felt sufficiently annoyed to register an email address in the Old Man's name for myself and to circulate a non-anonymous email to all my friends at that time, denouncing Al Gore's lack of any grasp whatsoever of the subject matter of his speech. I thought it was a defining moment of the Old Man's career when, irregardless of who he may have annoyed, the entire nation stepped back and gave him its full backing against what was an obviously unwarranted attack by a rude, arrogant guest. Hopefully the guest has learned something in the intervening decade. He has, after all lost a US Presidential election in the meantime.

Anyway, back to the core of this post: whatever great things the Old Man did, his time is past. He did it to himself; no one else. So to now try to do a Jesus or a Lazarus (come back from the political dead) is downright bad taste. Let go. Your time is over, Old Man. You retired. It was your choice. Now stay retired so the rest of us can get on with our lives.

LMT.

Freedom of Speech

I have always thought that it is important not to give in to bullies.

When someone wants to shut off all debate on an issue because of some perceived or alleged (meaning it has not actually happened) threat to society's general wellbeing, I get a little worried. I cannot help but suspect that the rush to shut the debate down before it has even begun is happening not so much because of any threat to society but because of a threat to the establishment and the established order, and vested interests who do not wish things to change - not for any high moral reason, but because they are gaining too much from the status quo.

IN other words, killing debate in many instances serves the bullies who are in power and who know that their position cannot be defended by rational argument. Rather than be proven wrong on the level playing field of rational debate, they decide to strong-arm a solution from a position of physical strength.

In recent history this has included certain American politicians trying to employ the war on terror as a flag to kill off proper and important debate on the limitations to individual freedoms; and the Hindu religious chauvinists mentioned in this article from the Sun,Malaysia, below.

LMT.

--- Article Information ---
This article was printed from Welcome to Sun2Surf
Article's URL: http://www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=15714
---------------------------

Preserve the right to free expression
By: Jacqueline Ann Surin (Thu, 05 Oct 2006)

The UK's Daily Telegraph recently ran an article headlined "Hindus threaten cinemas over film exposing plight of India's 'City of Widows'."

The film is Indian-born director Deepa Mehta's Water which highlights the cruel Hindu tradition of treating widows as social outcasts. According to this tradition, it is a widow's bad karma that caused her husband's demise.

As a result, many of India's 40 million widows are cast out of family and society, and have to fend for themselves. They are forced to shave their heads and dress in white.

About 10,000 seek sanctuary in Vrindavan - the City of Widows - a holy town in northern India where they rely on charity. Those not fortunate enough are forced into prostitution and begging.

The film is being nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film, but it is not being nominated by India, but by Mehta's adopted homeland, Canada.

See, Mehta has received death threats for her film and had to finish making it abroad. Protesting mobs attacked her film set and no cinema in India will show her film for fear of reprisals.

Hindu nationalist groups have accused the filmmaker of "insulting" Hindu culture, and of a "conspiracy to tarnish India's image".

The Daily Telegraph quotes World Hindu Council national convenor Prakash Sharma as declaring, "We will not tolerate a screening under any circumstances. We will attack cinemas if necessary."

The furore over Mehta and her film in India should resonate in Malaysia.

Sure, the context and actors may be different, but it wasn't too long ago when protesting mobs tried to prevent two Article 11 forums on Malaysians' constitutional rights from proceeding. Unfortunately, with the government ban on any other Article 11 forum, the use of threats and mob rule has proven highly effective in Malaysia.

And, wasn't it just last month that death threats against Muslim lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar circulated on the Internet, purportedly in the name of defending Islam - a great religion that seeks peace and justice, and that has a rich tradition of diversity and consultation.

Groups like Sisters in Islam and public intellectuals such as Farish Noor, who speak out against unjust practices committed in the name of religion, are also constantly accused of "belittling" and "insulting" Islam. They, too, have been labelled and threatened in attempts to suppress and silence.

Freedom of expression is a necessary prerequisite of any thinking, thriving democracy. Freedom of expression ensures that different voices, representing a plurality of interests that is inevitable in any human society, have the space to be heard and the opportunity to engage in public discourse.

It ensures that injustices such as the inhumane ostracisation of Hindu widows can be highlighted and addressed, rather than left to perpetuate and fester.

We know that it's not just in religion that strong threats against freedom of expression exist in Malaysia.

Movies, most recently Lelaki Komunis Terakhir, numerous publications and theatre performances are repeatedly and arbitrarily banned or censored in Malaysia.

Academics and students, meanwhile, are effectively prevented from speaking up publicly, for example, through the media, by the Universities and University Colleges Act and the Aku Janji pledge.

Those who would want to silence the people who speak out against the wrongs in our society - be they cultural or religious practices or in institutions like universities - are asking us to acquiesce to ongoing injustices.

You can usually tell when that happens from the arguments that they use, whether they be in India, Malaysia or any other part of the world.

To speak out is to "tarnish", "insult", "attack", "disparage" or "undermine" the sanctity of a religion, an institution, "Asian values" or whatever notion of social harmony is being promoted.

We would all do well to remember these arguments. It's usually an effective test to discern if freedom of expression is being suppressed to our collective detriment.

LAST month, to commemorate International Right to Know Day on Sept 28, the Freedom of Information (FOI) Coalition launched a campaign to advocate for a FOI Act in Malaysia.

The call for "No More Secrets" is long overdue, and the 10 principles for the FOI campaign (see www.cijmalaysia.org/info_cafe) are crucial and commendable.

What was highly disappointing, however, was the poor turnout at the launch.

Although the FOI Coalition comprises more than 32 organisations, none of their representatives, except for the Centre for Independent Journalism, turned up.

No political party representative or MP turned up either, despite being invited. In fact, only 10 people turned up, two of whom were foreigners.

"People must like their secrets very much," one foreign observer remarked.

It was hard to dispute that especially since coalition members themselves could not be present to show support for a campaign they want the public to embrace.

Jacqueline Ann Surin believes that you cannot be neutral on a moving train. She is an assistant news editor at theSun. Comments: feedback@thesundaily.com

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