Author: Hafiz Noor Shams

For more about me, please read this.

Categories
Liberty Politics & government

[1896] Of their words on morality are as worthless as dirt

A theater nearby is closing late today. Business is brisk, tickets sold out and the hall is filled. The operator has an outstanding comedy to thank for. The audience may laugh but at the end of the day, there is one important lesson to take home: to UMNO and Parti Keadilan Rakyat as well as their supporters, political defection is a matter of convenience and not morality.

So much has been said about political defection ever since Anwar Ibrahim first shared his ambition with the public last year. The confidence exhibited by him and his supporters was extraordinary. It rallied his base and made those on the other side terribly apprehensive. The drama even went across the South China Sea to Taiwan in humorous fashion.

Those threatened by Anwar Ibrahim’s move questioned its morality. They accused that a government formed through defection is undemocratic and unethical. Never mind that freedom of association itself is a democratic right, political defection was forwarded as a maneuver that disrespects the mandate given by the people through the March 8 2008 general election.

BN, fearing defections might actually take place, cried for anti-hopping law. Yet, when Parti Bersatu Sabah suffered political defection much to the benefit of BN, the same demand for such law was not heard.

This is one simple sign that the morality of defection is not about conviction but rather, convenience.

Another sign is when Anwar Ibrahim and PKR itself suffered from political defection. Suddenly, political defection is bad word for PKR. Anwar Ibrahim went as far as saying ”BN is trying to form the state government by hook or by crook — more by crook”. He said that without even a hint of guilt. Just days earlier, he was full of praise for freedom of association after he successfully fished in an UMNO state representative into PKR.

UMNO of course suffers from contradiction too when it comes to words and actions. It is clear that UMNO is for anti-hopping law, except when they are the beneficiaries of a supposedly immoral act.

Amid chameleons lacking sincerity undeserving of trust, there are a few notable heroes. Among them are Karpal Singh, Tunku Abdul Aziz Ibrahim and Nik Aziz Nik Mat. While their opposition to the idea of free association is disagreeable, at least they are honest as proven by the consistency. It is to these individuals that matters revolving around freedom of association are truly a question of morality.

These are the ones our society should give backing more frequently to and not some politicians who change their positions when it is convenient to do so, and too often at that. These are the ones that have real principles and take effort to live up to them even when they face challenging obstacles.

If freedom of association is ever immoral and an unethical idea, then the purposeful convenient inconsistency of positions is an even graver immorality. It is immoral and unethical because it shifts the goal post whereas a fair game demands for the post to be fixed. It is because of this that those that stick to their positions out of convictions are far better than fickle minded, opportunistic, unprincipled individuals.

For UMNO, PKR and their respective supporters that drabble themselves with the shameful paths of convenience, the next moral step to rectify their immoral act is clear: do away with the pretension of morality with regards to liberty. They need to be honest with their position about political defection: that they really do not care.

Any effort at honestly requires for both to cease assaulting the democratic right of a person to exercise his or her freedom of association. Equally important, both sides should realize that they have no moral authority at all to question such freedom anymore for their words are as worthless as dirt.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on February 8 2009.

Categories
Liberty Politics & government

[1895] Of Karpal Singh must not be prosecuted for the King is not above the law

Guess how many police reports have been filed against Karpal Singh for his plan to sue the Sultan of Perak?

To remind all, there is a huge dispute in the way the state government of Perak was transferred from Pakatan Rakyat to Barisan Nasional earlier this month. I will not go into the details and speak legalese since I lack the skill to do so. Suffice to say, Karpal Singh insists that the method is unconstitutional and I at the moment tend to agree with him. I myself prefer a vote of no confidence to formally prove any lack of confidence against the Pakatan government. Calling for the vote would settle a lot of issues as civil as possible.

Returning to the question, at the time of airing of Bulletin Utama on TV3 — drum roll please — 27 reports. Watching TV3 is always an angering experience since its so-called news borders outright lies and manipulation. But I want to know what both sides are thinking and I have to brave through the horrible minutes to obtain that knowledge. Not a pinch but a handful of salt has to be close by while watching and listening to TV3.

According to the news presented on Bulletin Utama in its typical propagandist fashion, Karpal Singh at the moment is being investigated under Sedition Act.

I may have been wrong when I suggested that the infatuation with the monarchy is coming to an end. I may be right if the statement is constrained to a certain section of the society but on the whole, it is quite hard to say if the monarchy is becoming more popular or less. One thing is certain, the monarchy as been used as a political vehicle by all sides.

The episode in the usually charming little Kuala Kangsar involving the firing of tear gas by the police to a protesting crowd suggests a conclusion which sits exactly opposite to the conclusion of various UMNO-related rallies in various places as aired on TV3. It cannot be ignored however that with UMNO’s effective control of the mainstream media, these pro-monarchy rallies may not as big as it was reported.

In any case, groups especially the one aligning to Barisan Nasional are trying to place the monarchy even higher than individuals and groups leaning toward Pakatan Rakyat had proposed earlier. Through the BN-aligned groups’ action against Karpal Singh, they are trying to grant the monarchy immunity. If they are successful in using an arm of the state to convict the DAP man under the Sedition Act, we would effectively have lèse majesté law.

That is unacceptable. Nobody is supposed to be above the law.

This is even greater than the immunity suggested by Parti Keadilan Rakyat during its pow-wow not too long ago and therefore, worse in terms of violating the spirit of equality before the law. For PKR at least, they were willing to bent back after being criticized though the bending seemed less than honest to me. Honest or not, the feedback mechanism works to some extend.

Unlike PKR however, the groups filing reports against Karpal Singh are unlikely to bow to any criticism. These are groups with strong direct ties to the pre-March 8 culture. Besides, these groups claim to fight for the Malays and that also means standing behind the monarchy. If they were to back down from supporting the monarchy, they would lose their raison d’être.

Effort by the UMNO-backed groups filing police reports against Karpal Singh is even more worrying given the fact that in the past, the subsequent processes had been manipulated to tilt the result. Furthermore, if the groups are successful in bringing the system to convict Karpal Singh, that would take us a step closer to undo one good structural legacy of the Mahathir administration.

While former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed has caused many wrong weakening of public institutions to overly strengtened the executive, one of few good structural changes he brought upon to this country is the removal of the immunity of the monarchy. He made true of the phrase nobody is above the law by making the monarchy accountable to rule of law.

The court is and has to be the final arbitrator and Mahathir made that possible.

At the same time, it is clear that the dispute regarding the change of state government in Perak is a constitutional matter. Such matter can only be addressed in the court of law. Outcomes from the courts can then be used as reference, making the likelihood of future disputes lower than what it currently is. The application of the Sedition Act to prevent effort to bring the matter to the court does nothing other than sweeping the dust under the carpet.

For the UMNO-backed group, they do not realize this because as always typical with emotional overly sensitive communal groups, they are unable to see very far ahead.

Categories
Liberty

[1894] Of the flaw of forced liberation

It is likely for those supportive of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq to call the operation an act of liberation. Appearing on NBC’s ”Meet the Press” hosted by Tim Russert, former US Vice-President Dick Cheney confidently postulated that Iraqis would greet the US military as liberators. Not to deny that there were Iraqis who celebrated the fall of Saddam Hussein the dictator, the days, months and years that followed greeted the invading force with bullets and bombs instead of flowers.

He said: ”Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” Four days later, the US troops with its Coalition of the Willing began what they would identify as the liberation of Iraq.

The former vice-president and many supportive of the war from the beginning were not alone in tricking themselves into believing that their actions would be appreciated by the invaded. Farther to the east, Tibetan legislators loyal to the central government of the People’s Republic of China just last month declared March 28 as an annual holiday in Tibet. Known as Serfs’ Emancipation Day, it is designed to celebrate the official narrative of the central government of the PRC.

It is an act of pretension equivalent to Cheney’s.

It was 50 years ago on that day that the independent government of Tibet fled the country after a failed rebellion against the occupying PRC force. It was already nine years since the communist PRC first invaded Tibet in 1950 since effective Tibetan independence decades ago.

The invasion was predicated on a pillar: Tibet has always been part of China. To morally support the invasion if the idea of first rationale is unpalatable, the PRC claimed that it was freeing Tibetan serfs from a feudalistic system practiced there.

These two assertions are controversial. Here today in light of the newly announced Serfs’ Emancipation Day, the claim of liberation requires attention.

For a country whose liberty has never been its strong point, the claim of liberation is highly inappropriate. What is the value of such liberation when it led to another kind of occupation? What is the value of forced freedom?

There is a political cartoon first published at the height of the Bush administration. I feel that the author wanted to paint the usefulness of exporting freedom and democracy to the Middle East. In it, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ran a plebiscite among Arabs. While she proudly witnessed the Arabs finally practicing democracy and free choice, to her great surprise she learned that the Arabs voted to kick the US out of the Middle East and democratically rejected democracy. The cartoon is of course filled with hyperbole but the message is clear.

Societies in the Middle East are undoubtedly unfree. Those societies and especially those holding the levers of powers maintaining the status quo there deserve criticism. Nevertheless before the societies can be free, individuals in those societies have to yearn to be free first. What is the point of forcefully doing away with an unfree societal structure when the majority of individuals in those societies after that waste no time in returning to the old ways of disrespecting individual liberty?

For a society to be truly free, freedom has to be born organically and not introduced exogenously through force. Freedom has to be freely and sincerely embraced before true change towards a freer society can happen. A society forced to be free would become an unsustainable society that would only regress farther away towards a coercive top-down approach, making the arduous journey towards a free society harder than it should be.

Iraq today is not free but occupied. That is why there is opposition in Iraq. The same goes with Tibet. The truth is that the story in Tibet is a story of occupation. Freedom shoved down a person’s throat is no freedom at all. To say otherwise is an attempt at dishonesty.

And surely, the PRC’s claim of serfs’ liberation in Tibet itself is not consistent with its own previous effort at collective farming and people’s communes. Such systems tied individuals to the land: that is unarguably serfdom.

The many inconsistencies are observable. Forced liberation is an oxymoron and the Serfs’ Emancipation Day is a celebration to legitimize illegal occupation of Tibet.

Many Tibetans went out and voiced what they really think of the liberation on March 28, 2008. That day is instructive of how much freedom Tibetans have in a liberated Tibet. Not only has the right to self-determination has always been denied, freedom of expression was brutally suppressed. Those who care would remember that Tibetans peacefully took to the street last year to exercise their inalienable right to freedom of expression to remember the events of 1959. Unfortunately, the desire for freedom of expression on one side and the effort to contain it on the other side ended in a deadly riot.

For many Malaysians, we were lucky to have the courage to exercise our freedom in the face of state power and then coming out on top. For many Tibetans, they do not share this sweet liberty. The suffocating grip on liberty was not loosen but tightened. They have a long way to go, just like Palestinians who wish only to be free.

As the inaugural oxymoron day approaches, already the PRC authority in Tibet is mindful of last year’s event. At this very moment, homes, businesses and other places are being raided in the name of fighting crime. In reality, it is an act of intimidation.

That is the reality of a supposedly liberated Tibet.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on February 2 2009.

Categories
Politics & government Society

[1893] Of is this the end of infatuation with the monarchy?

Previously, a lot of people within Pakatan Rakyat praised the monarchy for various decisions in the public sphere. At the moment however contrary to the environment barely weeks ago, words unworthy to be typed here have been uttered as insults. Worse, these insults were thrown even before the Sultan of Perak made a final decision regarding the status of the state government.

I have warned that the infatuation with the monarch is dangerous and I have been consistently concerned with the development of greater power of the monarchy. But those benefited from the decisions of the monarchs celebrated such expansion and dismissed my concerns. They were eager to elevate the roles of the monarchy above and beyond the status quo. Now, the very same people are turning their back to the institution with rudeness unimaginable previously.

Apart from stating that inconsistency of these people (which I increasingly look down as ideologically lalang or more politely, pragmatists), I would like to say, I told you so.

I am glad that I have taken the moral high ground on the matter. Watching down below from above is a morally satisfying activity.

Let this be the end of any infatuation with the monarchy. Let this be a harsh reminder to those who praised the expansion of the monarchy.

A healthy dose of skepticism against the monarchy and indeed any apparatus of the state, must always be kept alive. Thanks to this episode, that will indeed be the case.

Nevertheless, the rudeness shown is unjustified.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s — The Malaysian Insider, much later after this post, has this to say:

Make no mistake the political crisis in Perak is not only about who controls the state legislature, and who is left on the sidelines.

It is also a litmus test for Malaysia’s royalty — whether they can play the role of honest brokers in resolving disputes in a country increasingly fractured by politics and racial strife; whether they can be the balm for a more divisive and polarized nation; whether their pronouncements will have a calming effect.

The early signs emerging from Perak are not promising. The previously unsullied reputations of Sultan Azlan Shah and his erudite son, Raja Nazrin Shah have been the subject of scorn and ridicule.

From yesterday, members of the public have sent in emails to the royal household’s website, imploring the Sultan to dissolve the state assembly and call for fresh elections.

After 12 pm today, the emails sounded more threatening and damning. It coincided with the announcement that the Sultan had asked the Perak Mentri Besar to step down in view of the fact that Barisan Nasional had gained control of the state assembly.

Here is a sampling of the emails sent.

Zambri Hussin wrote: ”I have lost all respect for the institution of the Malay Rulers in Perak.”

Dr Phillips John wrote: ”People in Perak are not going to forget the decision you make today.’”

Chan Wai Phing wrote: ”Tuanku, So sorry to see you have failed the test of your own words, before God and before your subjects. You have let three unprincipled scumbags decide the fate of the whole state.”

Arguably, because of the political temperature this was always going to be a no-win case for the royal family. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. [Perak crisis spotlights royalty’s role. The Malaysian Insider. February 5 2009]

Categories
Politics & government

[1892] Of pot, kettle and Anwar Ibrahim

Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim accuses BN of trying to form government in Perak ‘by hook or by crook’.

“We are pushing for a dissolution of the state assembly and fresh elections in the state. We must go back to the people and get a fresh mandate,” he tells AFP.

“BN is trying to form the state government by hook or by crook – more by crook.” [Perak gov’t collapses – BN claims power. Malaysiakini. February 4 2009]

Oh, c’mon…

Of all persons, he has the least moral authority to say so. Who was it that started this game?

You’ve got yourself burned. Deal with it like a gentleman.