Category: Liberty

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
Economics Liberty

[1885] Of freer market to save Zimbabwe

After millions of percent of inflation[0], Zimbabwe finally gets on the path of freer market as well as dollarization to fight inflation:

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — Zimbabweans will be able to trade in any currency they choose and the government will abandon price controls with immediate effect, acting finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said today.

Chinamasa, from President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party, told parliament that price controls would be abandoned because they had ”unintentionally’’ harmed businesses and added to Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation. [Zimbabwe Abandons Price Controls, Promotes Currency Trading. Brian Latham. Bloomberg. January 29 2009]

This is progress, amid horrible set of statist policies practiced by the tyrant Mugabe.

Previously, Zimbabwe passed an idiotic policy making inflation illegal as inflation shot through the roof and upward beyond the sky . That is as stupid as making dying illegal. On top of that, Mugabe administration ordered prices to be reduced, figuring that once inflation was illegal, there would be no more inflation. Right? Wrong.

Even the uneducated traders in Zimbabwe knows this and many violated that ban in the name of practicality. There was risk to that: those who refused to cut prices as sanctioned by the autocratic economic-illiterate government were beaten by pro-Mugabe groups.[1] Meanwhile, Zimbabwe kept printing money, adding fuel to the inflationary fire.

Needless to say, the policies did not stop inflation from increasing exponentially to make the Zimbabwean dollar more worthless than worthless. When inflation was about 10,000% in 2007, it was the world’s highest at that time.[2] With inflation at many sextillion (how many zeroes are there in a sextillion?) percent on annual basis now, it is probably the highest in whole history of human kind.[2a]

In fact, they printed so much money, Zimbabwe ran out of paper to print more money![3] It became so bad that selling the money as paper might worth more than having the paper functioning as money.

But Zimbabweans could give a sigh of relief now. With freer policies, they lives are going to get slightly better.

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

[0] — The country is in the grip of world-record hyperinflation which has left the Zimbabwean dollar virtually worthless – 231,000,000% in July 2008, the most recent figure released. [Zimbabwe abandons its currency . BBC News. January 29 2009]

[1] — JOHANNESBURG, July 3 — Zimbabwe’s week-old campaign to quell its rampant inflation by physically forcing merchants to lower prices is edging the nation close to chaos, according to some economists and merchants.

As the police and a pro-government youth militia swept into shops and factories, threatening arrest and worse unless prices were rolled back, staple foods vanished from store shelves and some merchants reported huge losses. News reports stated that some shopkeepers who refused to lower prices were beaten by the youth militia, known as the ”Green Bombers” after the color of their fatigues. [Zimbabwe Price Controls Cause Chaos. Michael Wines. New York Times. July 3 2007]

[2] —”People are losing millions and millions and millions of dollars,” said one Bulawayo merchant, referring to the Zimbabwean currency, which has been rendered increasingly worthless given the nation’s inflation, the world’s highest. ”Everyone is now running out of stock and not being able to replace it.” [Zimbabwe Price Controls Cause Chaos. Michael Wines. New York Times. July 3 2007]

[2a] —”People are losing millions and millions and millions of dollars,” said one Bulawayo merchant, referring to the Zimbabwean currency, which has been rendered increasingly worthless given the nation’s inflation, the world’s highest. ”Everyone is now running out of stock and not being able to replace it.” [New Hyperinflation Index (HHIZ) Puts Zimbabwe Inflation at 89.7 Sextillion Percent. Steve H. Hanke. Cato Institute. November 14 2008]

[3] — Zimbabwe is experiencing a shortage of paper needed to print local currency banknotes, the newspaper said. [Zimbabwe Debates Using Dollar, Rand for Budget, Herald Reports. Brian Latham. Bloomberg. January 27 2009]

Categories
Liberty Society

[1883] Of it is not about defending a criminal; it is about rule of law

While Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said that his statement about criminals should not be regarded as heroes does not refer to the recent death of Kugan[1] — an alleged criminal who died in police custody under suspicious conditions — I find it hard not to make the connection. Surely such statement is linked to the controversy because such statement cannot be cooked up all the sudden out of nowhere. There has to be a trigger and that trigger is most definitely the death of Kugan. The Home Minister is taking concerned individuals for fools it seems. One lesson of March 8 2008 has yet to sink into him.

Regardless of that, to state that various individuals and groups are taking criminals as heroes is an argument done in bad faith. It dishonestly paints individuals and groups rallying around Kugan in bad light. That is definitely not the best way to build bridges. As a person once served as the Foreign Minister of this country, I actually expected a more refined argument from him. One that is befitting of diplomats. I guess, I was wrong.

Firstly, Kuran is an alleged criminal. Nothing has been proven yet and to consider Kugan as criminal is to assume too much. Indeed the police personnel involved should be considered innocent until proven guilty too. Investigation into the matter should duly take place first because any conclusion is made. That is a reasonable standard to take up but it must be made applicable to Kugan too. Any double standard will make the matter worse.

More importantly, concerns for the death, even if Kugan was convicted of the crime he was accused of, is not about defending a criminal. As a Home Minister, he should know that this is about rule of law.

While investigation is underway, pictures circulating on the internet are hard to ignore.[2] Those pictures of terrible wounds on Kugan are incriminating to the police; it suggests torture took place while Kugan was under the care of the police. Did the police carry out torture on Kugan?

The possibility of torture and murder are both transgression of rights. When that transgressions occur, that means there is a possibility of disrespect for rule of law. Even criminals have their rights and that death, if indeed caused by the police, would be the ultimate transgression of rights.

When right to life is held with contempt, then something is not right. That is the whole point of this issue. It is quite cleanly and clearly not about defending or mourning a criminal. If Kugan were still alive, were not tortured and were properly convicted if indeed he was guilty of the accused crime, then trust me, nobody would have come to the side of Kugan.

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

[1] — PUTRAJAYA, Jan 28 — The people should not regard criminals as heroes and the police who enforce the law as demons, Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said today.

Speaking in general terms, he said no one was above the law and added that action would be taken against those who broke the law, even if it was the police. [Syed Hamid: Don’t regard criminals as heroes. Bernama. The Malaysian Insider. January 8 2009]

[2] — [A. Kugan: Horrifying pictures depict latest victim of police brutality/murder? Jelas.info. January 22 2009]

Categories
Liberty Politics & government

[1878] Of President Reagan 1981 Inaugural Address

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