Category: Politics & government

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Liberty Politics & government

[1931] Of change? Who am I kidding?

Will there be change in Barisan Nasional?

With Samy Vellu still manning the steering wheel of MIC,[1] it is not hard to present a case which BN would continue doing business as usual despite requirement for change along with internal almost Darwinian political rhetoric of change.

But with Najib Razak expected to assume the post of Prime Minister from Abdullah Ahmad Badawi soon, in the strictest sense, change will definitely happen. The composition of the Cabinet is likely to change too, if the signal that the current Deputy Prime Minister is giving out is to be believed in.[2]

The willingness of BN to pull a political coup in Perak too gives the air that there is more tolerance for — to put it politely — unorthodox maneuvers that are uncharacteristic of the current Prime Minister. That is change too, for better or for worse.

In that light, a more meaningful question to ask is whether there will be a change for the better?

That is harder to answer and I personally would like to be fair by giving Najib Razak a chance to prove himself. To pre-judge him maybe an unfair position to take.

Indeed, he is riddled with controversies but with cognizance of how unclean politics is, I am unwilling to believe those far too many accusations until it is proven. No doubt, some events related to the DPM and BN are curiously questionable but I am a skeptic in many ways. It is only right for me to keep to that tradition of mine.

Still, there are signs that changes which Najib Razak plans to introduce might be unpalatable to individuals like me. One clearest sign yet is the recent 3-month ban imposed on Harakah and Suara Keadilan as announced today by the Ministry of Home Affairs.[3]

On TV3 just now, the announcer stated that the reason for the ban is the seditious nature of both papers. In the same breathe, the announcer read what she was supposed to read: the Home Ministry has no intention of infringing free press but Harakah and Suara Keadilan have gone too far.

Give me a break. They actually still believe that kind of tricks work still.

As a libertarian, I find it tiring to present effective but template-like arguments against such reason. I feel like a broken record but the sad part is, those questions are still relevant. Too far to whom? Who is the judge?

The timing, as suggested by Mr. Teoh of The Malaysian Insider, further invites critical questions . The fact that the timing of the ban coincides with three by-elections to be held on April 7 is inescapable. Among many questions, the convenient date for BN highlights possible abuse of government machinery to forward an unkosher political agenda.

Then, there is a question of equal application of the law. If sedition is the benchmark, clearly with the untruth and inflammatory style, Utusan Malaysia deserves reprimand as heavy as Harakah and Suara Keadilan. Even the TV3 too if I may add.

Change?

Who am I kidding?

I need to remind myself that I am a skeptic. And I am applying my skepticism with equal pressure on all sides.

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

[1] — KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 (Bernama) — Former MIC vice-president Datuk M. Muthupalaniappan, who failed in his bid today to contest the party top post, has declared that democracy is dead in the MIC.

He said this was evident from the fact that he had many of his nominations disqualified.

Muthupalaniappan had submitted 53 nominations supporting him at the party presidential nomination at the MIC headquarters this morning. Forty-eight of the 53 nominations were rejected due to non-compliance with the MIC constitution and the presidential election by-laws.

At the end of the day, he only had five valid nominations as opposed to incumbent president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu’s 455. Samy Vellu was declared president of the party for the 11th consecutive term. [Muthupalaniappan Cries Foul, Says Democracy Dead In MIC. Bernama. March 22 2009]

[2] — PETALING JAYA: Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has listed out the qualities he is looking for in his new Cabinet line-up when he takes over as Umno president and Prime Minister.

He said those in his Cabinet must have ability, credibility and general public acceptance so that he could institute reforms in both the party and the Government. [Najib wants an able and credible Cabinet. The Star. March 23 2009]

[3] — KUALA LUMPUR, March 23 — In a move that appears to be geared towards handicapping the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) machinery ahead of the three by-elections on April 7, Suara Keadilan and Harakah have been banned for three months by the Home Ministry with immediate effect.

The party organs of Pas and PKR respectively were informed of the decision around 5pm this evening by fax with no reason given. [Harakah and Suara Keadilan banned. Shannon Teoh. The Malaysian Insider. March 23 2009]

Categories
Liberty Politics & government Society

[1917] Of revisiting the roles of government and other matters

Friend Ho Yi Jian[1] currently at the National University of Singapore asks several questions pertaining libertarianism. One question asks what many have asked: how small is a small government? The second question is about wealth inequality. Third, is there a way to overcome speculation associated with the operations of free market?

Let us explore the three questions one at a time.

The hardest question is the first. How small — or big — should a small government be?

There is no objective way of measuring the size of government but there are principles. In no way however these principles are universally adopted throughout the schools of libertarianism.

In the famed Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, Judeans were against Roman rule and there were multiple resistance groups. They however just could not agree with each other. In the classic comedy, the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea seemed to hate each other more than the Romans though both groups shared a common goal of ridding Judea of Roman presence. The same is applicable for libertarianism.

Different strains of libertarianism have their own idiosyncrasies which one libertarian may disagree with each other. I therefore cannot provide an answer to represent all libertarianisms. But I can present my version of libertarianism and that is green libertarianism. This is the green-blue alliance that is probably currently seen in form of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom under the exciting David Cameron.

In this kind of libertarianism, the purpose of the state defines the boundary and hence size of the state. The purpose in my libertarianism — with regards to this particular purpose — is uncontroversial in common libertarian circle because it is the universal truth in libertarianism. The first and foremost purpose of the state is the protection of individual negative liberty. This is further enhanced with rights egalitarianism: all are granted the same negative rights as long as the person respects others’ same rights.

As first formally rationalized by Isaiah Berlin, negative liberty is the freedom from interference. This definitely includes protection from coercion and fraud. This freedom is mostly bounded by the non-aggression axiom.

Sidetracking, the non-aggression axiom does not eliminate force as an option. It merely prevents libertarian from initiating force. If coercion was initiated by the other, then by all means pick up your arms and fight. The state motto of New Hampshire describes it all: live free or die.

I would like to think I am a Friedman libertarian to a certain extent. This is mostly because while preferring for a small government which at the very least defined by protection of individual negative rights and non-aggression axiom, the government has a crucial role in education. A liberal society as in libertarian society requires an educated society and education is the sculpture of society. Without education, individuals would not be empowered to take destiny into their hands and that would bring the downfall of a liberal society. Its importance can never be overemphasized in sustaining a liberal society.

While we are at it, allow me to answer Jed Yoong’s question posed much earlier[2] and answer Yi Jian’s second question too.

Before we begin, it is crucial to point out of problematic label liberalism as utilized by Jed. It is problematic because of the inconsistency of her usage of the word, which is probably due to her unfamiliarity with US politics. The title of her entry betrays that fact. She carelessly uses liberalism to describe the free market sort by including me and John Lee[3] as adherents of liberalism in the same line as the US liberals — more accurately the Democrats. This is a misuse of label because in US tradition, the liberals are the social democrats and I am definitely not a social democrat. Admittedly, libertarians in the classical liberalism sense may support the Democrats but that is due to employment of pragmatism and nothing more.

Under the flawed definition, she asked, how egalitarian will your (here, I take it as me. Others can answer that question for themselves; the two other names mentioned were John Lee and Nik Nazmi) NEP-free Malaysia truly be?

A loaded question with flawed assumption is hard to answer. She fails to understand the libertarians are not quite concerned with wealth egalitarianism. Instead, libertarians are firm believers of rights egalitarianism. Libertarians are not supportive of and oppose to any effort at achieving equality of outcome.

This is why libertarians or classical liberals are the great philosophical enemies of communists and socialists.

The question of endowment does disturb me however. Here, my concern is poverty and not wealth inequality.

In my opinion, poverty has greater propensity to create instability than wealth inequality. Proof: supposedly equal communist state always without fail, fail. Less communistic and socialist state and more capitalist countries have proven to outlast communist state, so far. But of course, there is no absolute capitalist state in the world at the moment. What are there are states on a spectrum sitting close to capitalistic end, vis-à-vis the other end in a simple two dimensional spectrum.

Take note of my concern for poverty. I hold that poverty is the problem, not wealth inequality. I also hold that a lot of people accidentally mixed the two concepts together without realizing it because the two concepts are similar on the surface. Below the skin, the difference cannot be missed.

It is that endowment question, or if your will, the question of poverty, that led me to rationalize the need for government’s active role in education. It is education that is capable of breaking the cycle of poverty, the great machine which provides equality of opportunities. Education may also create a more wealth egalitarian society, but only as a side effect, not as an expressed goal.

But if — and that is a damn big if — affirmative action is a must, I prefer it to be inclusive, not exclusive, need-conscious affirmative action.

Coming back to the first question, one final factor in defining the size of government is market failure. While market is the superior form of social technology in its class — and definitely far more superior than socialism — it does suffer weakness and that is market failure. Many libertarians, especially the minarchists of minarchist somehow choose to ignore this but market failure presents both theoretical and practical problems.

It is important to define market failure, lest others misconstrue losses caused by corrections made by the market for bad decisions made by actors as market failure. Bad decisions made by actors are actors’ failure, not market’s. This is applicable to bubble bursting, from tulips, to dot com, to housing. In those cases, the market is merely turning around and saying, hey, you made a mistake and you have to pay for it.

Market failure here is in the line of tragedy of the commons. The problems associated with pollution and harvesting of public goods in situations where there is consistent and systemic divergence of social and private costs called externality, especially negative externality are market failure. In this, the government has a role to narrow wide gap between social and private cost. This can happen through introduction of Pigovian taxes — of special interest is the informal Pigovian Club founded by economist Greg Mankiw — or issuance of permits.

Finally, the third question: speculation is a problem, what can we do about it? Here, he qualifies speculation as over-speculation.

In answering the question, I would like to begin from the top. Is speculation a problem?

The question, much like Jed’s question of egalitarianism, is loaded. I do not accept that speculation is a problem. What I consider as a problem is incomplete information or more accurately, asymmetric information. It is especially so when it is associated with fraud. Does the government have a role to play in that?

Yes. Refer back to the first purpose of government: protection of individual negative rights.

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

[1] — [Labour Politics, Libertarianism and Business Cycles. Thoughtstreak II.V. March 6 2009]

[2] — [Liberalism In America + Malaysia, 1968 vs 2008 Jed Yoong. January 3 2009]

[3] — John Lee blogs at Infernal Ramblings of a Thoughtless Mind.

Categories
Liberty Politics & government

[1906] Of an insidious prospect for greater moral standardization

The episode surrounding state assemblyperson Elizabeth Wong is beginning to assume a new twist. Slowly subverting violation of privacy as the main issue at hand is a desire to impose one’s moral on others. For a society like ours, that is hardly surprising. Recent event indicates what many have already known: we have a long way to go before enjoying a society of free individuals but it might just get worse. If the call for the resignation of Wong is successful, we are in the prospect seeing greater standardization of moral across all communities when previously, it was only mostly visible within a particular community.

I might be beating a dead horse but for those who are truly concerned with the state of individual right to privacy should not let the issue die. In that spirit, I am only glad to repeat what others have said: Elizabeth Wong is a victim.

Unfortunately, far too many individuals with Khir Toyo possibly as flag bearer of the informal group of thought are pummeling the victim while ignoring the occurrence of crime. If it is unclear, the only crime that happened is the violation of Wong’s privacy.

The same rationale is applicable to the case of Chua Soi Lek though this is not to say that the cases of Chua and Wong are the same. Chua is married and he broke the trust of his wife. Wong on the other hand is single. The contexts differ and so too the justifications.

In Chua’s case, the betrayer of trust is him — here, trust refers to his family trust on him — while in Wong’s case, the betrayer of trust is her former boyfriend — here, trust refers to trust between Wong and her friend. Notice that the betrayer of trust in the latter case is not the victim of violation of privacy, unlike other case.

Yet, in both cases, the crime is the violation of privacy and nothing else.

When the calls for resignation for both were made, it only showed that the callers are trying to impose their morality on others. This is especially visible when Khir Toyo called for Wong’s resignation. While it is still wrong from the perspective of liberty, the imposition of morality on others has more or less occurred within a community, specifically the local Muslim community. While being mindful that a community is not monolithic, the opinion of those identified themselves as belonging to the community and taking conservative position previously only wanted to impose their morality on those who they deem as belonging to the same community, their community. They do so on the assumption that there is only one moral standard in their imagined monolithic community.

Khir Toyo’s demand is definitely one of the more prominent calls that cross into another community where the moral standards — if one use the logic of monolithic community, which is typically used by UMNO, however flawed it might be — differ.

Khir Toyo and those from his community — that is an assumed Malay community —  supporting the call for Elizabeth Wong’s resignation because of Wong’s private life wrongfully made public due to intrusion of privacy may demonstrate an increasing tendency of the cultural or religious conservatives to impose their morality on others from outside of their perceived homogeneous community.

Alternatively, if that is wrong, then the call for resignation of Wong is done out of malice, lacking honesty based not at all on moral and principally driven by excessively vicious political competition otherwise, rightly called by others, as gutter politics.

This cannot be allowed to happen because it creates an perverse opportunity to standardize morality across different communities. While effort to standardize morality within community is already a step towards tyranny if not tyranny itself, wider standardization is a step towards hell if not hell itself.

There is a direction I will oppose and that is the reason why I wish for Elizabeth Wong to continue to serve to the people of Selangor and beyond as a member of the Executive Committee of Selangor and as a assemblyperson for Bukit Lanjan.

Categories
Politics & government

[1902] Of the dishonesty of blind partisanship

Diversity of thought is a natural phenomenon in any society. It is unavoidable because we are all victims of history. Our values are formed by our experience and no one experiences exactly the same life path. It is this uniqueness which leads to diversity of opinions as we utilize our differing values to form our worldview. Any honest difference must derive from this logic.

These days in Malaysian politics however, this particular reasoning is sorely lacking. Almost everywhere I turn I can find individuals taking up lines in the spirit of blind partisanship. It does not matter what the issue at hand is but to these individuals, their positions are determined before sufficient information is available and before debates and discussions take place earnestly. Even after all that have taken place, their opinions remain unmovable regardless of palatability of their positions.

Blind partisanship may be easy to spot. There are hints of that when various arguments thrown in support of a position are done only after the fact merely to justify it, rather organically reaching a solution by putting the building blocks first. Sometimes, even strong convincing primer reasoning is not in place. These are signs that the positions taken are not thought through thoroughly. There has to be a reason for that and the reason is likely a gross bias, possibly blind partisanship.

Worse, sometimes organic efforts to reach to a conclusion by considering all sides objectively are derided as biased by those subscribed to blind partisanship. This reminds me of a certain professor that I know from my undergraduate years who lamented about the political jabs he received from all sides for trying to tread the organic path. He said “the Left thinks we’re Right and the Right thinks we’re wrong” for merely suggesting for both sides to consider an issue more objectively and free of prejudice.

For individuals with blind partisanship, loyalty is an attribute regarded as higher than honesty. This is easily comprehensible especially because a political structure of a country like Malaysia takes the Westminster model as its basis. In that model, party unity in the legislative arm of government is crucial in determining who exactly leads the executive. It is this factor that fuels the threat and act of defection.

While strongly opposed to the change in Perak, PKR was equally fierce in supporting a change of federal government through defection in the Parliament. The morality of defection for PKR — as well as BN — suddenly changed when the situation switched. As I have opined previously, this indicates that the debate on political defection by these two political actors revolves merely around convenience and not around morality or conviction as many pretend to be so. Why? The path of convenience preserves party unity while conviction leads to division.

The importance of loyalty vis-à-vis honesty can further be impressed upon by making reference to 2006 when Shahrir Abdul Samad, an UMNO Member of Parliament for Johor Bahru as well as the chairman of Barisan Nasional Backbencher Club came under fire from his own party for supporting a motion moved by the Opposition against his fellow UMNO MP.

If the instance has been placed in an attic full of spider web, it is worth recalling that a former UMNO MP for Jasin, Melaka, Mohamad Said Yusof, allegedly requested for the customs authorities to “close one eye” to an illegal shipment of timber owned by his business. The then leader of the opposition, Lim Kit Siang, wanted for the Jasin MP to be referred to the House Committee of Rights and Privileges.

Shahrir Samad supported the motion and broke rank. Suddenly, the issue became a question of loyalty instead of the alleged wrongdoing of the Jasin MP. Shahrir Samad was harshly criticized because of his disloyalty and he eventually had to relinquish his chairmanship.

There are many other cases proving how loyalty and unity are embraced much closer than honesty and all of them show that nobody monopolizes blind partisanship. That much is certain.

It is this demand for unity and loyalty that suffocates the desire for honesty and this is why blind partisanship is so dangerous. It encourages groupthink while too easily dismisses the possibility that a partisan position might be wrong.

It cannot be overlooked that groupthink is one of those little things leading to fascism. In fascism, loyalty is ultimate and the slightest hint of disagreement is treason. Sure, the juxtaposition between blind partisanship and fascism may be a hyperbole but blind partisanship with political party or a community as a pillar is as much as dismissive of individual politics of self-empowerment as fascism. Blind partisanship contemptuously disrespects the ability of individuals to think as much as fascism, even if blind partisanship has miles to go before becoming fascism.

Yet, partisanship — including blind variety — is part democracy. But what a healthy liberal democratic society requires is idealistic partisanship based not on the concept of loyalty but rather on specific honest ideas held a priori where events become tests of ideals, not merely a chance to demonstrate one’s loyalty to an entity, or even an idea for that matter. A person may chance his or her position after experiencing those events but only if the change is organic. In other words, the change needs to be genuine and sincere. Blind partisanship gives no heed of that at all.

What we need instead are individuals who have the courage to stand up and call a spade a spade. What is wrong will always be wrong, regardless the perpetrator. If the question of right and wrong — and everything in between — is dependent on the identity of the perpetrator than the action and its context, then something is awfully wrong.

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 16 2009.

Categories
Environment Politics & government

[1901] Of support Selangor hillside policy

I fear, if Eli quits, so will Selangor’s hillside policy. I simply do not trust Teresa Kok and Ronnie Liu.