Category: Politics & government

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Liberty Politics & government Society

[1875] Of time to kill it

I am sympathetic to the Pakatan Rakyat. I helped one of their candidates during the last general elections and I hang around with people from Pakatan too often. That however does not mean that I need to agree with every little thing the component parties of the Pakatan hold. I for one categorically oppose implementation of hudud as it currently being proposed and indeed, the imposition of any religious ideal upon free individuals. For this reason, I am afraid that I have to write this, especially after Anwar Ibrahim states that PKR would not reject hudud outright and that it would only be application to Muslims. I would like both PAS and PKR to be punished for their position on hudud.

Before anything else, the importance of this election has been grossly overblown. It means nothing to both BN and Pakatan on the margin. Victory by any side does not change the balance of power in the Dewan Rakyat. BN will still hold the majority power at the end of the day.

A win by PAS will of course reduce the number of seats Pakatan requires to takeover the federal government via mass defection of BN members of Parliament to Pakatan. However, if there is anyone among us who still believes in that possibility, all I can say is that winter has passed and summer is nigh. Wake up and smell the roses.

Even within Pakatan, this election is meaningless on the margin. A win by PAS does nothing in rearranging the fact that PAS is the junior partner. PKR and DAP will remain the bigger component parties in Pakatan regardless of the outcome for the Kuala Terengganu by-election.

For BN, is this a referendum on the Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak since that he is the designated Prime Minister of Malaysia come this March?

I am always wary of a small by-election with an awfully limited and biased sample being used as a referendum of national proportions. Not only turning this little by-election into a national referendum is statistically flawed, the BN candidate has been labeled as the BN President’s man rather than Najib Razak’s.

And of course, this by-election is not a referendum on hudud either. Hudud, as journalists on the ground have it, is hardly an issue at all. Bread-and-butter matters dominate the list of concerns of the electorate.

The issue of hudud itself cropped out almost by accident. It seemed almost like a trap set by Khairy Jamaluddin on Husam Musa in a public forum in Kota Bahru back in December. The former asked the latter if PAS would implement hudud if the party became part of the federal government. If it was a trap in the first place, Husam Musa certainly took the bait by answering it in the positive. Immediately after that, BN, especially MCA, has been milking the issue ever since.

I would like to risk digression by stating that, with little backbone, MCA hardly has the moral authority to question DAP’s position on hudud. MCA should ask UMNO on items like the use of Chinese language, on Chinese school and on Ketuanan Melayu among other things. Or even hudud for that matter.

The courageousness of MCA notwithstanding, it is with great regret that the wedge is being driven in between Pakatan so deeply at the most inopportune time much to the benefit of BN. Hudud is exactly the same issue which brought Barisan Alternatif to its demise some years ago. Hudud has been the item that plagues the unity between DAP, PKR and PAS and it is because of this hudud needs to be erased from the agenda of Pakatan.

After some years since the collapse of Barisan Alternatif, Anwar Ibrahim brought everybody far and wide together sufficiently tightly to stand up against BN. What Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad identified as big tent politics worked beyond skeptics’ wildest dreams. What happened next was sheer delight: March 8 2008 radically changed the whole dynamic of suffocating local politics, thanks to the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia. BN was downright humbled.

It has been more than 10 months now since the last general election and the scenario of January 2009 is very different from March 2008. The same impetus to support PAS as part of the Pakatan coalition is simply not there. Win or lose, January 17 in Kuala Terengganu simply does not share or even come near to the significance and the urgency of March 8. Therefore, those who disagree with PAS have the luxury to not come to the aid of PAS. Pakatan simply can afford to lose the by-election simply because the election is meaningless.

While Kuala Terengganu is not a referendum on hudud, it certainly could give some signal that could alter future actions. The right signal — a loss to PAS — could inform future election campaigns not to put hudud on the agenda. A loss in Kuala Terengganu for Pakatan could kill hudud off as an agenda of Pakatan for a very long time and hence, save the coalition from future disaster that befell upon Barisan Alternatif.

And the stage in Kuala Terengganu offers the opportunity for a kill since non-Muslims are seen as the kingmakers there.

This is where the idea that hudud only affects Muslims comes into play. The idea aims to reduce apprehension the non-Muslim community in voting PAS while the party advocates for the implementation of hudud, regardless of its afterthought qualifications. In order to kill off hudud as an agenda of Pakatan and save Pakatan from the fate of Barisan Alternatif, the repulsive idea that the non-Muslim community is decoupled from the Muslim community must be killed first.

The problem with the argument hudud only affects Muslims assumes that all Muslims are for the implementation of hudud. I definitely would not mind if hudud is implemented as long as individuals, and not at the community level, could choose between hudud — and truly, sharia — and secular civil laws. I would not mind if hudud is implemented as long as I could choose between hudud and secular civil law. Under the current proposal, I and many others do not get that choice.

I have also mentioned this before but just to stress it again, the argument that non-Muslims need not worry with the implementation of hudud also builds unnecessary walls among Malaysians, further dividing an already divided society. Furthermore, it is hard to imagine how the minority will be left unaffected if there is great development within the majority community.

If the non-Muslims are prepared to buy that argument set forth by PAS and PKR that hudud only concerns Muslims while ignoring the fact that under the proposal, Muslims who prefer secular environment instead would be forcefully subjected to religious laws, well, perhaps we all should put blind eyes to each other’s problems. If my problem is not yours, then the discrimination that the non-Malays suffer is not my problem either. Each time you suffer injustice, too bad because it shall not be mine. Those are non-Muslim problem and so, why should I care at all?

Is that the new arrangement you prefer? Shall we make that as the basis of our social contract, our new constitution?

If the answer is no, then PAS must lose in Kuala Terengganu. It is regrettable that implication is victory for BN especially when it is becoming clear that BN has learned nothing from March 8. Nevertheless, I am unwilling to sacrifice my ideal for too much political expediency. There is such thing as a limit and this whole issue on hudud, as especially the argument brought forward by PAS and supported by PKR, has gone over and beyond mine.

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

This article was first published in The Malaysian Insider on January 12 2009.

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Politics & government

[1861] Mengenai kerajaan pembangkang

Membaca Utusan Malaysia bukanlah satu perkara yang lazim saya lakukan. Surat khabar itu hanya dibelek apabila hidup mula terasa bosan kerana tiada apa mahu dilakukan lagi, seolah-olah sudah tiba masanya hayat ini dihentikan. Duduk di atas kerusi sambil merenung ke peti televisyen yang tidak terpasang, akhbar Utusan berada di atas meja. Lalu diangkat untuk dibaca.

Apabila terbaca muka hadapannya, teringat mengapa hanya melihat akhbar itu bukanlah satu perkara yang menyenangkan. Tekanan darah yang berada di tahap sihat tiba-tiba memuncak dengan nafsu amarah. Perlahan-lahan, kemahuan untuk ke dapur untuk menyiatkan akhbar propaganda ini dengan sebilah pisau tajam beribu kali berulangan bagai tidak mampu ditampung lagi.

Sebelum bersedia untuk memberhentikan pengalaman yang tidak berguna ini, itu dia; di dalam tulisan tebal dan besar, “Kerajaan pembangkang diminta sedia tapak PPRT“.

Kerajaan pembangkang?

Kerajaan pembangkang?

Binatang apa itu?

Sebenarnya, maksud dan konteksnya jelas. Akan tetapi, istilah itu menampakkan betapa Utusan masih lagi tidak menerima kenyataan yang apa mereka terbiasa kenal sebagai pembangkang dahulu kini adalah kerajaan. Bagi yang mampu menempuh realiti, kerajaan Pulau Pinang, Kedah, Perak, Selangor dan Kelantan adalah kerajaan negeri Pakatan Rakyat.

Perbuatan memanggil kerajaan-kerajaan negeri ini sebagai kerajaan pembangkang adalah satu usaha untuk memutar-belitkan keadaan. Perkara inilah yang membuatkan akhbar-akhbar seperti Utusan hilang kredibiliti.

George Orwell menulis di dalam Nineteen Eighty-Four, slogan The Party adalah peperangan itu keamanan, kebebasan itu perhambaan, kejalilan itu kekuatan. Bagi Utusan, mungkin slogan yang sama sedang diguna pakai, dengan tambahan: kerajaan itu pembangkang (caveat: di tempat-tempat tertentu sahaja).

The Party tidak boleh dipercayai. Begitu juga dengan Utusan Malaysia.

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Politics & government Society

[1860] Of we are all for hudud goddamnit

Deputy President of Barisan Nasional and UMNO Najib Razak verbally attacked PAS after Husam Musa declared that PAS would continue to fight for the implementation of hudud in this country:

“In the last election, PAS used the slogan welfare state. They did not bring up the issue of hudud but before that they did. Now it seems like the party leaders want to implement hudud,”

“This is a matter of credibility. Hudud is used as a political slogan only but nothing is implemented by them,” said Najib. [Najib: Pas using hudud as a political slogan. Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani. The Malaysian Insider. December 22 2008]

Okay. Regardless, all the more reason to make sure PAS is always the junior partner of any coalition. But with UMNO supporting hudud, keeping advocates of hudud as a junior partner might be tough.

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 22 – Kelantan Umno will lobby the federal government to allow the Islamist party Pas to introduce hudud law, which prescribes stoning, whipping and amputation as punishment for criminal offences, in what will certainly spark intense debate and rouse opposition from non-Muslims.

The Malaysian Insider understands the Kelantan state Umno leadership is planning to declare their support, which comes on the heels of Pas vice president Datuk Husam Musa’s admission on Saturday that his party would introduce hudud if it wins federal power. [Kelantan Umno backs hudud. Leslie Lau. The Malaysian Insider. December 22 2008]

Oh, the shock. But could this be a slogan too?

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Politics & government

[1859] Of Wan Hamidi Hamid the economic liberal in DAP

It is so refreshing to discover that Wan Hamidi Hamid embraces the idea of economic liberalism so passionately. For a person working so deeply in the DAP, I had expected him to stand on the other side of the divide. My expectation missed its target slightly less by a mile.

I learned of his philosophical position during a small discussion at the Middle Eastern Graduate Centre on Jalan Telawi on a Friday’s evening. It was an unscheduled attendance for me because I had not planned to visit Bangsar on that day. The discussion was about attacks on the idea of economic liberty by the left movement in Malaysia. Wan Hamidi wrote an essay a couple of pages long refuting the attack. A good part of the essay could be succinctly summarized by the very idiom he used in the final paragraph of his essay: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In my mind, Madonna burst out to sing the song 4 Minutes. That probably helped digressing the discussion from focusing on the attack to describe economic liberty at large.

I wrote slightly less by a mile because he is a convert from socialism to liberalism. Pardon the pigoenhole but those labels are convenient to use. Regardless of convenience, as he admitted during he discussion, he used to sympathize with the left movement. As a young journalist, he did substantial reporting on the local labor movement.

How did he finally, as he said cheekily, “bertaubat” (repent) is unknown to me but he is undoubtedly a liberal in the classical sense now. Actually, he is down the road farther than me. If anybody out there was to describe me as an extremist, he would ran out of superlative to describe Wan Hamidi.

That conversion made me thinking. A person jumping off the left boat to board the liberal one is not an unusual news to hear. How about a person doing the reverse?

The latter is something I have yet to stumble upon.

This also made me thinking about how left the DAP is these days on the political spectrum. Increasingly, DAP may look like PKR in its political diversity, as far as the red-blue spectrum is concerned. Tony Pua seems like more like a liberal than a left sympathizer. Wan Hamidi Hamid is unambiguously a liberal. I also know several more individuals in their 20s within DAP holding liberal ideas.

It would be interesting to know how big the divide is in DAP.

Big or small, all this makes Wan Hamidi Hamid an amusing rare instance of stark contrast. Here is a Malay with economic liberal ideas in a political party dominated by the Chinese which traditionally sides itself with the left. He just stands out from the crowd.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
nota bene — a certain blog claims I followed “enlightenment” discussions organized by Middle Eastern Graduate Centre. In its exact words, “Hafiz Noor Shams turut mendedahkan bahawa beliau pernah mengikuti perbincangan-perbincangan pencerahan di MEGC (Middle Eastern Graduate Centre), Jalan Telawi, iaitu anak syarikat kepada IKD.” The wordings are disingenuous. I attended only one discussion and that was unplanned. I did not attend any other event organized by that organization. Yet, with that chanced attendance, the website makes it as if I was a supporter or a follower of MEGC, which I am not. Furthermore, that website took a religious context in describing me, while that particular discussion that I attended was purely about the economy. I will not take this matter further other than to say the accusatory blog entry was written in bad faith.

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Liberty Politics & government Society

[1845] Of status quo for the monarchy

Various anecdotes insist that the act of placing a baht note in your pants back pocket is a terrible faux pas to commit in Thailand. It is because all bills have a portrait of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej and placing one in that particular pocket is a sign of disrespect. More so if a person actually sits on it. As it goes, anybody caught doing so by the Thais would be admonished, or sometimes worse.

Though the veracity of the anecdotes is unconfirmed, the message is clear: the Thai monarchy commands tremendous respect from the people of Thailand. This enables the King to exert some influence in Thai politics especially in times of turmoil. Perhaps envious of their counterpart up north, several Malaysian royal houses are looking to play greater roles and claim greater power within Malaysian society. Whether that is a good idea is debatable.

This idea first came to mainstream consciousness in recent times when the Thai monarchy apparently brought the country’s political deadlock to an end. This proved to be temporary but at that particular time, it inspired Malaysians to turn to the monarchy in search of ways to challenge the Barisan Nasional-led government.

In a time when the Barisan Nasional government exercised stifling control over almost all tools of the state to silence disagreements towards its policies, it did not take much of a nudge for many Malaysians to imitate their neighbor up north. Bersih, in particular, held a huge rally to raise concerns to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, in protest of the executive arm of the state.

The support for the monarchy was further strengthened when the royal houses of Terengganu and Perak were deeply involved in the appointment of the Menteri Besar of the respective states. The Sultan of Terengganu rejected the BN-preferred candidate for the MB post, preferring a person more palatable to the taste of the royal house. In Perak, the Sultan played an active role in the appointment to the state’s highest executive office and in doing so effectively resolved the uncertainty that followed immediately after the March 8 general election.

Both episodes demonstrated the capability and the usefulness of the institution. The monarchy proved that it could provide leadership when the situation requires so.

Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean the monarchy deserves an expansion in role or in power. Rather, it is just the case that the status quo works.

While the status quo works, the role of the monarch over society may have been overstated. Just as Thailand inspired Malaysians to turn to the monarchy, the case for overstatement also inspired the events in Thailand as turmoil riddles the country.

This was seen during the September 2007 coup d’état by the Royal Thai Army. Almost immediately after tanks secured Bangkok, the military rushed to the palace to obtain endorsement from the King. The endorsement however came after the military coup happened, not before. Regardless whether the King was in favor of the military coup mounted against an elected government, the King could have acted merely as a rubber stamp. In a practical sense, it was the military that gained control of Thailand, not the King.

It is true however all the successful coups had the endorsement of the Thai King while the ones that failed — namely in 1981 and 1985 — did not get royal endorsement.

Yet, the military’s action was more or less aligned with the People’s Alliance for Democracy, the group opposed to former Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra and the two successive Thai Prime Ministers allegedly tied to him.

PAD positions itself as royalists and assumes yellow — the royal color — as its own. It has frequently accused its rivals of being disloyal to the King. With an association like that, it is hard not to disagree with the PAD without being accused as disloyal, especially in a country which makes criminal any criticism against the royal house.

The frequent accusations of disloyalty however have brought suspicion that the PAD is manipulating its relationship with the royal class to forward its own agenda with gross disrespect for the democratic process.

In any case, Bersih was a show of organic power and hardly had anything to do with royalty. As much as many would want to believe, there is not enough proof to show how receptive the Malaysian King was to the movement. Bersih, like PAD, only associated itself with the monarchy as a strategy to pit the executive and the institution to forward its own agenda.

The democratic process itself is not sacred since from time to time, tyranny of the majority does occur. Democracy does suffer from failure, especially when all its checks and balances have been exhausted.

Early liberals held a deep suspicion for democracy because of the fear of tyranny of the majority. Voltaire, for instance, advocated enlightened absolutism where idiocy of the masses is kept in check while preserving liberty and everything relating to the Enlightenment.

This is the same thinking PAD is applying in rationalising its action. It argued that the majority of Thais — the rural voters — are not educated enough to do the right action, like voting properly. By using this argument, it could basically reject any democratic outcome against its favor and refer to the King who, in its view, is an enlightened monarch.

Liberal thoughts however do not stop at Voltaire, and classical liberals distrust absolutism as much as crass majoritarianism. Evolution of ideas later introduced the concept of liberal democracy superior to Voltaire’s. The monarchy is replaced by a liberal constitution which ferociously defends individual liberty from infringement by the majority.

The reason for the superiority of liberal democracy to an enlightened monarch is obvious: not all monarchs are enlightened. And enlightened monarchs do not exist all the time either. Voltaire, somehow, overlooked this.

In the case of Malaysia, the country has neither an absolutist nor a liberal constitution in its purest sense. The county does however, perhaps, have several enlightened monarchs who are able to rise above the noise to appeal to the greater good. And there is some security over individual liberty in this country. The imperfections in the protection of liberty by the state may sometimes call upon the enlightened monarchs to play, in some ways, part of the role that Voltaire advocated.

Thus, the monarchy finds itself as a check and balance apparatus. In times when the power of the executive is beyond disgust, the resurgence of the monarchy to check the excesses is most welcome.

It has to be noted that the idea of checks and balances imbeds within the system parts which are capable of limiting the power of the other parts and vice versa. If one part has the ability to overwhelm the other, however, the idea of checks and balances simply loses its meaning.

The same applies to the monarchy. If invested with greater power, chances are the monarchy will stop functioning as part of a check and balance mechanism. The greater power could upset any balance that exists in Malaysia at the moment.

And one of the easiest ways to upset the balance is to grant all nine monarchies in Malaysia with immunity. Immunity will place any royalty above the law, well beyond the reach of any check and balance mechanism.

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

A version of this article was first published in The Malaysian Insider.