Tag: The Malaysian Insider

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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

[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

[1884] Of tax cut as backbone for the second fiscal stimulus

The train is on the move and the second fiscal stimulus package seems imminent even as the federal government scrambles with great difficulty to spend RM7 billion as promised in the first stimulus package announced back in November 2008. While that is so, press reports suggest that the general outline of the second stimulus has yet to be written. This is perhaps evident through the solicitation of the Finance Minister for stimulus idea from the public. If indeed that is so, then this is a good time to demonstrate why tax cut is a better solution than government spending within the context of the second stimulus.

If the purpose of an economic stimulus is to reduce the sufferings associated with economic downturn, then the stimulus package has to fulfill at least two criteria.

First, the lag between the administration, the execution and the effect of the stimulus has to be short. This is to ensure that the stimulus comes at the times when it is most needed. That period is when the economy is deep in crisis and not when it is already nearing reasonable level of recovery. Any later, a stimulus will become useless.

Secondly, it has to be widely distributed to among the participants of the local economy. A restricted distribution of stimulus will be meaningless in terms of alleviating the sufferings of individuals adversely affected by the downturn. While theoretically the economy could show sign of recovery even with a restricted distribution, it may do little in improving, for instance, the unemployment rate. The previous RM5 billion injection by the government through its various arms into ValueCap — a fund management company active in the equity market — is a case in point where a stimulus is extraordinarily focused. While the massive injection into ValueCap may save the company, the injection does nothing in improving the real economy.

Government spending is unlikely to achieve both criteria at the same time because there is a trade-off between the two factors as far as government spending is concerned.

For a government spending-based stimulus to act fast, it has to be administered on small items without complex distribution method. Any effort to distribute the spending widely will necessarily bog down the execution of the stimulus. Why?

Designers of the plan will have to know where and on what to spend. This information unfortunately does not come quickly. Any investigation into the subject requires time and an investigation of countrywide magnitude demands reasonable time to complete. It is possible that effort by the Finance Minister to harness the wisdom of the masses is partly to cut short the process of information gathering.

Independent to the quality of information is a question of execution. A widely distributed government spending-based stimulus by definition itself requires considerable number of transactions which transpires various levels in the government as well as the economy. Each transaction itself needless to say consumes time, especially so when transparent processes which include open tenders are applied.

While government spending suffers from the trade-off, tax cut simply does not. Tax cut can be done relatively quicker and more distributed than government spending.

Tax cut especially on transactional taxes on consumer goods like sales tax can be administered quickly because the information required is not a massive as the one required for government spending. The government could announce that tax cuts on sales tax in a matter of weeks if not days. In this age, simple information like that can travel fast and wide.

Secondly, a tax cut, especially on sales tax is more distributed in its effects than any practical government spending. Just imagine how many times a week does any one of us commit a transaction with sales tax appended to it? And then consider how many people do you know pay sales tax? Compare that to how many people do you know that may enjoy the direct effect of government spending on public works?

The reduction of sales tax in particular has the potential of increasing the quantity of goods demanded in the economy by making it prices faced by the buyers cheaper. More so if demand for those goods is elastic.

There are other taxes that could be reduced, like corporate and personal income taxes but that a cut on those will not come as quickly as a cut on sales tax. Regardless, it is possible to do tax rebates on taxes assessed and paid in the previous years in a quick matter. Proof: the government managed to return tax rebates quickly last year in less than a month or two.

Another method is through future tax cut. Future cut on taxes however is likely to be a game of expectation management.

In any case, tax cut on non-transactional taxes on consumer goods must be directed at the lower and middle classes. It has been demonstrated time and again that these groups are the ones most likely to spend instead of save the extra cash that they received. There are ample empirics to eliminate debate on positive economics on this specific issue.

A large tax cut will of course hurt government revenue in times when revenue from petroleum and its by-products may not be as large as projected last year. This therefore will increase the fiscal deficit. Concern for deficit however is immaterial if the alternative is greater government spending. Whether government revenue shrinks or its expenditure grows, the end result is likely the same in terms of direction if not in magnitude.

Besides, while RM7 billion is pale when compared to the size of drop in Malaysian exports seen lately — when exports consists of more than 100% of the Malaysian gross domestic product just months ago — and therefore unlikely to counter the full effect of weakened external demand, the path of government spending essentially has been explored. The first stimulus attacked the demand curve in its first wave. Perhaps it is wise to attack the supply side this time around. When the first and the second stimuli are combined, a more holistic view is taken.

Finally, for Barisan Nasional, tax cut has greater appeal over government spending.

The BN-led federal government has been accused to cronyism with government contracts circulating mostly among BN party members. Even in a system that favors the Malays, the general feeling is that only UMNO members are benefiting from it.

Consider government spending as fiscal stimulus: with its requirement to be executed fast, large spending is likely to bypass many transparent processes, if there is any at all. With an already bad reputation in place, the haste of commissioning various stimulus-conscious projects is likely to encourage the public and even more so for political rivals of BN to question the method of award of the contracts. Suspicion of corruption will be inevitable and that will only solidify the image that BN suffers.

With tax cut, especially on transactional taxes on elastic consumer goods, there is no room for the accusation of cronyism or corruption. A tax cut breaks away from that bad reputation and positions BN as an advocate of a more egalitarian stimulus.

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 on January 28 2009.

Categories
Politics & government

[1879] Of so long, Mr. President

Craiglist for Washington DC is filled with incessant postings regarding the availability of accommodation in and around the city. As Inauguration Day draws near, the population size of the US capital is swelling as people from all over come to celebrate the event. It is a celebration of a beginning, a continuum and an end on the same day. The eight years of the Bush presidency are finally coming to an end and that is a relief. It is a great relief particularly for me because the Bush administration was riddled with disappointment, outrage and the betrayal of ideals.

With so many voting for Barack Obama on November 4, 2008, January 20, 2009 will surely be different from the Inauguration Day that fell on the same day exactly 8 years ago.

It was raining on January 20, 2001 and the newly-elected President Bush was received by a hostile crowd in the capital. The result of the 2000 presidential election ended so closely that the Supreme Court had to come in to settle the hotly-disputed political contest. Elections of national proportions are naturally divisive but the decision of the court only cemented the division for years to come.

The bitter division was observed on the very first day of the Bush administration. The journey through Pennsylvania Avenue was not pretty for the new President. Angry protesters pelted the presidential motorcade with trash. That forced the new President and his entourage to hurry up rather than enjoy the day meant to celebrate the Office of the President of the United States of America.

Roughly two years earlier, Vice President Gore visited Malaysia in 1998 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Kuala Lumpur. “Democracy confers a stamp of legitimacy that reforms must have in order to be effective,” he said.

“And so, among nations suffering economic crises, we continue to hear calls for democracy and reform in many languages — people’s power, doi moi, reformasi.”

He, of course, was referring to the political turmoil of the late 1990s in Malaysia that led to the incarceration of the former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Al Gore was clearly sympathetic to Anwar Ibrahim, reflecting what the position of the US was in the whole issue. The Barisan Nasional-led government under the combative former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad naturally was not amused with the remark.

With Bush’s victory over Gore, somewhere at the back of my mind there is a memory of the former PM almost celebrating it. I am unsure if that memory is made up but I am certain that supporters of BN made no bones about expressing how they welcomed Gore’s defeat: a payback to his speech in Kuala Lumpur in 1998. I somehow feel that the same individuals would have preferred Gore to Bush in retrospect.

I do not remember much of the first more or less eight months of the Bush administration but I do vividly remember September 11, 2001. I had just begun my freshman year in an American university and I woke up at around 9am on a Tuesday only to be greeted with cancelled classes and closed offices. Just as I was trying to adjust to my new life, the World Trade Center in New York collapsed after being rammed by two hijacked passenger airplanes to unveil a new world. Al-Qaeda claimed credit and Osama Bin Laden, the head of the organization and a guest of the Taliban-led Afghanistan, was a likely candidate for Time’s Person of the Year.

September 11 is, without doubt, the single event that made everything the Bush administration is today possible.

Shocked, a divisive society came together behind Bush with a majority of the world offering goodwill unconditionally. The political will shown in Washington made retribution swift. An ultimatum was issued: surrender Bin Laden or face military action. Afghanistan refused and the rest is history. The US now occupies the landlocked country with a US-supported government in place.

Then, there was Iraq. Suddenly, weapons of mass destruction was the buzzword and Saddam Hussein of Iraq was accused of maintaining it. Iraq said that it did not have it anymore. Bush maintained otherwise and was prepared to disarm Iraq forcefully. Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to convince the world that there were WMD in Iraq. The United Nations, however, was unconvinced and refused to sanction any military action of the level Bush advocated.

Frustrated, the US forged the Coalition of the Willing and invaded Iraq. Unity within the US and goodwill of the world crumbled as swiftly as it was born immediately after September 11.

Sooner or later, the wars were positioned as a conflict between the Muslim and Western worlds. Understandably, many within the US Muslim community feared of becoming the victims of hate crimes. Several of my Malaysian friends warned me to watch my back. While their concern was comprehensible, I did not suffer any of it and I tend to view warnings with skepticism. Rather, my fear was based on something else entirely.

Reports were coming out that the US government was spying on thousands of individuals in the United States and allegations of telephone conversations and email exchanges being tapped made its way around the internet. It was later proven to be true. More distressing was that Bush had the audacity to defend it, even when the secret was out in the open. I however could never be certain if I was ever bugged; a large part of me is confident that I was a victim. After all, as Bush had emphasized in defending the secret tapping program, only calls made to overseas were monitored without a court order.

Some Malaysian friends had to report to the newly-created Department of Homeland Security at regular intervals. It was as if they were ex-convicts on parole. I would have felt humiliated if I had been treated like that. So much of my time would be wasted just reporting to the office in Detroit.

While I was spared of that, profiling by the US government ensured that I went through more rigorous security inspections compared to others.

Every time I took the plane, the security personnel would pull me aside and say “Congratulations, you are selected for further security screening.” I hate having to take off my shoes and to loosen my belt just so they can use the metal detectors. And I hate strangers going through my bags looking for weapons or bombs, just because I am a Malaysian.

In many ways, I was not harassed by US citizens. They were kind to me. I instead was harassed by the US government. In the land of the free, it did not feel like the land of the free. Liberty was curbed in the name of security. Sacrifices had to be made, they said.

The talk of pro-war itself was suffocating. It was either you are with us or against us. Oh, the arrogance!

In the end, Saddam Hussein was executed with unholy haste for the unholy crimes he committed. But there was no WMD to be found. Somebody lied and people died just like that. Thus, the credibility of the US went down the drain. For a world power that could have done some good, it was a shame.

It was shame also that the US sacrificed the moral high ground it took in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis to save its financial as well as the automotive sectors. If a Democratic administration maintained the moral high ground in economy, surely one would expect a Republican administration would do better. But no, the US government under Bush made sure it did everything necessary to prevent institutions from failing as it should under a free market.

There is no atheist in the foxhole and there are no libertarians in a financial crisis. Bah!

What was politely called unorthodox in the late 1990s quickly became the orthodoxy. Government intervention is the order of the day. As a result, the size of government grew tremendously that one would wonder if it was a Republican President sitting in the Oval Office. Coupled with war spending, the beast was on the loose. The small government ideal, supposedly part of the Republican Party, was betrayed.

So pervasive were the tentacles of government that even scientific reports were censored just to support the political position of the White House on several issues, especially on climate change. In one particular case, a lawyer with little background in science, edited facts presented in a report prepared by climate scientists. He was caught and resigned to save Bush from further embarrassment. Shortly after that as if he had nothing to regret, he joined ExxonMobil, an energy company that vehemently rejected the idea of climate change until only very recently.

Yet, after all the wrongs and more, Bush is right in saying it is history that will judge him. “There are things I would do differently if given the chance. Yet I have always acted with the best interests of our country in mind”, he appealed.

Perhaps but whether it was good enough is another matter.

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 19 2009.

Categories
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.