Here, Member of Parliament Tony Pua was speaking to Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng before the latter took the stage to address the crowd in Kuching. The CM is a crowd-puller while the MP is one of the minds behind the DAP machinery here.
How big was the crowd?
The opposition is definitely on the offensive here in Sarawak.
Ubah the Hornbill says hi.
There is speculation that there will be a general election in the near future. Political parties across the board are shifting gears, as if they needed to after all the by-elections.
I had a conversation with a friend several months back about the general election. Being away from Malaysia, I caught up with him, among others, to find out the latest about Malaysian politics. There is, of course, the Internet but it can get you only so far. Nothing beats face-to-face conversation. The facial expressions, the intonations and everything that matters are something that articles, podcasts and videos do not relay.
Among the topics discussed was the disillusionment that both of us had with the current political reality where both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat dominate. Although I do believe that this is the stage for Malaysians to strengthen the newly established, effectively competitive two-party system before any further steps are taken to improve the Malaysians political system, I despise the options that I face.
It was then that I contemplated the idea of refraining from voting in the next general election.
Where I am registered to vote, it has always been a contest between UMNO and PAS.
I do not believe in UMNO. I do not believe in their core values and I do not trust them for all of their abuse, regardless of the presence of some good individuals in it. I do honestly believe that for UMNO and its partners to change, they must be out of power at the federal level.
Nothing is more powerful as a driver of change than failure itself. Without power, the worse and the corrupt will be flushed out, leaving the competent and clean to work their way up, at least hopefully.
Besides, Malaysia needs to experience a proper and peaceful change of political power. The actual experience will test the country’s institutions. The outcome of that test will inform Malaysians at large whether the institutions are capable of handling peaceful transition, or that the institutions themselves needed to be changed.
Malaysia has experienced change at the state level. There are kinks but the institutions are handling it reasonably well. Federal change, however, is likely to be a different beast altogether.
While I do not think highly of UMNO and its junior partners in Barisan Nasional, the other viable alternative is not too convincing either.
Specifically, I distrust PAS. While PAS may have allayed the fears of the non-Muslims in issues like the controversy on liquor sales, they have not done so for the more liberal Malays like me. For instance, PAS has insisted that Islamic laws should not be imposed on non-Muslims. While that is more progressive relative to a more suffocating encompassing view regarding Islam and the state, that communal thinking leaves the liberal Malays trapped.
While the status quo with BN in power is not fantastic to say the least, the way PAS and Pakatan Rakyat explain the issue of Islamic laws — about how Islamic laws affect only the Muslims, hence non-Muslims need not fear — desensitizes such communal thinking.
Of perhaps larger concern is the rumor that UMNO and PAS are discussing a possible pact, either in the name of Malay unity or an Islamic one, none of which appeals to me. I thought the issue was dead long ago but it persists. That worries me. What is the point of voting against UMNO by voting for PAS only to have PAS join UMNO?
Then there is the Pakatan Rakyat coalition in general. In Selangor recently, the Pakatan Rakyat-led state government announced that they would grant PR state lawmakers RM1 million each in preparation for election while excluding those from other parties.
The state government justified this by saying that BN also does this at the federal level. The selective provision levels the field, so the state government argues. I completely understand the crass reality of politics but I also believe that state resources belong to voters, not to the parties of the day. Seeing PR stooping to the level of BN disturbs me. It forces me to reassess my premise for voting for Pakatan Rakyat.
I fully recognize some of the good that Pakatan Rakyat state governments have done. Yet, I do not want to give them a blank check. The good work should not be used to justify other less admirable actions. I gave them a blank check in the last election because the situation then was dire. Things have changed so much since then. The situation today does not warrant old premises.
In the past, I overcame this problem by resorting to voting for the lesser evil. The lesser evil was PAS. Furthermore, the idea of giving somebody new a shot appealed to me. Since PAS was — and still is — in alliance with DAP and PKR, a vote for PAS was a vote for DAP and PKR; I thought of both DAP and PKR better than any other parties in Malaysia at that time. I worked on the premise that DAP and PKR would outnumber PAS when it matters always. PAS would be powerless where it matters.
I was wrong about power and PAS within Pakatan Rakyat.
Now, I am tired of choosing the lesser evil. I am also tired of others asking me to vote for the lesser evil. They are effectively telling me that I have no option. Imagine how excited I was when they told me that my only option is PAS. Hooray.
They are wrong though. I do have an option, except that it is not on the ballot.
I told the friend that I was thinking of refraining from voting in the next election. “This would not be indifference,” I told him. “It’d be an active choice. No more blank check.”
To which he replied, “You might not be the only one who is thinking of that.”
Although I consider myself as sitting on the fringe of the Malaysian political spectrum, there are many dissatisfied voters out there if the talk of the so-called third force is of any indication.
That makes me wonder about the turnout of the next general election in absence of other options on the ballot. How high, or low, will it be?
First published in The Malaysian Insider on January 26 2011.
I am busy but this controversy relating to Tian Chua’s sentence and his status as the Member of Parliament for Batu enrages me so much that I feel compelled to write something about it.
The law clearly states that an MP will lose his or her chair in the Parliament if he or she is ”sentenced to imprisonment for a term of not less than one year or to a fine of not less than RM2,000 and has not received a free pardon.” Any respectable college graduate — even those whom have passed their high school — will see that the equivalence is an MP will lose his or her chair if sentenced to jail for one year or more, or fined RM2,000 or more.
Surely, one does not need a law degree to come to that conclusion. Apparently, some in the legal profession believe that, as a friend of mine said, they can rewrite the laws of mathematics. They insist that legal precedent overrules mathematics!
Somebody should point out to them that this group of legal experts may lack knowledge of mathematics to undertake such a bold project.
This is probably a damning sign of the deplorable state of Malaysian education and legal systems. They do not know their inequality. Yikes!
Tian Chua the Batu MP at first was sentenced with a fine of RM3,000. In the name of public interest, the judge reduced the sentence to RM2,000 to avoid the need for a by-election, which will increase the cost of his judgment. Good intention, maybe, but RM2,000 will simply not do it. It has to be less than RM2,000.
Tian Chua’s legal counsel Amer Hamzah argues that ”not less than RM2,000” means more than RM2,000 and cites a legal precedent to back it up. Lawyers are lawyers. They want to win and I cannot blame them for that. They are paid to win. What more can I say?
Regardless of that, the truth is that the precedent is wrong and it has to be corrected.
Unless the judge believes in that argument by the lawyer, the judge has mistaken in his action. His action is not in line with his intention. Unlike Amer Hamzah, the judge does not have the room to perform ridiculous maneuvre. The judge should live up to the mistake and allow the next piece in the domino set to fall.
If the judge actually believes in Amer Hamzah’s argument, then the judge has to be an illiterate of mathematics.
A legal expert Shaq Faruqi states that ”[i]f the judge said he wished to avoid an election and to substitute the first court’s sentence with a sentence that avoids a by-election, then we should try to give effect to that purpose.” Professor, good intention is not enough.
It is not good enough because all this could have been avoided. It was not and we are at this juncture. Maybe, the judge is incompetent to do the necessary. Maybe, it is a plain mistake. Whatever it is, the right thing to do is to live with the mistake and live with the law. The law in this matter is quite uncontroversial anyway.
Furthermore, it is not good enough because there is a way to address this problem without bending the law too much. The next course of action should be an appeal.
But if Tian Chua refuses not appeal as he has indicated, then by all means, let us have an election in Batu. That is the rule of law. No to arbitrariness, please.
And let us blame the judge for incompetence.
There will be a big parliamentary by-election today in Hulu Selangor. By-elections have always been big in Malaysia but the fact that Pakatan Rakyat is fielding a giant makes this edition important by its own right. Zaid Ibrahim is not an obscure name.
Important or not, I do not feel the excitement of by-elections anymore. Part of the reason is that I am away in Australia. Another part is caused by election fatigue. Yet another part is because I have grown skeptical of Pakatan Rakyat due to policy issues.
The biggest of all issue is likely related to the goods and services tax debate. Effort to nationalize highways is another issue I deeply disagree with Pakatan Rakyat. Never mind issue of subsidy of various kinds. Some individuals who I thought would defend liberal economic policies within Pakatan Rakyat turn out to be cafeteria liberals. In short, I am no longer impressed with Pakatan Rakyat’s politics.
That in no way means that I am all set to lend my support to Barisan Nasional. I simply do not trust Barisan Nasional although I am willing to give thumbs up for several initiatives that fit my economic worldview. Their racial policy is a huge turn off for me, even if the current Prime Minister is pushing for liberalization of the economy.
Liberalization, of course, does not necessarily mean economic liberal. It could mean superlatively liberal. What else do I make when the federal government is pushing for liberalization of the economy while appearing to support minimum wage or creation of more government enterprises?
I was ready to largely ignore the election until Barisan Nasional raised the issue of alcohol and how Zaid Ibrahim drinks. I frown at the personal attack because I always expect people to debate on issues. Barisan Nasional failed on that front.
Moreover, the issue of alcohol comes close to the idea of choice, or anti-choice to be more accurate.
While I do appreciate that the norm in Malaysia is for Muslims to refrain from drinking as well as the fact that Muslims do have strong opinion on the matter and thus, Muslims voters who make up the majority in Hulu Selangor may vote based on personal lifestyle, for Barisan Nasional to raise the issue and use it as its election campaign material simply assaults my principle. The fake photographs of Zaid Ibrahim drinking distributed by those close to Barisan Nasional just adds up to the mounting anger I feel with respect to the way Barisan Nasional is campaigning.
That is not the only assault on freedom that is happening as far as the by-election is concerned. A former producer at NTV7 resigned because the Prime Minister’s Department, really, to make it all the more outrageous, the Prime Minister’s wife, demanded that the channel practice censorship to the benefit of Barisan Nasional.
Barisan Nasional has made freedom as an issue for me.
For that, I am stating that, for whatever it is worth and I know that it is not much, I am endorsing Zaid Ibrahim.