This should really go to Metblogs KL but I just want to have a post to keep visitors happy.
This is where Jalan Sultan Ismail and Bukit Bintang meet.
I had never read a book after watching its film adaptation. I am usually dismissive of those who do that. I admit, I am arrogant about this kind of stuff. It is a feeling of those listening to alternative less-than-mainstream music have against those that listen to commercialized songs like Britney Spears’ or Backstreet Boys’. When Lord of the Rings came out in 2001, I spent excessive time deriding those who fell in love with Tolkien’s works because of the movie, instead of the book. I am like a book puritan, like those religious conservatives watching liberals as if the latter suffer from grave moral erosion deserving in the lowest level of hell. Worse, watching the movie before reading the book ruins imagination.
Well, I finally lost my moral authority to assume that holier-than-thou attitude because of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Material.
To my defense, I read it not because I fell in love with the film. Well, I did fall in love with it but that is not the reason why I started reading it.
The reason is this: it was the controversy the film invited when it, The Golden Compass, hit the cinema. Christian conservatives in the US wanted for the movie to be boycotted. On the other side, the director Chris Weitz was criticized for self-censorship when he diluted reference to Christianity in order not to offend the religious rights.
That and a desire to entertain a friend convinced me to watch the movie. I like the movie but I wanted to do a comparison between the movie and the book, just to discover by myself about the heretic nature of the trilogy with respect to religion.
I did not manage to do my comparison until I got myself a free copy of the whole trilogy at the KL Alternative Book Fest some time ago.
Finishing the first installment of the trilogy failed to prove the alleged hostility that Pullman’s work has against the idea of religion. The idea presented in the first book was mild though creative and I could not really understand the brouhaha surrounding it. And so, my interest in reading the trilogy waned as I picked up other wonkish books to read.
I did continue reading the trilogy after renewing my commitment to finish reading all of my books that I have ever bought. As I did that, I was hooked by the second book and it was until the end of the third book did I finally comprehend why the book is not at all innocent. It was about killing god, or rather, killing an angel who pretended to be God. It was about dismantling the Kingdom of Heaven to create a Republic of Heaven.
In Pullman’s universe, the first ever angel made others believed that he was the creator of the universe, a god. The angel later retired from life as he grew older and appointed an angel named Metatron as a regent. Metatron assumed full godly authority and tightened the Kingdom of Heaven’s grip over the world. Metatron later became more powerful than God, or the Authority as named in the book, and supplanted his position, effectively becoming God himself.
The Church, ignorant of the truth, meanwhile, being the agent of so-called God, tried to restrict free inquiry. Parts of the Church secretly worked to turn human kinds into, effectively, obedient zombies incapable of running their life freely, incapable of questioning. It was this effort along with the discover of dusk, started the ball rolling. The Church strongly denied the existence of dusk though they themselves were aware of its existence.
Metatron himself was formerly a human called Enoch. As you can see, there are references to actual characters in the Abrahamic tradition. You will realize that assertion alone is heretical beyond scale. There are frequent reference made against religion throughout the trilogy but it only become more memorable towards the end.
There were rebellions, among men and angels against god in the name of free will. Part of the rebellion was fueled to undo the lies told by God.
In any case, Metatron in the end, was killed by humans, thus freeing human kinds from tyranny, allowing free will to flourish without having the smoldering Church lurking somewhere. God himself die somewhere in the book.
I am slightly disappointed with the ending. As usually, reading a good book causes one to become involved in the universe created by the author. I saw the two main characters of the trilogy, Will and Lyra, walking along the beach with their daemons from afar, falling in love. There was a feeling that you want them to be together. But they could not be together. They had to part ways because of, ehem, the structural integrity of the whole universe depended on them staying apart. I found myself protesting when I they found out their feeling was futile, that something larger was against it, something larger than god. It was morality and responsibility to others. It was about the Republic of Heaven.
That disappointment however does nothing to diminish the brilliance of Pullman.
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.
First published in The Malaysian Insider on February 8 2009.
Guess how many police reports have been filed against Karpal Singh for his plan to sue the Sultan of Perak?
To remind all, there is a huge dispute in the way the state government of Perak was transferred from Pakatan Rakyat to Barisan Nasional earlier this month. I will not go into the details and speak legalese since I lack the skill to do so. Suffice to say, Karpal Singh insists that the method is unconstitutional and I at the moment tend to agree with him. I myself prefer a vote of no confidence to formally prove any lack of confidence against the Pakatan government. Calling for the vote would settle a lot of issues as civil as possible.
Returning to the question, at the time of airing of Bulletin Utama on TV3 — drum roll please — 27 reports. Watching TV3 is always an angering experience since its so-called news borders outright lies and manipulation. But I want to know what both sides are thinking and I have to brave through the horrible minutes to obtain that knowledge. Not a pinch but a handful of salt has to be close by while watching and listening to TV3.
According to the news presented on Bulletin Utama in its typical propagandist fashion, Karpal Singh at the moment is being investigated under Sedition Act.
I may have been wrong when I suggested that the infatuation with the monarchy is coming to an end. I may be right if the statement is constrained to a certain section of the society but on the whole, it is quite hard to say if the monarchy is becoming more popular or less. One thing is certain, the monarchy as been used as a political vehicle by all sides.
The episode in the usually charming little Kuala Kangsar involving the firing of tear gas by the police to a protesting crowd suggests a conclusion which sits exactly opposite to the conclusion of various UMNO-related rallies in various places as aired on TV3. It cannot be ignored however that with UMNO’s effective control of the mainstream media, these pro-monarchy rallies may not as big as it was reported.
In any case, groups especially the one aligning to Barisan Nasional are trying to place the monarchy even higher than individuals and groups leaning toward Pakatan Rakyat had proposed earlier. Through the BN-aligned groups’ action against Karpal Singh, they are trying to grant the monarchy immunity. If they are successful in using an arm of the state to convict the DAP man under the Sedition Act, we would effectively have lèse majesté law.
That is unacceptable. Nobody is supposed to be above the law.
This is even greater than the immunity suggested by Parti Keadilan Rakyat during its pow-wow not too long ago and therefore, worse in terms of violating the spirit of equality before the law. For PKR at least, they were willing to bent back after being criticized though the bending seemed less than honest to me. Honest or not, the feedback mechanism works to some extend.
Unlike PKR however, the groups filing reports against Karpal Singh are unlikely to bow to any criticism. These are groups with strong direct ties to the pre-March 8 culture. Besides, these groups claim to fight for the Malays and that also means standing behind the monarchy. If they were to back down from supporting the monarchy, they would lose their raison d’être.
Effort by the UMNO-backed groups filing police reports against Karpal Singh is even more worrying given the fact that in the past, the subsequent processes had been manipulated to tilt the result. Furthermore, if the groups are successful in bringing the system to convict Karpal Singh, that would take us a step closer to undo one good structural legacy of the Mahathir administration.
While former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed has caused many wrong weakening of public institutions to overly strengtened the executive, one of few good structural changes he brought upon to this country is the removal of the immunity of the monarchy. He made true of the phrase nobody is above the law by making the monarchy accountable to rule of law.
The court is and has to be the final arbitrator and Mahathir made that possible.
At the same time, it is clear that the dispute regarding the change of state government in Perak is a constitutional matter. Such matter can only be addressed in the court of law. Outcomes from the courts can then be used as reference, making the likelihood of future disputes lower than what it currently is. The application of the Sedition Act to prevent effort to bring the matter to the court does nothing other than sweeping the dust under the carpet.
For the UMNO-backed group, they do not realize this because as always typical with emotional overly sensitive communal groups, they are unable to see very far ahead.