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

[1878] Of President Reagan 1981 Inaugural Address

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Categories
Education Liberty Society

[1877] Mengenai pemerkasaan minda

Di zaman dahulu kala di Yunani, bidang logik, tatabahasa dan retorik perlu dikuasai sebelum seseorang itu melangkah ke tahap pendidikan yang lebih tinggi. Dikenali secara kolektif sebagai trivium, sukatan ini bertujuan untuk memperkasakan seseorang individu itu dengan membolehkannya memiliki pemikiran yang berdikari.

Adalah mudah untuk memahami mengapa sukatan trivium disediakan untuk memperkasakan minda seorang manusia. Bidang logik mengajar tentang batu asas cara berfikir. Bidang tatabahasa pula bersangkut-paut dengan bagaimanakah cara untuk melahirkan hasil sesuatu pemikiran manakala bidang retorik menyentuh tentang kaedah penyampaikan pemikiran.

Walaupun tamadun Yunani sudah lama terkubur untuk memberi laluan kepada tamadun-tamadun yang lebih hebat, falsafah pendidikan trivium terus hidup ke zaman kontemporari sebagai falsafah pendidikan liberal. Pendidikan liberal, seperti sukatan trivium, bertujuan untuk mengasah keupayaan intelektual manusia. Matlamat ini adalah penting bagi meruntuhkan segala kongkongan kebudayaan yang berasaskan kepada ketakutan yang timbul daripada kejahilan.

Minda manusia yang tidak terlatih akan terperangkap di dalam pemikiran yang kolot kerana dia akan terikat kepada tradisi yang diwarisi. Tanpa minda yang terlatih, seseorang itu akan mengikuti sesuatu tradisi itu tanpa usul periksa hanya kerana sesuatu perbuatan itu telah diamalkan sejak dari dahulu lagi. Dia akan gagal melahirkan soalan-soalan yang penting untuk memahami dan merasionalkan amalan-amalan tradisional. Tanpa soalan-soalan tersebut, status quo, termasuk amalan-amalan lapuk yang tidak berguna akan berterusan bersama dengan amalan-amalan yang baik.

Tanpa soalan dan dengan kesetiaan yang buta, golongan ini bagaikan lembu yang hidungnya ditarik. Ke mana jua ia ditarik, di situ juga akan mereka pergi tanpa sebarang persoalan, walaupun destinasinya adalah sebuah rumah penyembelihan di mana kezaliman bakal berlaku.

Ini amat menguntungkan kepada mereka yang mendapat manfaat daripada pelanjutan pengamalan tradisi secara membuta tuli. Mereka ini akan mencipta pelbagai cerita dongengan yang menceritakan akibat-akibat buruk yang akan melanda sesiapa yang berani mencabar naratif yang sedia ada. Dengan minda yang kurang cekap, individu-individu akan menerima naratif tersebut. Sekali gus, batasan didirikan.

Jika ada kumpulan minoriti yang mencabar tradisi, lembu-lembunya tersebut akan dipergunakan untuk bertindak ke atas pencabar-pencabar pemikiran tradisional. Lembu, tanpa keupayaan untuk berfikir dengan sendirinya, tidak akan mendengar apa-apa hujah yang dilontar. Ini adalah sebab utama pendidikan menjadi agenda penting di dalam masyarakat yang liberal. Masyarakat liberal tidak mampu ditampung tanpa pendidikan yang memperkasakan minda.

Tiada masyarakat yang benar-benar merdeka selagi ahli-ahlinya masih dijajah oleh orang lain, baik bangsa asing ataupun bangsa sendiri. Tiada individu itu benar-benar merdeka selagi mindanya tidak bebas. Kejahilan, ketakutan dan kezaliman akan sentiasa menguasai sesuatu masyarakat itu selagi ahli-ahlinya tidak mampu atau tidak mahu memiliki pemikiran yang berdikari.

Falsafah pendidikan liberal mampu melahirkan satu masyarakat yang majoritinya mempunyai pemikiran yang berdikari kerana sistem ini menggalakkan pelajar-pelajar mempersoalkan segalanya tanpa batasan.

Di sinilah di mana sistem pendidikan Malaysia yang sedia ada mengalami kegagalan.

Di negara ini, kita terlampau taksub di dalam usaha kita untuk menambah bilangan jurutera, doktor dan pelbagai lagi pakar bagi menyokong pertumbuhan ekonomi. Demi memenuhi keperluan-keperluan ini, kita melihat pengkhususan aliran dari awal lagi lalu mengetepikan agenda pembinaan intelektual. Akhirnya, kita mengeluarkan robot yang mampu melakukan pengiraan-pengiraan rumit tanpa memahami konteks.

Kadang-kala, kita perlu belajar merangkak dahulu sebelum berjalan dan berlari. Ini amat penting di dalam mewujudkan satu sistem pendidikan yang ingin melahirkan insan kamil. Perkara-perkara asas yang disarankan oleh pendidikan liberal perlu dimahiri dahulu bagi menyediakan minda pelajar untuk menelaah bidang-bidang yang lebih tinggi yang memerlukan daya pemikiran yang kompleks.

Seperti pepatah Melayu, melentur buluh, biarlah dari rebung ini. Falsafah pendidikan liberal hanya akan berkesan jika falsafah ini diterapkan di peringkat pendidikan rendah, di tahap awal pendidikan seseorang insan.

Jika batu asas gagal diperbetulkan, manakan menara yang tinggi mampu berdiri dengan lama. Kegagalan individu untuk menguasai kemahiran asas untuk berfikir, menulis dan bertutur secara baik sebelum beredar ke peringkat yang lebih tinggi akan hanya menggalakkan pelajar-pelajar menerima apa sahaja yang ditulis di dalam buku, di papan putih dan apa sahaja yang dipercakapkan oleh guru-guru. Tanpa kemahiran asas ini, minda tidak dapat diperkasakan.

Apatah lagi apabila sistem pendidikan Malaysia sendiri hanya menyembahkan fakta-fakta untuk diingati tanpa menggalakkan pelajar-pelajar sendiri berfikir untuk tiba ke satu kesimpulan. Pembezaan, evolusi, jadual berkala, momentum antara lain semuanya diterangkan sebagai satu kebenaran. Walaupun tamadun manusia telah berjaya memahami semua ini, ini tidak bermaksud bahawa perkara-perkara ini harus diperkenalkan kepada pelajar-pelajar sebagai satu kebenaran.

Sebaliknya, adalah penting mereka bermula dengan semangat skeptikisme. Seperti Socrates hampir dua setengah ribu tahun yang lalu, pelajar-pelajar harus mencapai kesimpulan hanya setelah menanyakan satu siri soalan yang mana guru hanya memainkan peranan sebagai seorang koordinator dan bukan sebagai sumber maklumat seperti yang lazimnya. Ini melatih minda untuk berdikari.

Pembentukan budaya minda berdikari dan perkasa akan melenyapkan ketakutan yang timbul daripada kejahilan. Lama-kelamaan, pelajar-pelajar akan berani mencabar segala perkara atas semangat ingin tahu.

Pendidikan liberal bukan sahaja membina intelek seseorang dengan memberikannya dengan alatan asas untuk berfikir, menulis dan bertutur. Sistem pendidikan liberal memberikan pelajar-pelajar peluang untuk membuat keputusan dengan fakultinya sendiri. Ini datang dengan menggalakkan pelajar-pelajar mendalami minat mereka dan bukan hanya melalui laluan yang disediakan oleh orang lain.

Oleh kerana arah yang dituju ditentukan oleh mereka sendiri, pelajar-pelajar akan secara sukarela untuk memikul tanggungjawab peribadi mereka sendiri. Secara tidak langsung, ini melahirkan seorang individu yang bukan saja diperkasakan dengan minda yang tajam, malah seorang individu yang sedar akan kesan tindakannya ke atas diri sendiri.

Semua ini membentuk satu individu yang perkasa, mampu untuk menentukan halatuju hidupnya. Mindanya sentiasa terbuka dan tidak mudah menjadi mangsa kezaliman. Sebagai unit asas masyarakat, individu yang perkasa dapat mewujudkan dan menampung satu masyarkat yang liberal.

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

Tulisan ini telah terdahulunya diterbitkan di Project Malaysia pada Januari 16 2009.

Categories
Politics & government

[1876] Of last word before it all ends

There are so many words to be penned and typed yet, time ticked too fast. I am drained and wished nothing else at the moment except for placing my head on my trusted pillow on my bed and read the books which I should have finished last year, that would have been banned if our society was more religiously conservative that it is at the moment.

I will go to my bed in peace. I will not be perturbed by some of the hate mails I have received. I will go in peace, but only after did this:

Presumably public domain. Parliament of Malaysia.

Good night and good luck.

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.