Malaysia must end racial politics-Razaleigh

The Najib Tun Razak government and the United Malays National Organization (Umno) came under attack from former Finance Minister Tengku Razaleigh who urged the nation to do without 'communal policies' and racial based politics.

In a veiled attack against his own party, Tengku Razaleigh pointed out that the NEP had been systematically appropriated by a small political and business class to enrich itself and perpetuate power.

“We must break the stranglehold of communal politics and racial policy if we want to be a place where an economy driven by ideas and skills can flourish.

“We can do much better than cling to the bright ideas of 40 years ago as if they were dogma, and forget our duty to come up with the bright ideas for our own time.

“We need a Malaysian New Deal based on the same universal concerns on which the NEP was originally formulated, but designed for a new era.”

The Umno veteran also called for a fair and equitable political and economic order, founded on equal citizenship which he said was the only possible basis for a united Malaysia and a talent-driven economy.

Tengku Razaleigh pointed out that the current government was elected into power on March 8, 2008, and not 100 days ago.

He also argued that Najib had effectively been in power since last year when Tun Abdullah Badawi’s departure schedule had been announced.

“The issues before the present BN government are not transformed overnight with a change of the man at the top,” he said.

In a scathing criticism of the BN government, he cited the recommendations made in 2004 by the Royal Commission to Enhance the Operations and Management of the Police and pointed out that despite the allocation of RM9 billion as a result of the panel’s conclusion, “there has been no dent on our crime problem.”

“Security is about more than just catching criminals out there. It is also about the integrity of our own people and processes.

“It is above all about uprooting corruption and malpractice in government agencies, especially in law enforcement agencies,” he said.

The key recommendation of the panel, he pointed out, was the formation of an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission, but it had been shelved.

Citing another example, he said the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Lingam video clip “might as well have not been conducted” because its findings had been completely ignored.

Tengku Razaleigh said that Malaysians should start trusting “less in personalities and more in policies.”

“Look less to politics and more to principles, less to rhetoric and more to tangible outcomes, less to the government of the day and more to enduring institutions,” he said.

In his speech, the former finance minister also spoke at length about the country’s affirmative action policies, the NEP and how he felt embarrassed that after 50 years of independence, “we are still talking about bringing Malaysians together.”

“Curiously, although the policy was formulated … for a finite period, in our political consciousness it has grown into an all encompassing and permanent framework that defines who we are.

“The NEP ended in 1991 when it was terminated and replaced by the New Development Policy, but eighteen years on, we are still in its hangover and speak confusingly about liberalising it.”

He said that it was a crushing indictment of the mediocrity of leadership that the NEP is considered sacrosanct and that departures from it are big strides.

“The NEP is over and we have not had the courage to tell people this.”

However the good talks and the criticism, Razaleigh's views will not weight much within the Umno, said an oberver to Wfol.tv. The observer added that Razaleigh wanted to 'reform' the Umno but that is tentatmout to Don Quitchot fighting the windmills and losing the battle. "His place is within the opposition, in the Party Keadilaan Rakyat (PKR) and not with Umno," said the observer.

Politics Drive Upcoming Anwar Trial

(July 13, 2009) - The Malaysian government should immediately drop politically motivated criminal charges against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, Human Rights Watch said today. On July 15, 2009, the Kuala Lumpur High Court will hear Anwar's application to strike out a sodomy charge against him, and an ongoing defense request for evidence it says is crucial to properly prepare for trial.

This is the second time Anwar has been charged with sodomy. He spent six years in prison before his previous conviction for sodomy was overturned in 2004.

Human Rights Watch said the current charge appears politically motivated and lacks credibility.

The government has failed to disclose key evidence to the defense, hastily sought to pass a DNA statute that aids the prosecution, and put Anwar at a disadvantage by unnecessarily moving the trial to the high court. In addition, the government allowed the attorney general, who is under investigation for misconduct in Anwar's previous trial, to be involved in the current case.

"This trial is a bald-faced attempt to permanently remove an opposition leader from Malaysian politics," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The government is trying to manipulate the justice system for political purposes."

The current charge against Anwar relates to allegations that on June 26, 2008, he had sexual relations with Mohd Saiful Bukhari bin Azlan, a 23-year-old male former volunteer aide to Anwar. Although initially filed as a non-consensual offense, prosecutors later changed the charge to consensual sodomy, though Saiful has never been charged. A conviction would force Anwar to vacate his seat in Parliament and effectively bar him from contesting in the next general election, expected before 2012.

Anwar's July 15 court application to drop the sodomy charge rests on the basis of two medical reports. Three specialists from the public Kuala Lumpur Hospital endorsed a July 13, 2008 medical report regarding the complainant that found "no conclusive clinical findings suggestive of penetration to the anus and no significant defensive wound on the body of the patient." A doctor at the private Pusrawi Hospital who examined Saiful on June 28, 2008, two days after the alleged incident, reported the anus as "normal." The doctor later left Malaysia to escape what he said was persistent pressure to alter his report.

In addition, the defense will reiterate its January 2009 request for at least 10 documents it asserts are necessary for it to properly prepare Anwar's defense at trial. They include the original closed-circuit television recordings from the alleged crime scene, original specimens from which DNA samples were allegedly obtained, chemist's notes, witness statements including the complainant's, and medical reports. To date, the Public Prosecutor's office has denied it is withholding any documents it is mandated to share under the Malaysian Criminal Procedure Code.

"Providing the defendant with evidence crucial for preparing his defense is a basic requirement of a fair trial," said Pearson. "The prosecution's withholding of key evidence is a red flag of political shenanigans."

Concerns about a fair trial were heightened on July 1 after the court dismissed Anwar's appeal challenging Attorney General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail's decision to move the trial to the High Court from the Sessions Court where it originated. Transfer to a high court reduces opportunities for a defense appeal to higher courts should Anwar be found guilty. Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi then stated publicly in July 2008 that Abdul Gani, who is also public prosecutor, would have no part in Anwar's trial as he is under investigation by the Anti-Corruption Commission for allegedly falsifying evidence to protect those involved in an assault on Anwar in 1998 while he was in police custody during the earlier sodomy trial.

Sessions Court Judge Komathy Suppiah ruled in March that, "it is evident that any involvement by the AG [Gani] in this case would seriously undermine public confidence in the administration of criminal justice." The High Court overruled Judge Komathy's decision, stating that Gani was only acting administratively in approving the transfer and thus was not involved in the new trial.

DNA issues are also contentious in the case. On June 23, 2009, the lower house of Parliament quickly passed the Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) Identification Act, which will go into effect after Senate and Royal assent. It would allow police to take DNA samples from criminal suspects and to use those samples to build a DNA databank. Anwar has repeatedly refused to submit DNA samples in this case on the grounds that current law does not require it and because of his reasonable concern for evidence tampering as happened in his 1998 trial.

The proposed DNA law includes a provision stating that "any existing DNA profile and any information in relation thereto kept and maintained by the Chemistry Department of Malaysia or Royal Malaysia Police, immediately before coming into operation of this Act shall ... form part of the DNA Databank established under this Act." Circumventing Anwar's refusal to provide a new DNA sample, this would permit the manipulated samples from his previous trial to be used as evidence and manipulated again during the upcoming trial.

Other language in the bill raises fair-trial concerns. Article 24 reads: "Any information from the DNA Database shall be admissible as a conclusive proof of the DNA identification in any proceedings in any court." Such decisive stipulations ignore well-known information that DNA databanks are not foolproof, and are often prone to tampering and mistakes in evidence collection and handling. As a safeguard, many courts around the world have determined that information gleaned from DNA cannot be conclusive and must always be corroborated. Those responsible for the collection of evidence must be professional, competent, and beyond the reach of any improper interference.

Serious concerns about fairness and impartial administration of justice, combined with heavy-handed police tactics at the time of Anwar's arrest and intimidation of witnesses, are reminiscent of Anwar's earlier, deeply marred sodomy trial, Human Rights Watch said. Given these concerns, Human Rights Watch renewed its call for the charge against Anwar to be dropped immediately.

"The Malaysian government should stop using the courts to pursue political vendettas," said Pearson. "Unless it drops these dubious charges against Anwar, it risks giving its reputation another black eye."

Sodomy ("committing carnal intercourse against the order of nature"), even when consensual, is punishable in Malaysia under Section 377B of the Penal Code by up to 20 years in prison and whipping. Human Rights Watch urges the Malaysian authorities to uphold international human rights standards by decriminalizing consensual homosexual conduct and replacing Section 377A with a gender-neutral rape law.

A cyber war in Malaysian politics?

FEB 19 — Once upon a time, before the Internet became as common as the television in Malaysian homes, public figures made local speeches that were tailored to suit the audience that was physically present.

This worked well for politicians wishing to entertain the parochial tendencies of the audience of the day without jeopardising their prospects of becoming nationally relevant.

Today, however, such speeches quickly leak into the wired world of the Internet, putting things into a different context, and revealing the speakers' supposed real values to the world.

Playing local politics with the awareness that the audience is always the whole wide world is no easy task, especially for those who have been in politics and in power long before the Internet changed everything.

The dominant Umno learned this the hard way three years ago when it decided to telecast "live" its national assembly. The parochialism and racism expressed by its candidates on that occasion for the nation to hear soon forced it to backtrack.

Defensive arrogance does grow out of the inability to evolve.

The attempt to block access to Raja Petra Kamarudin's controversial Malaysia Today website last year managed to stop traffic going to that site, but did not stop access to its contents. Mirror sites sprung up immediately to nullify the censorship.

The police decision in September 2008 to use the Internal Security Act to jail Raja Petra, along with prominent opposition politician Teresa Kok and journalist Tan Hoon Cheng, merely backfired. The de facto minister of law, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, soon resigned in protest.

Publicly calling female bloggers liars, as then Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor did in March 2007, is also not a very smart thing to do. The negative reaction on the web on that occasion was tremendous.

Opinions expressed for local consumption becoming national news is part and parcel of a revolution in information technology which carries enormous consequences for the near future. Some are positive, and some will certainly not be.

Through the Net, you can sell old useless books you have under the stairs on the world market; you can get to know strangers on the other half of the world merely by being on chat sites; and you can arrange an entire holiday to the south of France without talking to any salesperson at all.

In Malaysian politics, we have witnessed how SMSes, videos and phone cameras have come into play. While these can uncover abuse of power, as in the case of the woman forced to do ear-squats naked while detained by the police in December 2005; reveal dubious practices, as in the case of the Lingam Tapes released in 2007 showing a prominent lawyer boasting about his ability to fix top judge appointments through political connections; and contribute to court cases, as in SMSes supposedly sent by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to a lawyer, discussing the detention of a close associate then charged with involvement in the murder of a Mongolian woman.

The latest political incident involving IT innovations concerns the circulation of nude pictures of prominent opposition politician Elizabeth Wong, secretly taken on a phone camera.

The case of Wong (also a blogger), who has offered to resign from her position as state assemblywoman for the opposition-held Selangor, adds worrying dimensions to the political use of modern IT.

First, it is not only the line between the local and the national that is being erased. The line between the private and the public is fading fast as well.

That is worrying indeed. Most urbanites in Malaysia of all races, especially in the Klang Valley where Wong lives, would undoubtedly consider Wong the victim. Mass media attempts to class the case as a "sex scandal" — and this happened on both sides of the Causeway — smack of shameless sensationalism, journalistic amateurism and political opportunism.

In the sanctity of her home, surely she is allowed to walk scantily dressed, sleep half-naked, even shower nude, and yes, have sex without clothes on. The culprits deserving punishment are those who facilitated the publicising of those pictures, regardless of whether they were taken with her permission or not.

The fact that she is an unmarried woman, and not a man, has had a serious impact on how the incident is being interpreted. Should a male politician, married or not, such as former Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Khir Toyo, for example, have been photographed in the nude while asleep, the fallout would have been minimal, even comical.

The Wong case also shows the disturbing shrinkage of moral space when the private and the local are technologically subsumed under the public and the national.

Moral values do differ geographically, individually, culturally and according to lifestyle. This diversity is denied when such a case gets politicised, and here, the supposed sensitivities of the vocally most religious, most parochial, most traditional and most rural are allowed to define the national public norm. Wong is being sacrificed to appease illiberal elements within the opposition. Surely, this is not what the Pakatan Rakyat is fighting for.

A political cyber war has started in Malaysia. While we thought that the old would be at the mercy of the new in such a showdown, it is time to realise that, in truth, the more desperate and more immoral has the edge.

The Way Foward For Malaysian Politics

IN THE wake of the recent General Elections in Malaysia in March, Malaysians and foreigners alike are asking the questions: What now? And where will Malaysia head to?

Some have commented on the possibility of the Islamists in Malaysia growing more aggressive, after it became clear that the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party (PAS) had made huge gains in states like Kelantan and now has two states under its control. Speculation aside, it should be emphasised that the real winners in the recent elections were the Malaysian people, who managed to show that they were able to vote across racial and religious communitarian boundaries.

How and why did the Malaysian electorate vote the way they did, and what message were they trying to convey?

After a term in office, the Badawi administration had failed to deliver on many of the reform promises it made when it first came to power in 2004. The Malaysian public seems to have grown tired with the stream of promises of renewal and the creation of a citizen-based Malaysia for all, when it became clear that the Badawi administration was still being run along the lines of Malaysia’s old race-based politics.

The people’s vote of no confidence was not merely directed towards the Badawi government but also to the entire political system and political institutions of the country. So we have to look at how and where the governance model of Malaysia went wrong; and what were the factors that led to it being so radically rejected recently.

Malaysia’s social contract has been revised time and again, and perhaps the last great revision took place in the wake of the May 1969 racial clashes that followed in the wake of the May 1969 elections. During the ‘69 elections, the ruling coalition was dealt with a major blow as the Malaysian public voted for the opposition parties. Since then, successive Malaysian leaders and administrations have tried to fine-tune the Malaysian model of governance to create the much-touted “Malaysian model” of a multi-racial plural compromise system. This was reflected in the racial and ethnic make-up of the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN or National Front) itself, that was dominated by the Malay-Muslim Umno party that was in turn supported by its non-Malay-Muslim partners like the Malaysian Chinese Assembly (MCA) and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC).

For three decades, Malaysians were told that this was the only system that could work that would reflect the diversity and racial mix of Malaysia. Yet two steady streams of development worked against each other to erode the appeal of this model: The first was the rise of the ethno-nationalist forces in the ruling Umno party itself. Since 1969 to the 1990s, the Umno party slowly but moved even further to the right of the political spectrum with the rise of more and more ethnic and religiously-minded communitarian leaders. The Islamisation race between Umno and PAS during the 1980s and 1990s did little to inculcate the universal values of Islam into the politics and daily life of Malaysians, but did more to up the stakes in the political contest between Umno and PAS instead. During that time, the leaders of both parties were keen to demonstrate their commitment to Islam and Malay-Muslim concerns to an extent that many non-Malay-Muslim communities felt themselves marginalised.

Over the past few years, the pitch and tenor of the Islamisation contest has been raised even further, as has the communitarian language of Umno. With senior Umno leaders constantly harping on the rights and special status of the Malays, the dream of a plural Malaysia seemed to fade into the distance.

The second factor that eroded the appeal of the BN model was the changing nature of Malaysian society itself post-1969. While the leaders of Umno and the BN coalition parties continued to operate according to the logic of race-relations and racial compartmentalisation, they seemed to overlook the fact that Malaysian society was transforming itself: New urban constituencies emerged in the cosmopolitan urban settlements all over West Malaysia, ranging from urban Malay-Muslim youth who were less interested in Islam or notions of cultural supremacy to new non-Malay youth who were more attracted to the possibility of reinventing their identities and places in society.

This, then, is the way forward for Malaysia, though it has to be noted that the new Malaysian politics that is being invented has to take into account the manifold paths that Malaysia could – but didn’t – take in its recent past. It is for that reason that drawing the future road-map for Malaysia would involve a revisiting of its history as well, for that chequered history tells us as much about what Malaysians should not do as well as what they should.