Rallying or Railing?

New words: Plainspoken, Erne, Lea, Cuckold, Busker, Spackle, Esparto, Mendacious, Frisson, Perchance, Sloop.

Foreword: As promised, here is the last of this weeks articles. Due to time constraints (I have been attending band practices so I may enter the annual Battle of the Bands competition... For the very last time), I will combine the two Bersih and Hindraf protests and others of the same ilk into a single article.

March of the Lawyers
A few months ago, lawyers took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur to demand justice. Consequently, hell froze over (but a quick injection of American-bought Saudi-fossil-fuel kick-started the soul torturing furnace once more).

This all boiled down to a very simple issue of judicial impartiality, or rather, lack of.

I don't need to state the seriousness of this issue. Without impartiality in the Judiciary, we are at the mercy of an unchecked and unbridled Executive. Until 1988, the Judiciary was among the most respectable institutions of its kind in the region.

Now, it is not only vulnerable, it is corruptible.

However, our good friend in Parliament, MP Nazri Aziz has saw fit to not only condemn the actions of the Bar, but to obfuscate its true purpose by claiming Opposition aping.

The true purpose of any rally is to show a united face, especially when facing an enemy whose position in power would prevent any other (legal) means of meaningful protest.

Bersih
Not all marches are altruistic in nature.

And so, we have the Opposition linked Bersih, which is calling for free and fair elections.

So they gather all these people to demand:

• Use of indelible ink in future elections;
• Clean-up of Registered Voters Roll;
• Abolition of postal votes;
• Access to the Government controlled print and broadcast media for Opposition Parties.

The first of their demands has been met. In truth, indelible ink as an issue was already non-existent (2nd June 2007) by the time the fine folks marched for it (10th November 2007).

The second demand, quite reasonable. But evidence of such acts have amounted to nothing more than rumours, wild claims, and speculation. Unless the Opposition acquires solid evidence (like the now infamous lawyer video), they won't be doing much except perhaps embarrassing themselves.

The third demand is ridiculous, plain and simple. If, as they claimed, the bosses of civil servants overseas would browbeat their subordinates to vote in a certain fashion, the Opposition should be making a claim of infringement of the Constitution.

They should be demanding a permanent solution to this problem that won't allow any government-paid civil servant to force his subordinates to essentially, vote to keep him in power.

Under Article 5 of the Malaysian Constitution,

No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty save in accordance with law.

Voting for the political party of your choice is a form of liberty. It can thus be argued, that a loss of free will in voting would amount to gross infringement of this clause in the Constitution.

And Article 6:

No person shall be held in slavery.

I admit, I may be pushing the clauses of the Constitution to the limit here, but as I recall, slaves weren't allowed to vote.

Every citizen deserves a right to vote. It should never be rescinded in such fashion. And because of the way the Opposition has put forth such argument, their motives are suspect to say the least.

Hindraf
Now we descend to the ludicrous. But ludicrous with a caveat.

So we got this group of ethnic Indians, see? Demanding in a nutshell, for the Queen of England and Great Britain, to appoint a Queen's Counsel, to sue Her Royal Highness, the Queen of England, for bringing indentured Indians into Malaysia.

Now, anyone would be quick to dismiss this as pure naivety. Who the hell would pay anyone to sue themselves? Particularly with the added claims of ethnic cleansing.

But who is reporting the news? The Malaysian media. And they aren't being very impartial about it.

• Three policemen wounded.
• Demonstrations turn violent.
• Temples damaged.

Okay. Firstly, you can never ever claim widespread violence if only THREE people have been hurt. What about the figures for the protesters?

The government even claims the violence began on the protesters side, forcing them to disperse the crowd with tear gas and water cannons. This may be true, however, the circumstances of the report on TV3 news would suggest government forces acted first, when they reported police forces were "forced" into using water cannons and tear gas to "disperse" the intransigent crowd.

Read between the lines, brothers and sisters.

And the temples in Batu Caves were not damaged.

Until I researched this story myself online, I did not even realise the amount of obfuscation employed by the government to gag the media and pull a fast one over the public.

However, my opinion still stands: Hindraf as an institution for justice in ludicrous.

It is borderline terrorist in its claims. Ethnic cleansing? Do they even know its definition?

What happened was simply a happy confluence of greed (Hindraf promised RM1mil settlements to every individual who signed up), ignorance, and frustration.

The two latter factors though, are the result of one man:
Sami Vellu.

He is the old man of politics, and therefore, has loss touch with the new generation of Indian voters.

Indians are like any people, they have diverse views on a myriad of subjects. Unfortunately, their views cannot be expressed as long as that man remains in power in the MIC.

Which is why we now see a general mushrooming of Indian based parties.

Racial politics is negative politics. It dilutes the strength of a community.

Racial politics coupled with differing ideologies further divides. Eventually, any form of power accumulated amounts to a teacup of salt collected from a jug of seawater.

This is the caveat. Frustration, not reason, brought the majority of Indians to march with Hindraf.

Without a genuine outlet to voice their concerns, which include education, religion, human rights, and such, people, not only Indians will gladly accept any opportunity to stick it to the man.

March To the Streets!
To resolve these so called "un-Malaysian" behaviour, one must first realise demonstrations are in our blood. The pre-independence marches for one brought about change in government.

Like it or not, the British colonial masters were legitimate leaders of then Malaya. Ah, the power of treaties...

So one could argue without pro-independence marches, and by going through the slow bureaucratic Colonial masters, we would still be working under the Union Jack today.

These are the permanent ways to resolve the issue of "illegal" gatherings as I see it:

• Education on the rights of citizens to march, how to march, and why people march;
• ACCEPTANCE by the government that democracy means Freedom of Expression;
• Maturity on the part of the citizens regarding the state of affairs of their respective communities. Do these people who claim to have been subjected to immense bias have ulterior motives to their actions?
• Maturity on the part of the people that at the end of the day, globalization will eventually bring racial politics to an end. We should not focus on differences in genealogy and skin tone. But in opinion.

Until then, enjoy your roti canais before they too become a source of political controversy.
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