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Comment
Letter from Pulau Tikus |
| Bully nation UMNO IS CELEBRATING 50 years of its rule called "merdeka." What have they achieved? Let us be brutally frank. Since 1957 this country has become a corrupt bully, bloated with arrogance. We are so corrupt that even MPs have made false transport claims, some for more than RM10,000 a month. Involved in the scandal were six government MPs, five from PAS, three from Keadilan and one from the DAP. And these are the guys who love to be addressed as "yang berhormat" and even describe themselves as such on their service centre signboards. The corrupt keep their illegal gains, and if anyone exposes them he is charged in court under some police state law. And it gets worse and worse. Violence rules. Prisoners continue to be hanged, whipped on their naked bottoms till the skin comes off. Schools bully to death their weaker students, "ragging" continues and the sadism is chilling, brutal. It does not surprise us that a round table discussion with 85 teachers and school heads even proposed that school girls be caned. We bully those who have come here in search of work. We treat them as if these are still the days of the mui tsai (slave girls). The new immigrant mui tsai cleaning the house, paint, mow the lawn, cook, and nurse the small ones. Punishment includes a splash of boiling water. Foreign wives are not genuine but evil schemers and we make it difficult for them to live here with their husbands. According to Raja Petra Kamarudin UMNO has its own paramilitary unit called Gerak Gempur which patrols the streets and assaults anyone who dares put up opposition flags and posters. Armed RELA members, formed under The Essential (Ikatan Relawan Rakyat) Regulations 1966 (we pretend we are still allied with the British in a continuing war against the communists) stop and search persons, enter premises and make arrests as they please. So arrogant are petty officials that they even broke into the bedroom of a white Christian tourist couple and to demand their marriage certificate. They did not apologise. |
| And the treatment
of tourists who are not white is a disgrace. We have no sense of shame. Nobody apologies for wrong doing or resigns. Mediocrity prevails. Government appointees are those "whose only achievement is the ability to combine arrogance with incompetence" says Kam Raslan. How right he is, see the painful example of the Wetlands Foundation which lost the country 68 million. Loyal mediocrity is very costly. What is wrong? Puchong assemblyman Datuk Salim Othman also MPSJ councillor gives us the answer. The party's branch actions are beyond scrutiny. This in a nutshell is what is wrong with this country. UMNO runs the country and it can do no wrong. It is not the rule of law which prevails but the unchallengeable rule of UMNO. So those in power, even those low down in the hierarchy such as town councils occupy state land with impunity while ruthlessly demolishing squatter huts. Everyone who lays claim to some kind of authority throws his weight about. Take the case of Pua Chia Teng. The tailor was dragged out from his shop by the Klang Municipal Council officers for someone else's parking ticket offence. He was not only dragged but kicked. At the police station, he said he was only released after putting up RM 1,000 bail for having committed no offence. Everyone, even car park attendants, now sing the same Irving Berlin song: "Anything you can do I can do better." Someone has said, we're becoming a samseng nation. It should be corrected; we are a samseng nation National service "National service" should be scrapped. Since 2004 it has cost RM500 million every year to force boys and girls into camps for three months. For what purpose? What is it for? We really don't know. We already have the Boy Scouts, the Girl Guides, the St John's Ambulance Brigade, Outward Bound, plus the activities of religious bodies and on top of all that the Biro Tata Negara (National Civics Bureau), a governmental body to instil nationalism, whose 1980s song goes: " political power is what we are only left with one that will determine the fate of our nation wealth of this nation flows into the hands of others sons and daughters of the soil suffer in solace..." (loose translation by Dr Azly Rahman) We look in vain for a comprehensive official document explaining what it's all about but from what falls from the mouths of the UMNO rulers we gather the following: |
| * physical,
nation building, character building and community service. * military training without guns, patriotism, character building and community service. * allow youth of both sexes to integrate to encourage better understanding and mutual respect. * to bridge the cultural, racial and religious divide... * nation building - the creation of "bangsa Malaysia" or "Malaysian race." * fostering racial integration, patriotism and discipline, elimination of the culture of loose morals and gangsterism. * to make them aware of their responsibilities, stand on their own feet and learn what is good and what is bad. * to inculcate in Malaysian youth a sense of anti-imperialism as a pillar of nationalism So what are these unfortunates made to do? Wearing Lim Kok Wing uniforms they recite patriotic poems, they march, do unarmed combat, indulge in "water based activities," "high and low rope activities," as well as "creative sports." They do daily exercise of 40 minutes. They do marching competition, kayaking, rafting, obstacle course, abseiling the jungle in pitch darkness, taekwando, community service ( public facilities, neighbourliness, community work, environment) which includes painting fans at hospital and drawing murals, cleaning and painting hospital child care centre. Clearing rubbish in a kampong, painting chalets, cleaning up at waterfalls at Chemor. The academic Dr Azly Rahman warns that we should avoid being a spartan state. Our youth should not be subjected to a national service type of regiment but to a programme of creativity and problem-solving based on the latest principles of humanistic teaching and learning. There should be no 'one-size-fits-all' formula, such as the Malaysian national service formula, for the development of the mind of the youth... the national service is based on a half-baked philosophy of teaching and learning. The national service is based on the philosophy of anti-humanism, a philosophy governing the government's attempt to engineer the human mind.. When education is designed by those bent towards militarism, then we may evolve into a Sparta instead of an Athens, in the context of Ancient Greek history. Consider the training of a Spartan between 800 to 600 BC: Boys were taken from their mothers at the age of seven and put under control of the state. They live in barracks, where they were subjected to harsh disciplines to make them tough and given an education that stressed military training and obedience to authority. At twenty, Spartan males were enrolled in the army for regular military service (Spielvogel, 2005, p. 60) Unlike the Athenians who cultivate the mind through the arts and critical inquiry, the Spartans had a different attitude towards intellectual development in that: Spartan citizens were discouraged from pursuing philosophy, literature, the arts, and or any other subjects that might foster novel thoughts dangerous to the stability of the state. |
| The art of war and
ruling was the Spartan ideal. All other arts were frowned on (Spielvogel,
2005, pg. 61 .... Indoctrination is an enemy
of education. ....
The ultimate aim of education is, I believe, not to control the minds of
human beings but to liberate them from the shackles of ideological, supernaturalistic,
parochial, or regressive religious belief systems, but rather to move
beyond the sociology and politics of knowledge.
But let me give the final say to Raja Petra Kamarudin. You see, he writes, crabs walk sideways. All crabs do. Imagine a father crab trying to teach its baby how to walk straight. It is just not within a crab's nature to walk straight. And this is exactly what is happening in Malaysia today. When the father crab walks crooked, how can you expect the baby crab to walk straight? So, instead of a stint in the national service being able to change our youth, the national service instead becomes contaminated with the exact culture the government is trying to eradicate. The day the leaders walk straight, that would be the day the youth will follow suit. The Boonsom scandal I am glad to read that National House Buyers Association have called for an amendment to the National Land Code to prevent forgers from profiting from stolen land. According to the Association dozens of landowners have had their properties sold by forgers and cannot get them back. Police said that there were at least 85 such cases in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor alone. 16 cases of properties worth RM20 million came to the attention of the MCA. Forged identity cards were used to obtain duplicate title deeds and transfers done. Crooks are benefiting from the case of Adorna Properties SB against Boonsom Boonyanit which we highlighted in Issue 12 for Feb-Mar 2000. This decision astonished lawyers by its startling and unprecedented disregard of scores of cases decided on the same point of interpretation; it decided, against the leading cases, that the first transferee of stolen land was fully protected by law. For convenience of readers we give here a very brief summary of the Adorna-Boonsom case. A crook forged the signature of a lady living in Bangkok and transferred her land to a company called Adorna Properties Berhad. On discovering the fraud, the Thai woman sued Adorna for return of her land. The Court of Appeal, in a closely argued judgment, which took up 22 pages of the law report, held that the forged document conferred no title on Adorna. It dutifully followed seven high court and two supreme court (court of final appeal) decisions. |
Adorna appealed to the Federal Court (the renamed supreme court) and won. The judgment was an astonishing document. It gave no reasons for ignoring the decisions of nine courts which had adjudged that a forged document was a useless piece of paper and conferred no rights. Of the 14 pages of the typewritten judgment one was the title page, five pages recited the facts and the issues before the court, and three pages reproduced the relevant section of the National Land Code. Only three and half pages contained the reasoning of the court which finally said, "We therefore agree with the high court judge that on the facts of this case, even if the instrument of transfer was forged, the respondent nevertheless obtained an indefeasible title to the said lands". Contrary to the practice of our courts which build the law on judicial precedent, the careful analysis of the court of appeal which loyally followed decisions of the supreme court and high court were simply ignored. The leading text book writers quoted by the court of appeal were consigned to the scrap heap. Transport incompetence The KL getting RapidKL to "take over" (we use the term for lack of information) Penang's transport system is yet another reminder of the lack of democracy in this country. KL decides for Penang everything from buses to taxis. We recall that the elected Penang city council ran its buses and trams. Then, locals had a say. After Tengku Abdul Rahman abolished local council elections the bureaucrats took over. Sometimes one is inclined to think that the state and local administration in Penang is superfluous because a Dutchman running RapidKL will now sort out the mess that KL got us into. 
Abandoned bus stop, Tanjong BungahIndependent judges? CJ ticks off judges, report the newspapers. Sad is it not that once upon a time we used to think that judges were independent and equal adjudicators - the third arm of government. Sad is it not that the chief justice now talks to judges as if they were naughty schoolboys ruled by him. |
| Joke Police now sit in express buses to weed out reckless driving. Immigrants The other day a friend from Singapore had his car washed. At lunch he discovered that his wallet was missing and wondered where he had dropped it. When he collected his car he found his wallet, placed on the top of the dash board. He has abandoned his prejudice against immigrants because none of the Bangladesh workers at the car wash had touched his money. 200 (British) years old On March 25 2007 the police celebrated their 200th anniversary no, not the British police, but the Malaysian police force. It's amazing but many people here continue as if they are a continuation of British rule, as if independence never happened. Boleh land words * There will soon be 50 "cluster schools" - centres of excellence producing students with "global perspective. " * Go glocal, and become billionaires. Super efficient I was very impressed by a funeral service provided in Penang. No sooner had the old person died when the marquee was up and everything ready for visitors for the wake. The coffin arrived the next day for the service. The ceremonies over, the organisation immediately dismantled what they had put up and within 10 minutes they had cleaned up, chairs, cups and all, and left. Not a singple word was uttered, everything was done swiftly and with precision.# K L Chai |
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| _____________________ The Penang File Issue 52 |