Comment When We Were Free

Once upon a time ONCE UPON A TIME,  we enjoyed a temporary freedom. We were relatively free. Colonialism had returned to reclaim their colony but a defiant anti-colonialism was in the air. The British voters had thrown out "We shall hold India by the sword" Churchill, and put Clement Atlee in his place. At Stalingrad, the Soviet Union had saved the world from Hitler. The British servicemen who came to replace the Japanese even sang Russian songs. The United Nations Charter meant a better world; it was the dawn of  a brighter future.. From the Japanese surrender until 1948 the press was free. You could publish any paper you liked, hold meetings anywhere, form associations and trade unions and meet without getting anyone's permission.  But, in 1948,  with the Internal Security Act, darkness fell over the land. Meetings of five or more, convened without police permission, were forbidden;  a registrar of societies supervised the registration and deregistration of societies; printing press laws controlled  publications; the identity card was introduced and you carried it like a dog its dog licence. When the Merdeka people took over they fine-tuned the police state that they had inherited. Education minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed  introduced the University and University Colleges Act forbidding students to take part in politics. A succeeding education minister, Anwar Ibrahim, continued this policy of preserving the innocence of the young. For half a century new generations have grown up in the climate of this  police state. A tightly controlled and  regulated existence distorts their attitudes and utterances like an infrasound. How else do we explain the habit of politicians rushing to the "authorities " to complain about their rivals, like kids reporting a  naughty schoolboy to the headmaster. Someone does not like another Chinese Town Hall in the Federal Territory and demands to know why the registrar of societies registered it. A politician alleges that a rival told the government a lie, and rushes to the police station to make a  report. They even want state governments to vet those they intend to honour, as if routine vetting by the CID and Special Branch is not good enough. This sickness has entered our blood stream like a malicious drug and it  infects all including those in the opposition who repeatedly call for the repeal of the ISA but rush to the police with their complaints. A culture of lawlessness, bullying, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and witch hunting is suffocating us. The EPF Board has the cheek to say that members may not withdraw their compulsory savings at 55; government servants deny citizens service simply because they do not like what they wear; posters up  in the courts regulate dress codes: a judge refuses to hear counsel because he does not like his hair cut; another orders a lady lawyer to remove her jacket to examine what she wears underneath; aw students may not examine the legal significance of the Anwar Ibrahim trials;  UMNO Youth sends the minister of education a list of "anti-government lecturers;" newspapers and magazines are devoid genuine opinion and debate; KL's City Hall "evaluates" scripts for theatre performance; in Ipoh, 30 unmarried non-Muslim couples are fined for holding hands. It is an ever-growing record of mindless oppression. And the latest is that the police nanny wants to protect us from ghosts. It  will not approve imports of reading material containing elements "calculated to entertain by frightening." Books that fall within the definitions of mystery, fables, mysticism,  fantasy (khayalan), occultism (khrafat) and superstition (tahyul) are not  suitable for reading by the public. However we are told that Harry Potter is benign. Will the libraries  be purged of their Mary Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe and other writers of the "undesirable". Subservience and  kowtowing is the norm. How else do you explain the comment of a DAP leader who, on the death of the despicable attorney-general Mohtar - who was nothing but a self-important hatchet man,  that his death was a "great loss to the nation"? The police state came also with the outmoded and barbaric whipping code of the British empire. So  infused are they by the barbaric British love of flogging, euphemistically called whipping,  that some NGOs have demanded that traffic offenders be whipped!

Fickle politicians ONE OF THE JOYS of travelling up the hill by the cable car was the gradual revealing of the boundaries  and contours of this unique island and its mainland. And, as if to give pause to the visitor's wonderment, the train stopped at 1,400 feet, transferring its passengers to another car to negotiate the last stretch, taking them higher and higher to the 2400 feet top, where breath-taking views await  them. But now it's all going to be changed.  Our politicians want a non-stop railway all the way up, and it must go faster. Remember those days when the politicians speeded up the train which caused a fire in the engine room? Everything must kow tow to the quicky tourist who wants a lightning look around before the next stop that his crowded package tour is taking him. One wonders what would happen to the slow moving trams of Zurich, the Penang look-alike cable cars of Davos and that quaint train edging its way up the Simla hills if we let loose our politicians on them They do not seem to care for what is precious and special about Penang. The latest silliness comes from the DAP  who want a square to be built on the Esplanade, "to save the grass" from thousands of trampling feet during big dos. Our politician never paused to ask himself, where is the grass that  will be saved?  They have already destroyed the historic bandstand on the sea front.  The Millenium project has further damaged the Esplande . What  next?#  Go to the top

Women's Centre for Change  34D Jones Road  Penang Counselling for women and children Telephone 228 0342 Website: www.wccpenang.org

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_____________________ The Penang File Issue  32