Comment
Letter from Pulau Tikus
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Comment
Letter from Pulau Tikus |
Gilbert and Sullivan At the risk of repetition we discuss once more the escalating Perak affair. When three members of his political grouping hopped over to the other side, the Mentri Besar requested of the Sultan a dissolution of the state assembly. The Sultan turned it down. The state of Perak has a constitution of which Article 16(6) says - “If the Menteri Besar ceases to command the confidence of the majority of the members of the Legislative Assembly, then, unless at his request His Royal Highness dissolves the Legislative Assembly, he shall tender the resignation of the Executive Council.” In defiance of the law, the MB refused to resign. As Miss Ambiga Sreenevasan, president of the Bar Council has pointed out, he should have. His propagandists say the Sultan is a bad Sultan because he failed to heed the voice of the people which had spoken for a Pakatan Perak.. But, surely, ordinary decency demands that the MB who purports to uphold the rule of law should observe the constitution. To say as he does that the treachery of three members of the assembly is illegal and invalid contradicts his leader’s approval of party hopping. But he does not want to play by the game by his own Pakatan rules. What followed is nothing but a Gilbert and Sullivan romp with local costumes. Police reports are made (are they not, as is said, merely strong arm men of the government? ) and endless applications are made to court (are not the ‘judges’ after the amendment of the constitution in 1988 mere glorified clerks of the administration?) And it is promising to be a long exciting play. Even the Attorney-General wants a part. But is he not the legal adviser to the government? Pakatan is planning to bring in more “judges” to make sure there is “justice”. In the next Act , “judges” Nanki-Poo, Dish-Tush, Poo-Bah, Ko-Ko, Yum-Yun, Peep-Boh, Pitti-Sing and Katisha will be there, sitting in their glory to the chorus, “All hail great Judge!”. |
| The current slogan
for Pakatan seems to be: “Burn down the house
to roast the pig’. In these topsy-turvey times it is refreshing to hear Nik Aziz. When he rejected calls for PAS to field a candidate for the Penanti election, he said: One of the virtues of a good Muslim is to stick to an agreement and bad to create problems. The seat belongs to PKR and we must adhere to it ... keeping a promise is one of the teachings of Islam. Nik Aziz also criticised his son for criticising people ‘who provide misleading information’, never mind that that cost the son the election for youth chief post. Justice Someone has complained that because we have an UMNO man as chief justice we will not get justice. This grumbling has got things upside down. The fact is that since Tun Mahathir amended the constitution the judges have lost the judicial power which now resides in the administration. The result is that when someone talks about the the separation of powers he must realise that the separation now is only between parliament and the government. Government spokesmen are not muddle headed about the situation; they have said repeatedly that it is not the time to amend the constitution; none of them commit themselves to notions such as the rule of law or the independence of the judiciary. As for the performance of the post-Mahathir “judges”, examples: The Federal Court does not give a written judgment in a Perak case, so no one knows the reasons for the decision. A court of appeal of three judges in another Perak case says that one judge will write his reasons for their decision, promising to do it in a week. The other two remain silent and one can only guess that they remain so in the “headmaster” tradition of the post-Salleh Abbas era. And yet there are those who talk glibly about the collective wisdom of the judges in the face of the recent promotions of the “judges” of the Mahathir era. Among the politicians the only person with a memory is Syed Husin who says that we have no independent judiciary. May 13 The May 13 anniversary drew forth some calls for a trust and reconciliation commission or something like that. The danger is that this could serve as a diversion from the truth and provide a welcome camouflage for the real culprits already exposed by PAS and by Marina Yusof. It will be recalled that Marina was charged in court for sedition and the case dragged on for mention after mention for two long years when the prosecution finally dropped the case. Had it gone on, one can guess what damage the witnesses would have done. It should be remembered that the killings were in KL. Elsewhere, we witnessed calm and peace. In Kelantan , Trengganu it was peaceful and cars were travelling from Ipoh to Penang, Penang to Alor Star without fear. It definitely was not an ethnic war nor did it develop into one. |
| Penang Hill Railway The Public Works Department is going to “redevelop” the Penang Hill Railway. It will cost RM40 millions. This KL project comes out of the blue. No one asked for it. Penang Heritage Trust president, Dr Choong Sim Poey, has commented: “It makes no sense to say the main reason for changing the system is to allow passengers to reach the top of the hill quickly. Nobody takes the train up Penang Hill to get to the top in a hurry.” The delights that Penang offers to the visitor is the sun, the sea , the beaches, the ferry and the hill railway. One fears that KL might one day think that the ferry has to be speeded up. The government should go to Davos in Switzerland and see how a similar funicular railway is maintained and run instead of wasting funds on a badly maintained system. Whipping Caning is to be reintroduced in schools for fighting and bullying; higher penalties for Mat Rempit. We have learnt no lessons from the past; hanging has not reduced the drug cases in our courts, nor has hanging reduced such offences as murder. And yet the old record is played again and again for harsher penalties. Mission schools We learn that St Marks School, set up by the Anglican Church 124 years ago in Butterworth, will lose its field which the Mission has sold for “development”. If the land was originally given for a school and education or something like that, the selling for profit would smack of a breach of trust. Foreign churches appear not to care very much for their history in the East. A few years back the Pope sold huge tracts of land at Pulau Tikus which instead should have been preserved as a garden in memory of the Church’s work in the Far East. Tamils The fate of the Tamils in Sri Lanka is frightening. Once upon a time, there were two kingdoms on the island - one Tamil and the other Sinhalese. When the British colonised the land they made it one colony. After Independence there was an agreement for a government with two languages and two equal peoples. But that was never implemented simply because the Singhalese right wing chauvinists were against Tamil equality. Their youth leader once led a crowd to burn effigies of the judges, because they were Tamils. Denied equality, the Tamils then asked for autonomy, then took up arms. After a 26 years war they have been finally defeated, they face a dark future run by Sinhalese chauvinists. Reporting the Police state * Police activity seems to have increased with a record 160 arrests in three weeks. Offences include holding candle light vigils, DAP people preparing for a hunger strike, even lawyers who went to the police station to do legal aid, councillors, . |
| elected members of
the assembly,
those wearing black, those just hanging around, elected
assemblymen, those with “Altantuya cake”. Arrested included Mat Sabu
the PAS leader and the writer Wong Chin Huat for sedition.
Police even invaded a DAP dinner and searched the DAP
headquarters. Is it the PM flexing his muscles to show he is stronger
than the previous PM, or is it something else? * In the last few by-elections, the Election Commission spent less than RM3 millions. The police used more than RM31 millions. * Nice to read this story by Louis Lim: “Two young women stood in front of the Department of Justice (DoJ) in Plein Square, Den Haag, faces scowling and fists pumping. They were leading dozens of equally charged-up men, all waving the same banners and chanting the same slogans in Dutch. “The majestic Renaissance-inspired building stood rooted to its foundations, as if unfazed. Not one shutter moved, nor did anyone rush out to threaten police arrest”. We note: No tear gas, no police * The recently released Hindraf detainees were “terrorists” in 2007 when detained. * Politicians continue to run to Papa Police to make reports. The latest is MCA Youth complaining about someone advocating a One School policy. * To say to a lance coporal “All policemen are useless and stupid” cost a man a fine of RM600 under the Minor Offences Act, 1955 * Presumption of innocence. It is reported that the police now make those in their lock-ups wear lock-up uniforms. Water boarding In the Tokyo War Crimes Trials(1946-1948) several Japanese soldiers were convicted of carrying out waterboarding, then commonly called ‘the water cure’ on US and other allied prisoners. An American GI’s description of the torture fits well the present-day CIA technique: They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. ...They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water. When the Japanese invaded they used water torture. They would push the detainee down under water again ana again until he “confessed”. It did not matter if the victim drowned. The British police discontinued this practice but retained other forms of torture like the flying trapeze where the victim was hung from the ceiling and punched from wall to wall and the other was the ice treatment, stripping the prisoner naked and making him sit on a block of ice |
| Greed Abdul Hakim Bujang reports from Kuching that an excavator was torched and a religious officer beaten up by an angry crowd in protest against the excavation of graves belonging to family members to make way for a condominium and private hospital."This graveyard housed patriots like Haji Baki, and some have been here for many years, probably hundreds of years. There is other land for development, why don't they turn this into a memorial park and let these people here rest in peace?" he said. Malaysiakini has learnt that the cemetery is part of state land and was never officially declared a burial site. The Islamic Department had been told to vacate the land and make the necessary arrangement to relocate the graves to Samariang,. Gratitude We have a good way of expressing our gratitude to our PMs. We made Tun Mahathir adviser to Proton and now by making Tun Abdullah Badawi adviser to MAS and also to the National Corridor Development. Clearly, we are in the process of forming a unique national traditiion. Expense account The British MPs expense account scandal only shows how greed and dishonesty has gripped the West bringing about the downfall of Wall Street. But we should not shout for joy and excuse our shenanigans. The misdoings of the British MPs are only petty fogging misdemeanours; they have a long way to go before they can gain the skills of forming elites to siphon off the wealth of the country. Jawi It was exciting to find that a Chinese school in Sungei Patani is teaching students to read Jawi. Bad habits They are hill cutting again. This time it is Pulau Jerejak where it is happening. Hunger It was shocking to learn that three women in Klang aged 63, 44 ad 43 respectively who had committed suicide had not eaten for five days And it is reassuring to be told by the administration that Penang has no more “hardcore poor”.# The wages of poverty. Lawrence Summers of the World Bank once wrote "... the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that." His justification: "The measurement of the costs of health-impairing polluition depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. |
| From this point
of view a given amount of health-impairing pollution should
be done
in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country of the
lowest wages." * Perhaps this explains the recent dumping of toxic waste on the Ivory Coast. Lawrence Summers is now President Obama's top economic adviser. Quote Dato Seri Nazri’s no to anti-hopping law: “Freedom of association is more important than anything else.” So what about repealing the Societies Act which is a denial of freedom of association? * from "Capitalism in Wonderland" by Richard York, Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster (Monthly Review) Go to the top |
| Sea gardens  Developers, emboldened by lack of comment on their claim to 'private' beaches, are now building gardens right out of the sea Haven't they been warned that everything, from the beach stretching out to the sea, belongs to the state? And what if the public picnics in that garden?  The current fashion: no trees at roundabouts |
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www.lestariheritage.net for urban conservation |
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| _____________________ The Penang File Issue 66 |