http://miscpage.blogsome.com/2006/09/27/salleh-abas-gives-five-reasons-to-reopen-case/

http://miscpage.blogsome.com/2006/09/27/dr-m-yes-i-told-salleh-to-go/

http://miscpage.blogsome.com/2006/09/27/nazri-says-there-is-no-case-for-review/

If you have access to an academic library, try to get your hands on a book by Harold Crouch titled “Government and Society in Malaysia”. It gives an excellent account of the whole constitutional crisis of 1987-88.

From my possibly unreliable memory, the story in brief is as follows.

It started with the UMNO (that’s the dominant party in our ruling coalition) elections in 1987. The then Prime Minister was challenged for the presidency (the mandate of Malaysia’s PM derives from this position). On the ground, it seemed that the challenger had won. But officially, it was announced that the PM had won. A lawsuit was filed by the loser’s supporters to challenge the validity of the elections on the basis that several unregistered branches had sent delegates to vote.

Instead of focussing on the issue of validity of elections, the Judge dismissed the suit and declared UMNO as an unlawful society because of those unregistered branches. That judge has since gone on record to say that his hand was forced.

The former PM likes to use the deregistration of the old UMNO as an example of the existence of an independent judiciary. The fact is (as most laypeople don’t realise), the deregistration was to his benefit because if the election had been invalidated, it was uncertain whether or not he could win in a fresh election.

He then took the opportunity to form a new UMNO, purged of the dissenters.

While that was happening, the Supreme Court had been actively hearing other suits that resulted in declaring some Government actions invalid. It overturned the ban on certain publications and the arbitrary revocation of a journalist’s work permit.

The Government then introduced sweeping bills to Parliament which would have severely curtail the judiciary’s powers.

The Lord President of the Supreme Court, Tun Salleh Abbas convened a meeting with his brother judges and they sent a private protest letter to the King (malaysia is a constitutional monarchy).

The PM then accused the Lord President of misconduct and set up a tribunal to consider suspension of the LP. THe LP filed a suit to challenge the validity of the tribunal, which entitled him to seek an injunction to halt the tribunal’s proceedings until his suit was head in court.

Five supreme court judges convened an emergency hearing and granted the LP his injunction. The five were suspended by the government.

The tribunal proceeded (without a judicial enquiry into the illegality of its set-up) and the LP was sacked from office.

And it was all downhill from there. You’d be hard pressed to find any judgement thereafter that wasnt in favour of the government.

Sorry Minishorts, if this is going off tangent. I think ppl ought to know though, this particular aspect of our country’s political history, before they form opinions on things like freedom of speech.

The Judiciary is technically the place to seek redress against an unjust law, on the basis of being against constitutional rights. BUt you need a judiciary willing to hear you, with integrity intact.

To Minishorts, I apologize for continuing this debate, but appreciate your patience. I have a great deal of interest in comparative legal systems due to my current status as a law student.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the original context of the ISA. It (and its predecessor, the Emergency Regulations) wasn’t meant nor drafted to be used the way that it has since been. It was a response to the communist insurgency. The British draftsman who wrote it has come out time and again to put that on record. Tunku Abdul Rahman (Jeff, that’s our first Prime Minister) confirmed that many times over.

Moving on. As any political science student can tell you, the system we have in Malaysia is a democracy simply because of the exisitence of the eligibility to vote. The question then, is, what kind of democracy? But because philosophically there are too many accepted forms of democracy for us to properly discuss and understand outside of an academic forum, this is all I’ll say – tying censorship to just “democracy” without understanding the concept of “separation of powers” is simplistic and inaccurately skews the argument.

Separation of powers is vital in any form of democratic systems. The theory is – the state is separated into three branches – executive (that’s our Cabinet and PM), legislature (that’s Parliament) and the judiciary. Theoretically, the existence of one is to balance and check the powers of the other branches.

As Minishorts says. It’s not so much a problem with the system. Theoretically our system of government does consist of the three branches. The problem is, the people (one person in particular) in the system destroyed the checks and balances by severely curtailing the powers of the other branches.

Theoretically, it’s the Legislature that passes the laws. The Executive, through its policies that are executed by its agencies, put those laws into force. If those laws turn out to be oppresive, technically, the Man-on-the-Street’s remedy is to seek redress from the Judiciary, or to organise themselves and lobby the Executive through its representatives in Parliament.

The system is there. How it works depends largely on the people in positions of power in those institutions.

As Jeff from LA said –

When you have a government that can control speech, they can also control who gets elected and who runs things and make sure that things do not change over time or that they do not lose power. Now that doesn’t mean that free speech is a perfect cure. Unfortunately, in America, we have seen that arrogant and corrupt politicians have the opportunity to get into power. However, because we have free speech, we at least have a better chance to understand how bad the problem is and hopefully will do our part to fix it.

Exactly. They have free speech because their judiciary has remained relatively unfettered and their parliamentary equivalent, ie Congress, still retains the element of balance btwn political parties. This allows their media to operate in a much more satisfactory way than ours does (not saying that American media isn’t a governmental mouthpiece, but the point is that the alternative point of view is allowed to exist).

Given that our Parliament has no credible political balance, the only hope for a liberal media is to have a credible judiciary; to pin our hopes on the Rule of Law. Unfortunately, we no longer have that either. Because a small number of people in the top echelons of power have messed with the system, to make it their own.

Most Malaysians, particularly those under 35 don’t realise it, but the worst thing to happen that allowed the state of affairs to become this way, was the judicial crisis in 1988, when those judges were sacked. Not the crackdown on reformasi, not enforcement of the ISA.

Censorship could have been fought, in the courts of law. But with the Judiciary relatively compliant to the Executive’s wishes over the last 20 years, it’s no wonder we’re in the state we’re in.

With this endemic rot in the system, it’s no wonder that the people in power in the governmental agencies have also absorbed the immaturity of thought into their bones. Stupidity is contagious.

Result?

Things like this stupid banned-book list.

‘Stupidity is contagious’. Now that’s a tagline worth remembering.

managing anything at all (and i use this term loosely) is difficult as you have to deal with many different people with many different background, ideals and agendas. thus guidelines (which themselves are imperfect) are put in place.

back more towards the topic, book (media, etc) censorship should continue. what would be a good improvement though is more transparency. who decides on the censorship board? how do we know these individuals are trustworthy? by what standards are things judged upon? why is a publication being banned?

oh and proactiveness. dont lar until everytime jadi bubur before some action is taken…

How do you expect Malaysians to mature when there is no freedom to mature in the first place? We mature by gaining knowledge which we obtain through media sources like books, newspapers, television etc. If these are blocked/controlled we will only get a single point of view. We will never learn how to handle or process opposing views, and thus never mature.

You won’t know fire is hot until you actually experience it yourself. So if you’ve never handled fire before, you will not know how dangerous it is and probably hurt/kill yourself. However if you’ve experienced it, you’ll know how to manage it to your benefit.

Having the freedom is incredibly important if you wish to advance, holding it back for “safety” reasons is ultimately detrimental. Imagine if humans avoided fire just because it could burn them.

Stereotypically speaking, authority sets it up to try keep authority unwaveringly authoritative. Politicians and bureaucrats exploit and extrapolate from the traditional Asian values “respect your elders”, “respect your leaders”, and summarily, “respect hierarchy” to a governmental level, to bolster the security of their positions. Asians, if I may make more sweeping statements, know better than to want disproportionate power vested in the government (who are supposed to serve the people not vice versa), but what can you do when this hierarchy is rigidified by culture and history.

Ultimately, like minishorts said, it’s not the system, which is of lesser concern; it’s the who in the system, the agents of the system exploiting their powers. The folks in the censorship board censor what they want, and we know next to nothing of their methodology. They hide in a system apparently built to protect them — hey maybe it is the system! — but more to the point, it’s the irresponsibility that’s rife in the system.

There’s more to say, but I’m running out of steam and I’ve got work to do. Maybe later…