Perak Coup was achieved by a congruence of forces – the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional coalition,civil servants and Police, all bending the semblance of law to breaking point.
Black Thursday in Ipoh
Sim Kwang Yang
May 9, 2009
When the Pakistan prime minister announced his government’s decision to go after the Talibans in the Swat Valley, he said it was to restore the “honour of the Motherland!” Honour, in one form or another, is one of the highest and most universal virtues held dear by many cultures.
We may not condone the sort of “honour killing” practised by some tribesmen in Pakistan. The ritual suicide of Japanese samurai warriors called ‘sepuku’ in defence of their personal honour may also sound extreme. But we still say, “There is honour even among thieves.”
We call our elected representative ‘The Right Honourable’, or ‘Yang Berhormat’, precisely because politics ought to be an honourable profession. Unfortunately, throughout the whole world, many politicians have prostituted their honour for personal gain and power – they are worse than thieves.
On May 7, honour in Malaysian politics was assassinated and buried by a bunch of people worse than thieves. The six-hour theatrical fiasco inside and outside the Perak state legislature has been variously described as “chaos”, “bedlam”, “mayhem” and “shambolic”.
In my ripe old age, and with my decades of active political participation and commentary in the media, I have never seen anything close to the murder of honour in Malaysian politics like what happened in Ipoh. Not even the infamous Operation Lallang can come close to the public display of the breakdown of rule of law and parliamentary democracy. Finally, new Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has outdone Dr Mahathir Mohamad in the usurpation of the people’s sovereign will.
Election of new speaker dubious
Calling it a coup d’etat in his article on the blog, Hornbill Unleashed, blogger Pak Bui has this to impart to us all: “American hawk Edward Luttwak wrote in ‘Coup d’État: a Practical Handbook’, that ‘a coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control over the remainder.’”
A coup is usually initiated by the military to overthrow a legitimate government. Remember when the Fiji military armed to the teeth marching into Parliament and put the lawmakers under arrest, thereby taking power from the politicians? Military coups are a rarity in these days. In Perak, it was achieved by more subtle means, through a congruence of forces – the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional coalition, the civil servants and the police, all bending the semblance of law to breaking point.
Looking at the picture, one can be forgiven in thinking that the Perak august house of legislature has turned into royal rumble on the World Wrestling Federation circuit!
The forcible removal of the House speaker by unidentified goons is a sight that is as macabre as it is surreal. We have finally achieved the dubious distinction of overtaking Taiwan as a country with gang-like behaviour in the legislative assembly.
By parliamentary conventions that are observed in most Commonwealth countries, the grounds of the legislature is a sovereign refuge from which government administration agencies like the police cannot invade unless upon invitation by the speaker. This convention has arisen from that time-honoured and almost sacrosanct doctrine of separation of powers between the three branches of government.
In the legislature, the House has its own sergeant-at-arms to enforce the decisions of the speaker and the whole House. This is the way of the legislature policing itself without the interference of the police.
To witness unidentified goons, speculated to be police personnel, carting away the speaker is to see the death of honour for parliamentary democracy in Malaysia.
Knowing something of parliamentary practices and House standing orders, I doubt the proceedings on May 7 in the Perak legislature is in accordance with the laws and the federal constitution. The election of the new speaker is dubious. The action of deputy speaker Hee Foong Yit in summarily usurping the power of the original speaker is entirely unlawful.
That much-maligned defector has once again played a critical role at the critical time. On the Internet and in private conversation, her name has been made synonymous with some of the most obscene words imaginable. It might be sexism at work, but some will argue that in this exceptional case, the vilification may be well-deserved.
Thanks to her, the picture of her tearing up one-ringgit bills or pointing what appeared to be a pepper spray at a fellow assemblyperson has come to be the most defining image of the entire circus on Black Thursday in Perak.
Police dragged into imbroglio
The biggest casualty of Black Thursday has to be the Royal Malaysian Police. Their demeanor in the discharge of their duty soils the image of the royal throne. I suppose one could argue that they have to take orders from their political masters. Being a federal agency, they do have to obey the demand of the federal cabinet and the new home minister. If the politicians drag them into playing a partisan role against the opposition coalition, then the fault lies in the UMNO politicians, and not the police.
But the enthusiasm with which the police went about arresting 120 people in the past three days or so does show a clear lack of professionalism. They arrested Wong Chin Fatt on very shaky ground. They arrested people attending peaceful candlelight vigil outside the Brickfields police station where Wong was held captive. To top absurdity upon absurdities, they arrested five lawyers who went to offer legal aid for those who were detained.
In Ipoh, within and outside the 500-metre limit of the Perak state legislature, they charged at strawmen like a bull in a China shop. They arrested 10 elected representatives like common criminals, handcuffs and all. They arrested people for wearing black. They arrested people for having breakfast, and for hanging around like my 69-year-old friend Bernard Khoo. Who would they NOT be arrested next?
One of the most cherished freedoms of a citizen in a free democratic country is the security and freedom of the person. It is the duty of the state within the ambit of that Social Contract (that of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau) to protect, preserve, and promote the personal liberty of its citizens. The unreasonable deprivation of that sacrosanct personal liberty, even for an hour, is a moral crime against the collective humanity of the citizens.
In a civil society, all forms of violence are outlawed, leaving the military and the police personnel to monopolise the right to violent means in enforcing the laws. When the laws are unjust, and when the police are overzealous in exercising their power in depriving peaceful citizens of their personal freedom, the moral legitimacy of the state and the police will deteriorate in the hearts of the people.
BN’s ‘ugly daughter-in-law’
Right now, the national attention is firmly fixated on Perak. The continuing battles in various courts between the belligerent parties will make sure of that. Malaysians are generally a meek lot. Apart from the activists and the bloggers, they may not rush to the streets of Ipoh to display their displeasure. They just watch events unfold with their cold eyes, making their own judgement in the silence of their hearts, waiting for their time of reckoning to come.
Again, the only honourable way of resolving this crisis in Perak is to hold a state general election, to settle the issue once for all. But that is what the puppet BN government in Perak will not do, for fear of a washout at the polls.
There is an old Chinese saying, “An ugly daughter-in-law will have to meet her husband’s father one day”. (In the old days in China, when marriages were arranged by parents with the help of a match-maker, the groom’s father may not see her daughter-in-law right up to the time of the wedding day when the bride’s face would be veiled the entire time. But a face-to-face meeting is inevitable after the wedding.)
The ugly illegitimate BN state government will have to face the Perak voters eventually – sooner rather than later. The ugliness of the loss of honour in Ipoh on May 7 may in fact drag down the BN coalition in the next general election. We can get an inkling of the voters’ sentiment in the Penanti by-election.
SIM KWANG YANG was MP for Bandar Kuching between 1982 and 1995. He can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com.
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