The courage of his convictions

Today marks a milestone in Malaysian politics with the conviction of najib tun razak of all 7 charges in relation to the SRC corruption scandal. He was sentenced to 7 concurrent sentences for each offence, the longest being 12 years’ jailtime and a fine for RM210 million, a record-shattering quantum by Malaysian standards. Najib has of course appealed And his lawyers managed to obtain a stay of execution of his jail sentence pending the outcome of his appeals. 

The conclusion of najib’s case marks a milestone in Malaysian politics. Never before has a former prime minister been convicted of corruption in or out of office, for that matter. The razak family name has taken a terrible fall from grace, the scion of Malaysia’s second Prime Minister known widely as “mr establishment” himself has tested the judicial waters and it totally froze him out.

Najib still has legal avenue to appeal his 7 convictions and the appellate process will be yet another test of the Malaysian bench’s independence and virility as a force for good or well, not so good. In order to overturn his 7 convictions, najib’s lawyers must prove that the trial judge had erred in law or that fresh compelling and material evidence had emerged rendering their client’s convictions unsafe and unsatisfactory. 

One hopes that the days of Eusoff Chin sitting at the head of the bench and passing shocking, unwarranted appellate decisions are well and truly a thing of the past. Indeed, the new appellate bench almost comprising exclusively of female appellate judges could just be the refreshing change that this country needs. But we will see. 

For now, justice has been done and it has been seen to be done. And that is all that one can hope for. 

It is today the 06th Jan 2022 and as i write this, najib's appeal to the Court of Appeal has been dismissed a few months ago with the appellate judge calling him a "National Embarrassment" when najib pleaded "national interests" in his defence. Najib's next and final appeal is to the Federal Court and he has in the meantime obtained  a stay of execution of his conviction pending the hearing of his final appeal. 

Sex lies and videotape

Malaysians, it seems, never tire of the sexual peccadilloes of our politicians. The latest sleaze allegation comes from PKR's (the People's Justice Party's) Haziq Aziz, a hitherto obscure senior private secretary to the deputy Primary Industries Minister Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin. Haziq posted on facebook what sounded like a statutory declaration admitting to be the actor in a video of Haziq bedding down with an individual who is widely perceived to be no less than the Economic Affairs Minister himself, Dato' Seri Azmin Ali. The video, it seems, was recorded without Haziq's permission and has since gone viral but now Haziq says that he is willing to brief journalists and he further urged the Malaysian anti-corruption commission to investigate Azmin Ali.

I have a few issues with this.

Firstly, if the video footage was indeed taken without his (Haziq's) permission, shouldn't he (Haziq) be outraged and immediately lodge a police report against the perpetrators of this heinous invasion of his privacy under the Personal Data Protection Act?

Second, wouldn't the police be more interested to apprehend the culprits behind the viral video for propagating obscenity/pornography under the Film Censorship Act rather than pry into the private lives of individuals?

Third, why would Haziq jump to the conclusion that elements of corruption are actually at play here? If there are 2 consenting adults, a formal charge for "having carnal intercourse against the order of nature" under the Penal Code comes into mind, but what is there that reeks of corruption or the abuse of official position unless Haziq comes forth to say that he was sodomised against his free will?
But if not, wouldn't Haziq be an accomplice himself and hence be liable to be charged for the archaic offence of sodomy?

A hitch hiker’s guide to the Anti-ICERD rally

They had to rally and so rally they did! That the rally began with a bang but quickly fizzled out in under 3 hours no thanks to a slight drizzle was, as far as this spectator could tell, pre-ordained. Oh, it was nicely organised and the boys picked up after themselves which was very nice. But the rally was largely uninspied, insipid even.

Speaker after speaker, blow after blow, spoke of the same blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, the Malays ate under threat, the religion insulted, the “outsiders” are at the gates. This fortress mentality spoke of volumes of what was to come. But it didn’t inspire Much. It was the same tired old tale. Even zahid hamidi looked tired as he poured out his rhetorical best under a fevered (literally) brow. Hadi was as usual at his hypocritical best, shouting out historical juicy bits and dinosaur-era grandfather’s stories. Most of the speakers took on More form than substance but who could blame them? There weren’t much to harangue against except one’s old familiar demons of the DAP/they -threaten-us-old cloth. All cut out in an orderly fashion, of course. But yawnous, no doubt. If you came to this rally expecting something new and inspirational, sorry pal. The lukewarm crowd, the drizzly spell, maybe the overcast skies made it all seem so ... ORDINARY?

But bersyukurlah, at least it was peaceful. So they had to rally, and rally they did! Over and out, next.

Losing Papa

It's something like this. Like Joni Mitchell's 'Big Yellow Taxi' song, "...you never know what you've got till it's gone...".

We have lost our family head, guide and mentor last Tuesday, 24th July 2018. Sometimes i recall snippets of memories from the past with papa. When i was little he used to drive our old morris minor up to batu berendam to visit grandad and the car radio played stevie wonder's "You are the sunshine of my life" as i lay on the car looking at the fluffy clouds above, imagining cowboys and indians hiding behind them. And as granddad's house was situated right in front of the jelutong cemetary we would hear ghost stories as we played in the rubber plantation where we could still find wild tortoises and catch cat fish by hand. This was back in the 70s and it was gloriously fun and organic. Grandpa left us in the 80s and now papa has also gone. The feeling of emptiness is obvious, but in my case and papa's, we were especially close genetically as i was almost his mirror image and he liked what i liked, disliked what i disliked and we understood each other without having to explain.

It's almost like losing my own twin brother. But at the very least, papa has joined mum within a space of 10 months from her passing on and if there is such a thing as the after life, they would surely have reunited as a couple and are cherishing each other now as kindred spirits as they did in real life. Rest in peace, papa. I miss you lots.

A Very Malaysian Spring

"In the spring a young man's fancy lighly turns to love" - Lord Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall. 

Locksley hall is a poem written by Lord Alfred Tennyson in 1835 and published in 1842 centering on a young man's unrequited love.  It narrates in monologue the emotions of a rejected suitor who comes to his childhood home, the fictional Locksley Hall.

Like the protagonist's unrequited love, the demise of Barisan Nasional had been many years in the making, only its leaders failed to read the writing on the wall. They succumbed to the trap of ego/personality-worship at their own peril for far too long and for all the wrong, farcical reasons. 

To be true, UMNO the mainstay of Barisan still retains 54 seats in Parliament and will likely reform itself - as an Oppostion party - to stay relevant to the Malays who are still loyal to the party. The UMNO which was founded by Onn Ja'afar who ironically left the party he founded in disgust over its communalistic leanings, is now drifting into uncharted waters. Bereft of its source of government largess and now cast out into the political wilderness, UMNO is struggling to stay afloat.

 MCA and MIC will ponder their future in barisan with the same gloom as do all its other minor component parties, loyal to the wrong cause to the last. How long more will this misconceived loyalty subsist remains to be seen. Already some have abandoned ship.

But after the dust has settled, BN leaders will have conducted a post-mortem into what went so wrong with PRU-14. The answer has always been obvious. For UMNO, its leaders became so manifestly corrupt and inwards-looking that party elections were postponed well beyond the norm to prop up the corrupt. It became manifestly UNREPRESENTATIVE of the people that it professed to protect. Most of its candidates were above the age of 60, save for a token few paraded around proudly as the model of najib's "transformasi" which never was. MCA lacked an agenda for the Chinese community. MIC the same, its squabbles with the PPP over who held the leadership mantle for the Malaysian Indian community was the butt of jokes everywhere. 

Irrelevance equals to loss of support from their respective communities. Barisan ceramahs were empty, hollow reminders of the arrogance of its leaders, echoing the microphone of speakers who shouted to invisible audiences their messages of denial and defiance in the face of mounting evidence of wrongdoings and falling mostly on deaf ears. They were roundly rejected by the people but the resulting rout was not felt by its leaders until too late into the night of 9th May 2018.

Is this the end of communal politics in Malaysia?

Not quite but it seems that all roads lead to Bangsa Malaysia from hereon. The new government is still forming as i write this but all hopes are for a better tomorrow. That most of its leaders were ex-UMNO stalwarts anyway is an irony not lost on us. It will become apparent that unity over division, national interest over parochialism, love over hate, hope over fear will now finally be allowed to flourish,  perhaps even to prevail at long last.  The strong undercurrents of Malaysiana will make its presence felt more and more in our national life. It is now up to the new government to navigate the waters and bring the ship Malaysia to port safely. Our common destiny beckons.   

We have witnessed a most equatorial blossoming of our young democracy from the tyrannical rule of the corrupt into a multi-racial, multi-religious people's power which toppled najib's regime and ushered in hitherto undreamed of freedoms our forefathers wrote about when they crafted our Constitution. Long live freedom and long live Malaysia. Let us hope that, unlike Tennyson's young man, may our love be requitted and may we always be loved by our country.

Mum

when i was down

you picked me up

when i was up

you celebrated with me

when i was mad

you tried to understand why

when i was weak

you comforted me

when i suffered

you protected me

i love you Mum

i miss you Mum

nothing compares to you Mum

please forgive me for taking you for granted

i could cry me a river but you will never come back to me now

only my empty hands when it's too late

to realise that

i could never love you as much as you have loved me

Pride and Prejudice

It is difficult to overcome ancient prejudices in matters of race and culture but if one makes a conscious effort to disassociate one's mind from overly simplistic generalizations and avoid giving in to that temptation (because thinking is hard), it is rather doable. As philosophers ponder on whether laziness or fear is the biggest obstacle to human progress, in this alley at least, i believe intellectual laziness is the cause and effect of our innate prejudices. But wait, how about one's past bad experiences that reinforce one's prejudices against a certain race/culture? If say, a Chinese Landlord had a tough time with his defaulting Malay tenant or a Malay customer gets cheated by a Chinese towkay selling counterfeit goods/gets overcharged or an Indian man drunk on alcohol physically abuses his spouse/partner, do any of these experiences justify and should they reinforce our ever lurking prejudices and preconceptions? The answer is NO. 

One must always remain vigilant and alert but especially with focus on the INDIVIDUAL and not to give in to easily stereotype an individual belonging to a certain race to a group of misbehaving miscreants based on the color of their skin or their cultural association. 

In Malaysia we still have some ways to go before we graduate from merely tolerating each other into open arm acceptance and embrace of our racial and cultural differences. Some of us are already there but the rest of us still have some catching up to do. But if the truth matters to you, that little effort in objective thinking is well worth the sacrifice.