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Posted: 02 Jul 2011 04:55 PM PDT

The Bersih rally hasn't happened yet. Until the rally is carried out, no illegal activity has been performed yet.

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has come up with the justification. "If the Bersih T-shirt is related to an illegal activity, then wearing it is illegal," he said. Is that logical? What "illegal activity"? The Bersih rally hasn't happened yet. Until the rally is carried out, no illegal activity has been performed yet. So how could he declare it illegal? On that score, why should it be illegal to wear a Bersih T-shirt?

By Kee Thuan Chye, Malaysian Digest

WHAT is this country coming to? Many Malaysians are asking this question in view of the numerous actions taken by the police over the past week.

First, they arrested 30 Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) members, including MP for Sungai Siput Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj, and are now investigating them for resurrecting Communism and waging war against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. While on their way to a Bersih roadshow in Penang, they were arrested in Kepala Batas and found to have in their possession T-shirts bearing faces of Chin Peng and Rashid Maidin. They have been remanded for seven days.

Communism? That's crazy talk. The Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) is long dead and gone. Chin Peng and Rashid Maidin are geriatrics. The party disbanded in 1989 after signing a peace treaty with the Malaysian Government, and its members were allowed to reside in Malaysia if they chose to do so. After 22 years of its being defunct and virtually forgotten, why is Communism still a threat today?

And if it were – by some stretch of the imagination – are we to believe that this threat is manifest in these 30 PSM members among whom 14 are women, the oldest aged 64?

A friend of mine who was at the court in Penang when the 30 were brought in told me they were just "a motley crew" of people who didn't look like they would carry a stick to fight, much less wage war against the Agong. "When I saw that, my faith in the system hit rock-bottom," he said.

"And to see Jeyakumar in handcuffs was too much," he added. "He alone is worth many of our people in power put together. Top scorer in exams, a doctor, a man who has dedicated his life to helping poor people – he doesn't deserve this."

Like my friend, I too knew Jeyakumar while at school. He was one year my junior at the Penang Free School, and I remember him well as a thoughtful, gentle person. He was soft-spoken, cerebral, and humble despite his well-to-do background.

I find it hard to believe that someone like him would wage war against the Agong. Only someone stupid or deranged would consider doing that. He might be a socialist, but that's a far cry from being a Communist. Don't the police and the Government know the difference? To all intents and purposes, he is probably someone who transcends labels and merely cares for the poor.

And why remand him and the others for a week? The High Court has since upheld this decision and said it is correct. Justice Zamani A Rahim said the case was serious. "It involves the security of the country, of everyone – you and me and our children." These 30 people are so dangerous that they are a threat to us and our children?

Case number 2: Sasterawan Negara (National Laureate) A Samad Said was called in by the police and told he was being investigated for sedition because he had read part of a poem at the Bersih launch on June 19.

When has reading a poem been seditious? In any case, did it provoke an uprising afterwards?

Look at the poem. Can it threaten national security?

Unggun-bersih

Semakin lara kita didera bara –
kita laungkan juga pesan merdeka:
Demokrasi sebenderang mentari
sehasrat hajat semurni harga diri.

Lama resah kita – demokrasi luka;
lama duka kita – demokrasi lara.
Demokrasi yang angkuh, kita cemuhi;
suara bebas yang utuh, kita idami!

Dua abad lalu Sam Adams berseru
(di Boston dijirus teh ke laut biru):
Tak diperlu gempita sorak yang gebu,
diperlu hanya unggun api yang syahdu.

Kini menyalalah unggun sakti itu;
kini merebaklah nyala unggun itu.

Translation:

Cleansing Fire

Even as we are lashed by the sickening fire,
we still shout out the message of Merdeka:
Democracy as brilliant as the sun,
united in purpose as pure as self-worth.

Long have we been restless – democracy is wounded;
Long have we been sad – democracy is ill.
Democracy that is arrogant disgusts us;
We dream of a free voice that is full and strong!

Two centuries ago Sam Adams declared
(in Boston while tea was being poured into the blue sea):
No need for noisy, trivial cheering,
all that's needed is a serene bonfire.

Light now that magic fire;
illuminate to others the flame of that fire.

Samad Said was prompted to say to the media afterwards that instead of intimidating writers, the action the police had taken against him could spur fellow writers to use the power of literature to state their views openly.

Indeed, it is time for Malaysian writers to come forward and defend what is right. All those who have been conferred the Sasterawan Negara award, like Shahnon Ahmad, Abdullah Hussain, Muhammad Haji Salleh, Noordin Hassan, Anwar Ridhwan and the newly installed Kemala should use their pen to "menyala unggun sakti" and "merebak nyalanya".

Case number 3: More than a hundred people have been arrested for wearing Bersih T-shirts. Eight of them were among 14 people giving out the national flag at a wet market in Sungai Siput. All 14 were arrested.

But what is the offence? Which part of the law says it is an offence to wear Bersih T-shirts in public?

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has come up with the justification. "If the Bersih T-shirt is related to an illegal activity, then wearing it is illegal," he said. Is that logical? What "illegal activity"? The Bersih rally hasn't happened yet. Until the rally is carried out, no illegal activity has been performed yet. So how could he declare it illegal? On that score, why should it be illegal to wear a Bersih T-shirt?

As an analogy, if I were to express an intent to do something illegal, like smoking marijuana openly in public, but I haven't done it yet, would it make sense for the police to arrest me? If they should do so, the case would be thrown out of court straight away. Doesn't Hishammuddin, who is a lawyer himself, know that?

Case number 4: The police raided the Bersih secretariat and detained its staff members. According to Bersih, the cops did not produce a search warrant. They confiscated Bersih T-shirts, leaflets and other paraphernalia.

Why raid only the Bersih secretariat? Why not raid those of Perkasa and Umno Youth as well since they will also be holding rallies? And why did the cops not produce a search warrant but instead threaten to break open the gates?

Later that day, the announcement came from the Inspector-General of Police, Ismail Omar, that the police would not only arrest those wearing Bersih T-shirts but also those using any medium to promote the Bersih rally. "Not just T-shirts but shoes, cars, buses. If these are the tools used to encourage people to gather (illegally), this amounts to sedition," he said.

Shoes too? Sedition? For dressing as one likes? Aren't Malaysians allowed the freedom to dress as they like? Are there new laws that have come into place without our knowing?

Gopeng MP Lee Boon Chye was arrested for wearing a yellow T-shirt the next day. It did not even have "Bersih" printed on it, it was just a plain yellow collared T-shirt. The police told him he was arrested for illegal assembly as he was with three other people at a wet market. Two of them wore Bersih T-shirts and the third a white shirt. Ipoh OCPD Asst Comm Azisman Alias said, "The shirts are evidence that they are trying to get people to take part in the illegal rally." Is that all it takes?

What is happening to our beloved country? Is it all turning into a farce? Do we laugh or cry?

My friend in Penang was full of admiration for the 30 PSM members arrested in Kepala Batas. He said when they were marched out to face the music, they were not cowed by it. "I tell you, I never thought I would have lived to see this. Despite the situation they were in, they were shouting, 'Hidup rakyat! Hidup rakyat!'," he said. "I'll never be able to forget that."

Now the question is, will the rakyat be able to survive the power of the police? And also that of the State?

Veto the Bersih ban, Mr PM

Posted: 02 Jul 2011 08:31 AM PDT

The rights to freedom of expression and assembly are enshrined in our Federal Constitution, and embraced as essential fundamental divine rights of all peoples in all democratic nations of the world, and revered in the Charter of Human Rights of the United Nations, of which Malaysia has been a proud member since it gained its independence on 31 August 1957.

By Thomas Lee Seng Hock

The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih 2.0) has been declared an illegal organization effective 1 July 2011.

A statement issued by the Registrar of Societies (ROS) says that the declaration was made by Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein under Section 5 of the Societies Act 1966.

According to the ROS statement, Bersih is not a registered organization.

The statement claims that Bersih has been actively creating confusion and causing anxiety among the people. It says that Bersih has been distributing handbills containing propaganda aimed at toppling the Barisan Nasional federal government.

The ROS statement says that Bersih has undermined the nation's sovereignty and disrupted the harmonious environment among the country's multi-racial population, and also caused disrepute to the country's image, and is a threat to public order, security, and economic development and prosperity.

Bersih had earlier announced plans to hold rallies in Kuala Lumpur, Sabah and Sarawak on 9 July to mobilize concerned citizens to demand for a clean, fair and transparent electoral process.

The Home Minister's unilateral decision to ban Bersih is certainly something any right-thinking and fair-minded believer in democracy and the rule of law will not be able to accept as just and constitutionally valid.

The Home Minister's action in declaring Bersih an illegal organization is a direct violation of the human, civil and constitutional rights of the country's citizens.

Human rights are the fundamental foundation upon which the total life, life-style and well-being of a human person is built and developed upon. Human rights ensure that the spiritual, moral, intellectual, emotional, physical, social and cultural aspects of an individual's existence is treated appropriately with value, dignity, honour, respect, and affection, and any violation of the basic human, civil and constitutional rights of any citizen of the nation should be regarded with contempt and condemnation.

Bersih, which means "clean" in Bahasa Malaysia, is not a subversive movement out to create a violent revolution to overthrow the government of the day. It is simply a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and certain political parties to seek and promote a legal reformation and transformation of the current very unsatisfactory and unacceptable electoral process in the country.

The allegations that Bersih is being funded by foreign sources, in particular by Christian interests, to destabilize the nation, and is a movement to bring about the resurgence of communism are uncalled for and unwarranted, and a real despicable attempt to create hatred and contempt among the various races. Those who made such allegations should be the one arrested and charged for sedition, not the Bersih advocates.

Bersih has specifically demanded that several changes be instituted for the present election laws and practices to ensure that elections are conducted in a fair, just and transparent manner.

Among the reforms Bersih proposed are (1) a complete and thorough cleaning of the electoral rolls to remove entries that are no longer valid such as names of dead persons, (2) all political parties and their candidates be allowed and provided with equal access to the print and broadcast media, (3) the campaign period be extended to allow all parties and their candidates more time to reach out to the people to promote and explain their views. (4) abolish postal voting in view of the high probability that it is easily abused and manipulated, and (5) using permanent ink to ensure that each voter may only vote once.

Such proposals are not unreasonable or impractical, and any government professing to practise democracy and rule of the laws should surely has no genuine ground to reject them.

And the promotion of a fair, just and transparent electoral process should not be considered a subversive plot to overthrow the government of the day. In fact, it is a joke to suggest that Bersih is out to grab political power by illegal means, especially the use of violence.

The mobilization of concerned citizens in a peaceful assembly to exercise their rights to seek changes for the betterment of the nation is surely not a sin, not indivisible to the pursuit of a holistic, righteous, fair, just and dignified nation-building process. It is the inherit divine right of a citizen to express his views vocally, visibly, and vividly, the government has no moral right to deprive and curb such rights.

The stated ultimate goal of Bersih is just the reformation of the nation's electoral process to ensure that the human, civil and constitutional rights of the legitimate citizens are protected and respected, and not any evil political agenda as insinuated by the mercenary spin writers of the main stream media (MSM), and certain former opposition politicians who had sold their souls, betrayed their constituents, and manoeuvred themselves into favoured and profitable positions in the establishment. Such despicable persons should be dismissed with scorn, and their views discharged with disbelief and disparagement.

Meanwhile, the police force should consider the fact that all forms of peaceful expression and assembly by the people should be respected and allowed to take place without any enforced restraint and forceful intervention by them. Bersih should be allowed to hold its civil rights assembly so long as no violence or chaotic disorder are intended.

The Bersih rally organizers have never attempted any incitement to riot and chaos, and the police should not take any unilateral action that may possibly cause confusion and provoke an unpredictable disorder with people scattering in various random direction. The police should not use canes, tear gas or water cannons on the crowd, but should provide proper crowd and traffic control to ensure that no untoward and adverse situation could develop. Any suspected trouble-maker should be stopped and detained, but no use of force should be made on the peaceful assembly.

The Bersih ban is surely a dark plot on the image of the nation, and I appeal to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdul Najib Razak to use his wisdom and good office to stop further damage to the country by vetoing the foolish action of the Home Minister, and also allow the peaceful assembly to take place as scheduled. If he does that, I will salute him for his statesmanship.

BN kept alive by defiled electoral roll

Posted: 02 Jul 2011 08:25 AM PDT

DANIEL JOHN JAMBUN

The BN has a strong reason to fear the coming Bersih rally. Never before has the BN been so frightened of a rally as this one, and for good reasons too.

The first reason is the fact that the electoral roll is actually very dirty, soiled and polluted with a lot of creative handiworks of the BN. And everybody knows this. Even the Election Commission admits it, or else why would it want to open its doors for talks with Bersih? The proofs of the election system being manipulated are many, and election fraud and irregularities are general knowledge in Malaysia.

Secondly, the 8-point list of demands by Bersih is causing the BN leaders to tremble because the prospect of having a clean electoral roll, a reformed postal ballot system, use of indelible ink, a minimum of 21 days campaign period, a free and fair access to media, a strengthened public institutions, a stoppage of corruption and dirty politics would cause the BN to spin out of control. BN knows it survives only through fraud and corruption. How ironic that the BN is now caught in its own trap; all these years it had been talking about clean administration, honesty, noble qualities, transparent governance and so forth, and out of the blue the masses are demanding exactly that, and it gets frightening because they have been lying and it is now caught with its pants down. BN knows it should be supporting Bersih, joining the rally in order to live up to its own claims. But no! The Bersih campaign is frightful because a clean and honest election system would spell the end of the BN rule. It would sound the death knell of half a century of license to bleed the people.

For BN the stakes are too high, and the mere thought of Putrajaya going into the hands of the opposition is dreadfully unthinkable. The BN is, therefore, now on a psywar, using every trick in the book to demonise Bersih, including the ridiculous tactic of planting communist materials to try give the movement a negative image. But how many people are buying the lie? The BN is doing it because it knows it is running the high risk of losing support if it uses force because which leader can forget how much BN lost because of the way the government handled the peaceful Hindraf rally prior to the 2008 general election? And yet let us not discount the possibility of an Ops Lalang type of crackdown before July 9.

In the meantime, some ridiculous rationales are being shoved down our throats at the moment. Datuk Herbert Timbun Lagadan is asking the opposition assemblymen and parliamentarians to resign if the election in which they won were dirty. Herbert's logic is inverted, it should be the other way round! It is the BN reps who should resign because they won through cheating and manipulations! The Deputy Prime Minister is saying if the elections were dirty how come the opposition managed to win so many more seats and PAS had managed to retain power in Kelantan for 21 years? This is another nonsense which seems logical, but is actually a mental manipulation! The fact is, dear Tan Sri, the opposition won all those states IN SPITE OF THE CHEATING by the BN. The fact is, the support for the opposition were so great in those areas that even excessive cheating and manipulations by BN couldn't overcome the opposition votes! Without the cheating, the opposition would have taken over Putrajaya since a long time ago! And this is what the BN is really frightened of.

Bags of postal votes found in Tebobon river just after the 2008 elections.

How can the BN say that the country's election process is clean and still keep a straight face, when we have so many instances of clear, daylight frauds even in the recent past? Have they forgotten about ballots boxes going astray? How about the ballot box for Bukit Bintang that turned out to be filled up with nothing but dry leaves?

Wikipedia reports that the allegedly subservient Election Commission had been involved in "gerrymandering, vote fraud, compliant media, misuse of government resources and massive vote buying [which] gave the National Front or Barisan Nasional an unfair advantage…. its electoral roll has been suspect, because of the discovery that it contains nearly 9,000 people aged more than 100. This raised suspicions that the books are contaminated with dead voters which leaves the election vulnerable to fraud. Further discoveries of people who have been born in the same year possessing different identity cards (IC) and living in many different localities, were uncovered by Malaysians for Free and Fair Elections (Mafrel). These people are registered to vote in various places throughout the country. These issues led to questions regarding the fairness of the elections. It was also highlighted by the Opposition that certain postal voters were issued with two ballot sheets…. Activists from BERSIH say each ballot was also attached to a letter identifying the voter along with the voting slip serial number, so it would be easy to trace who voted for the opposition. Electoral reform activists said that a number of seats that the opposition could win could be decided by postal votes and that those casting postal votes do not have the freedom to choose the candidate they want. Human Rights Watch, which had been monitoring the election process, stated that government restraints on expression, assembly and access to state media would deny Malaysians a fair vote. Calling the electoral process "grossly unfair", Human Rights Watch called on the government to address concerns with fraud in the electoral rolls, and to provide opposition parties access to state media."

They have been cases of votes counted not tallying with the available votes. The case for the polling centre of Siong Tengah in Tamin is a perfect example. The polling centre had 236 registered voters, and on counting, the BN candidate garnered 251 voters while the PKR candidate received 53, giving a total vote of 304, which was 68 more than the registered voters. If it was true that there was a turnout of 73% of voters, as the Election Commissions announced, there should have only been 172 voters that day! This was a clear case in which phantom voters played a part and this is not an isolated case.

And note that the recent Sarawak state general election was considered the toughest ever for the BN because of only one thing – the sentiments against the BN was so strong that they BN was forced to spend a reported RM1.5 billion and during the election campaign the whole of Sarawak ran out of beer and stout! The longhouse residents had merrymakings the likes of which they had never seen before, with free food and drinks – and cash. The sad thing about the whole affair was that the RM10,000 cheques issued as enticement to the Penghulus bounced at the banks after the elections and were recollected!

During election campaigns we see a sudden rise in government project allocations and announcements, a slew of handouts in the forms of water tanks, zinc sheets, scholarships for students, hampers for the poor and senior citizens, etc. which are clear cases of political corruption. There would be loads of buses of phantom voters from outside the district. There is also that famous trick of someone turning the electricity off during vote counting, and in the darkness, the vote-count trays are switched and the voting slips 'automatically' multiply like runaway virus. Or at the last minute another sack of 'forgotten' postal votes, which cannot be verified, are brought in!

It is unfortunate that many people have forgotten that in July 2008, a high-security bag containing a sizable number of voting slips was discovered near the Tobobon river in the constituency of Sepangar. A similar case also happened in Tawau in 2004. These were highlighted in the newspapers, and reported to the police, but until now nothing has been heard about them again. It's no use resorting to the courts for remedy in cases of electoral injustices and abuse of electoral process because all know what the courts' decisions will be.

And who doesn't know about the intimidation and fear used in the campaigns, such as threatening parents about losing their children's scholarships and jobs? And what clean elections are we talking about when the government has absolute monopoly of the people's community halls (which should be for free use by every Malaysian), and the abuse of government machineries and vehicles? There has also been cases of armies arriving by the truckloads, or unnecessary roadblocks before or on polling day as ways to alarm the people into voting for the BN.

Fraud, manipulation, intimidation, vote buying, and all other sorts of criminal ways to win elections have been used by the BN. It is high time for such a rally planned by Bersih to be held to express our frustration, especially for Sabah which has become a breeding ground for phantom voters in the form of illegal immigrants who were purposefully given the ICs to vote. So clean electoral rolls, clean election process? My foot!

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Ahad, 3 Julai 2011

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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