DECEMBER 11 — This year, Parliament passed three odious Bills that suppress our freedom of speech and provide for detention without trial, besides granting the government sweeping powers to declare security zones where our rights can be arbitrarily violated.
The Bills are amendments to the Sedition Act 1948 that increase penalties for the crime of sedition to a minimum three-year jail term, the Prevention of Terrorism Bill that allows terrorism suspects to be detained without trial for up to two years, and most recently, the National Security Council (NSC) Bill that allows the prime minister to declare an area a “security” zone for vague reasons of so-called “national security” where a curfew can be imposed and arrests and searches made without a warrant.
All three Bills were passed late at night, with the passage of the Sedition Act Amendments at 2.30am on April 10, the Prevention of Terrorism Bill at 2.25am on April 7 and the NSC Bill at 10.55pm on December 3.
The Opposition failed to stop the Bills as they were outnumbered by Barisan Nasional (BN), though they may have arguably managed to beat the Prevention of Terrorism Bill if they had turned up in full force as only 79 BN MPs voted for it, fewer than the total number of Opposition lawmakers.
In any case, civil society, Opposition politicians and middle-class Malaysians tried to speak up against those oppressive Bills, but to no avail. A slew of letters and press statements, and even a small rally by the Malaysian Bar against the Sedition Act, all failed to stop the passage of the Bills.
Barisan Nasional Backbenchers’ Club (BNBBC) chairman Tan Sri Shahrir Samad didn’t accept a memorandum by human rights activists. He just tossed the anti-NSC Bill memo back to Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan before walking off.
Some people say that the practice of democracy should be improved in Malaysia. Important legislation should be given enough time for debate and direct feedback from constituents should be obtained, instead of trying to bulldoze the Bills through in the dead of night.
However, I don’t believe that things would change even if somehow, more constituents gave their input on the proposed laws, or if the Opposition was given more time to peruse them. The government still went ahead with the Goods and Services Tax (GST), for example, even though Malaysians in general, including rural voters that form the backbone of support for BN, hated it.
The fact of a democracy is that the few hundred we elect into Parliament have all the powers to decide what laws the country should have.
They may have been elected based on certain manifestos (if any), but it’s difficult to know what stand a particular politician will take on all issues or how they would view a certain piece of legislation. And even then, politicians usually vote in Parliament based on party lines.
If it’s hard enough to know what a politician feels about abortion, for example, it’s even more difficult to identify a political party’s particular ideology. The philosophies of BN and Pakatan, with the exception of PAS that’s explicitly Islamist, don’t appear to differ significantly.
It’s all too easy to avoid doing things near an election that anger voters, like raising toll rates or imposing a burdensome tax, or even arresting a slew of people for the vague crime of sedition. Those measures would probably be taken years before the polls, by which time, voters would likely have forgotten all about them.
In the meantime, we’re subject to the whims of the 222 people we elect into Parliament. When they pass such oppressive laws like the Sedition Act amendments, the proposed Prevention of Terrorism Act, and the proposed NSC Act, we have no way of stopping them and we will suffer the effects for years, or even decades to come.
Changing the government in the next election won’t necessarily change anything. The new government could choose to retain the terrible laws that confer it such great powers.
As it is, even though the Opposition calls for the abolition of the Sedition Act, some MPs demand that it be used against their political enemies. This only shows that they don’t really want the law to be repealed; they just don’t want it to be used against them.
Ordinary Malaysians and activists, on the other hand, have resorted to opinion pieces and memos to express their outrage with bad laws. Mass demonstrations too, like the recent Bersih 4 protest that saw thousands rallying on the streets overnight, with plenty of selfies taken in a fun atmosphere of music and balloons.
Fighting for your rights isn’t a carnival.
When the British suffragettes fought for women’s right to vote, they used violent methods. They smashed windows of government offices and committed arson, with one such arson attack against an unfinished house that was being built for the Chancellor of the Exchequer whom the suffragettes hated.
They went on hunger strikes and were force fed by the authorities. One of them, Emily Davison, even threw herself in front of the King’s horse and died.
The suffragettes took such measures because talking didn’t work anymore.
The hundreds of letters to the editor and ranting Facebook posts on the Sedition Act or the NSC Bill are nothing more than the angry buzzing of bees to the powers that be.
How long more do we want to remain passive and rely on methods that we know won’t work? How many more letters do we want to write that will go viral on Facebook, but won’t change a thing in Parliament? How many more petitions do we want to create on the Internet that the government will only ignore?
Don’t we get it? They’re not listening to us anymore.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
