Free yourself from your mental prison

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Jun 2, 2009

By Sim Kwang Yang (Hornbill Unleashed)

For many decades in the past, many Malaysians gave up dreaming because they saw no alternatives to the status quo; they felt completely powerless, overwhelmed, and without hope, in the face of sheer naked power flaunted by the Barisan Nasional.

Whenever I floated the possibility of an alternative government in Malaysia one-day, voters like that would sneer at me and asked me to “dream on”. Even many opposition supporters in Sarawak today think that BN will be in power in my home state for eternity, simply because the Sarawak BN is too powerful and too rich, and the people are simply too stupid and too easily bought.

But the political climate has changed.

I wrote a piece several days ago, suggesting that a Royal Commission of Enquiry be set up to investigate into the Port Klang Free Zone scandal. Several readers posted their comments, asking rhetorical questions like, “what is the point of setting up a royal commission of enquiry when so many in the past had not yielded results?’

This kind of questions betrays a defeatist attitude among many Malaysians. For many decades in the past, many Malaysians gave up dreaming because they saw no alternatives to the status quo; they felt completely powerless, overwhelmed, and without hope, in the face of sheer naked power flaunted by the Barisan Nasional.

I remember that in the 1980s and in the 1990s, the opposition leader used to call on the government to form Royal Commission of Enquiry on one scandal or another during many parliament sessions. He shouted himself hoarse, and none was established.

But the political climate has changed. We have had two such Commissions, one to investigate the police, and the other to investigate the Lingam Tape. They may not bring us the results that we want, in bringing full reform to the judiciary and the police, but they were not completely useless. They made revelations and recommendations that open up possibilities for the future. Above all, they put the heat on two institutions which were hitherto untouchable.

To develop our infant – and often infantile – democracy, we need to improve our political institutions. Any Royal commission of Enquiry are such an institution. We must put pressure on our government to establish such a Commission as a matter of habit and a parliamentary convention.

People who are too ready to ask a question such as “what is the use of X?”, or “what is the point of Y?” have to exorcise this question from the mental vocabulary if they want to help reform to our deformed political system.

They are too easily disappointed and de-motivated by temporary setbacks and stumbling blocks of the moment. They surrender too easily. They perhaps do not dare to dream, in the manner that Martin Luther King dared to dream.