Justice Has a Price
History and unpaid dues that justice demanded and the critical importance of the resolution of the crisis in Sabah has come to a head. It cannot be avoided anymore. The price for justice has to be paid, but are people willing to pay it?
By batsman
The best image of justice that mankind can come up with is a blindfolded lady with a sharp sword on one hand and a balance on the other. The message that comes across is that justice does not care about the background or the influence that a person possesses and whether rich or poor, good or bad, justice is equally applicable to all. Well and fine.
Unfortunately, being blind, justice is easily subverted. This lesson every Malaysian knows too well, so even the image of justice is not perfect. It cannot be. My argument for a better understanding of the concept of justice is as follows.
Justice has a price. Sometimes, the price is small and people are willing to pay it to keep the image of themselves as decent, upright and good. Society benefits. Unfortunately on certain occasions, the price demanded is too high. Some people are no longer willing to pay the price. Why does such a situation come about?
Imagine an election where one candidate is clean and honest and the other is dirty and corrupt. The dirty candidate tries to bribe all the voters with goodies because he knows that if he gets elected, he can get back 100x his outlay of funds through corruption and outright theft. Later on, in the next elections, he does not even have to spend anything since he can now abuse his power and use public funds to bribe the voters.
In such a scenario, if the voters fall for the bribe, then justice is going to be very expensive indeed since most of the voters do not want to carry it. Only a few upright and decent citizens demand justice, but since it is now heaped upon their few shoulders, it will be extremely expensive and most likely some of them will pay an extremely expensive price to get justice done.
In the other case, the voters reject the bribes. The price for justice is now reduced because most of the voters now accept to carry it on their own shoulders. The load of getting justice done is spread out and the price that needs to be paid is also spread out, so most of the time people are still willing to pay the price because the load has been spread out.
The argument is clear – the more people accept to carry the load of justice on their shoulders, the lighter justice is for each and the price to be paid is also lighter for all.
The situation facing the PKR in Sabah unfortunately may come to a very sad and unpalatable possibility. This is because the buck of justice has been passed around and very few people wanted to carry it in the past or were too easily fooled to do it effectively. History and unpaid dues that justice demanded and the critical importance of the resolution of the crisis in Sabah has come to a head. It cannot be avoided anymore. The price for justice has to be paid, but are people willing to pay it? More importantly, each individual has to ask himself honestly whether he is willing to pay the price. To help you make this decision, let me explain more clearly what the “price” is.
Imagine a future scenario where after the 13th GE, PR has won 108 parliamentary seats and the Sabah PR representatives control at least 4 of these seats. The scenario is now somewhat similar to the scenario in Perak after the 12th GE only 1000x more critical because the fate of the Federal government lies in the hands of just a few elected representatives. Imagine the astronomical sums that will be promised to potential frogs.
I am not saying at all the Sabah PR representatives will turn. In fact just about anybody in the peninsula can also turn because of the astronomical sums promised, but with the fate of the nation at stake and possibly even total instability, violence and destruction, what price for justice are you willing to pay? Will you still recommend the suspension of the Sabah 12 based purely on an imaginary and speculative future possibility? How strong is your commitment to justice for these 12 unfortunate souls?
Would you blindly opt for justice, or would you now scrutinize the records and past behaviour of these 12 persons on the dock just to try and predict what they might do in future? As far as predictability is concerned, there is no way to be 100% sure, so we are back to the same question. What is the price for justice that you are willing to pay? How strong is your Faith?
It looks like our future is in the hands of the politicians even though the faith in DSAI seems to be a little weak at the moment. He has been accused of choosing the wrong candidates in the past and has admitted it. Will he now also make the wrong decision for the 13th GE as far as PKR is concerned?
Hopefully our protests, suggestions, ideas and complaints will guide him well, but hopefully too, our protests, suggestions, ideas and complaints are good, reasonable and decent ones and that each and everyone of us will be willing to carry the load of justice on our individual shoulders because I have no idea what the right decision is.
