Dumbos in Bar Council need to be less naive to match BN’s evil cunning
By Ismail Dahlan, Malaysia Chronicle
The Bar Council has called on its members to march to Parliament in protest against the ‘Peaceful Assembly Act’ tabled recently. That Bill was a crude attempt by BN to strip the Malaysian people of their right to assembly. It is certainly a positive that the Bar plans to protest against it.
Nevertheless, the Bar’s idea of presenting an alternative to the bill is an unacceptable mistake and it plays into the hands of the repressive BN. Surely there should have been at least one intelligent enough participant at the Bar’s meetings who could have pointed out that their action will only serve to help legitimize this draconian bill.
No such Bill is needed – so just say ‘NO’
In fact, there should be no such bill tabled by the BN, or presented by the Bar. The right of the people to free assembly is already clearly stated in Article 10 of the Constitution. What Najib should have done is to abolish those sections in the Police Act which in any way curtail that right.
Nor is there any room in Malaysia for the kind of co-operation that is the norm in Western countries. Giving notice in England or Finland is fine because you know the police need that notice so that they can help with traffic flow or to provide appropriate protection where applicable. In Malaysia however, giving notice to the police simply means giving them more time to find more ways to frustrate the people’s right.
Sad to say, the police here are wont to work with the BN by demonizing such protests in their controlled press, putting up inconvenient road-blocks all over the country to stop participants from attending the protest, infiltrating the protests with agent provocateurs and last but not least having partisan groups like Perkasa organize counter protests. Why give them notice when their intentions are so malignant?
Dumbos
It is a pity that the Bar, and surprisingly, many hardened opposition activists who should really know better, so quickly buy into this idea of a notice period when they should really know better. Instead of dismissing the very idea of a notice period, they have reduced themselves to haggling over its length!
The BN, in any event, is only involved in tabling these faux reform bills for the purpose of gaining some votes and Najib Razak is far from being a reformist. Uncivilized politics is the real order of the day for the BN. Witness this abuse of judicial process and prosecutorial powers that is the Anwar Ibrahim trial.
This trial represents the true face of the BN and of Najib Razak. They wish to cast into a dungeon the one man who by power of personality and intellect, holds together the coalition that now threatens the BN, Pakatan. They refuse him permits, trying to gag him and to limit the number of people exposed to his remarkable powers of oratory. The BN fears him and will therefore use any method, including misusing the nation’s laws, to imprison him. The Bar should march for that also, for are they not officers of the court, bound to defend any threats to its credibility.
Don’t reduce yourself
The BN is also being highly disrespectful to the Bar by assigning V.K.Liew, an unheard of deputy minister in the PM’s department to receive their memorandum. He appeared as a voice on NTV7 last night, unable to speak English. It should be Nazri Aziz, who tabled the bill, accompanied by the AG, who drafted it, who should be receiving them.
Malaysians cannot afford to voluntarily give up an inch, not one inch, of their rights, to the draconian mercies of the Barisan Nasional. We may consider such concessions when there is, in Malaysia, a free press, free and fair elections and when Institutions such as the Judiciary and the Police are independent of the Executive.
Until such time, the people cannot afford to be betrayed by organizations such as the Bar, even if it is only by weak analysis and by shallow thought and action.
