Poetic Justice

The job of being a Prime Minister is an unenviable task. There is on the one hand the need to forge a national identity, which by itself can be rather challenging even if one attempts this in one’s own house. On the other, there is also for example the need to ensure that security and social order – sometimes premised on polarizing grounds – is maintained throughout the nation. Recent events illustrate that conundrum best with many now poking fun at the 1 Malaysia concept presented by the present Prime Minister.

By recent events, I am referring to the fiasco in the Dewan Undangan Negeri in Perak where the iconic image will forever be of the (former) Speaker Sivakumar being dragged out of the Dewan Undang Negeri and the arrest of the activist Wong Chin Huat.

So much has been said about the Perak fiasco, nay debacle, that there is really no point by boring one and all by going over old ground. Nevertheless,  this much needs to be said about the former, what is presently happening are mere symptoms of the real problem.

Presently, an elected representative is entitled to change his allegiance without qualification as the Courts opted, rather ironically if one really thinks about it, to uphold freedom of association as a fundamental constitutional right. No complaint can rightly be made about the right of a representative to change his allegiance.

However, the same cannot be said when the representative opts to change his allegiance without being legally compelled to seek a fresh mandate from his constitutency. It is this absence of such a legal impediment that is the root cause of the present problem in Perak.

As for Wong Chin Huat’s arrest pursuant to the so called sedition charge, keep in mind that the Sedition Act, 1948 is a pre-Merdeka legislation. Since 1957, each Malaysian citizen has the right to vote. By extension, as expanded elsewhere, we are constitutionally entitled to agitate for change so long as the same is done in a peaceful and civil manner.

However, lets not get too pedantic by focussing only on the legal arguments of the arrest, there is one particular fundamental question to consider – what is so seditious about calling fellow citizens to wear black?

It wasn’t too long ago, albeit in a nation removed a few times from us, when a frail looking gentleman with quaint-looking glasses called upon all Indians to weave and wear the khadi. When Gandhi made that particular call, it was made an India then governed by the British. Today, his actions are herald as an example as far as civil disobedience is concerned.

The apt question to ask is if it is a right or even acceptable for a citizen to exhibit civil disobedience through their apparel when their Government is made up of non-citizens, then shouldn’t it be similarly a right, if not more so, for a citizen to do so when the Government is made up of fellow citizens which they have elected?

No doubt, the caveat to this is that the same must be done in a peaceful and civil manner and it is significant to note that in Wong’s case, there was no evidence that he was calling for more than just civil disobedience. For that reason, it becomes all too easy to question the propriety of his arrest.

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