Number of signatures to the petition as at 2pm today : 3,198
Target : 5,000.
Have you read the petition to His Majesty the Yang DiPertuan Agung to ask for the establishment of a Royal Commission to look into and stop the rot in the judiciary and to return the judiciary to the rakyat?
To read the draft petition in English, please click HERE.
The actual petition, complete with the language of protocol, can be viewed HERE.
To sign up in support of this petition, please send your name and i.c. number to :
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The title of this post is in fact that of a piece my friend, Helen Ang, wrote and sent to me this morning.
It appears below.
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Haris may be indefatigable but I’m not. I’ve just informed the malaysiakini editor that I’m taking a sabbatical. A catalyst for my decision was the disappointing response to this site’s Save the Judiciary petition.
While keeping the door open for me to drift back, Steven Gan was understanding and had a piece of advice for me. He suggested that I might want to “recalibrate” my expectations. I appreciate Steven’s careful choice of words, that he had not asked me to “lower” my expectations. He, more than anyone else, fully understands how Idealism is malaysiakini’s coin.
And I realize that I had unconsciously calibrated my expectations to Haris’ target of 5,000 signatures. An attainable goal, I’d thought, and reckoned that the converted being preached to in cyberspace could be counted on to sign up.
Malaysiakini had indirectly backed this petition through allowing me and KJ John a link in our columns as well making Amer Arshad’s a lead letter, also linked. Its news and editorial coverage favour a Royal Commission.
A slogan-writing competition in the newspapers (the parallel world to ours) can easily attract 50,000 entries where readers are quite prepared to fill their name and IC no. in the contest forms. It feels to me now like cyberspace is unreality. The real world is where Malaysians are keen on things like penning insipid slogans in the hopes of winning a refrigerator.
Doubtless, the state of the judiciary is of graver concern to lawyers than it is to those of us not in the legal fraternity. Nonetheless, it is one of the many troubles plaguing our country (the downslide in public healthcare being another) and an integral part of the big picture which is the ‘systemic corruption’.
Putting our name to the petition is one way of saying: ‘We, the public, want a stop put to this rot’.
Yet, what I see is Haris pleading and cajoling, prodding and scolding, and still the numbers are slow in coming. Mind you, clicking a mouse requires no one to really stick their neck out. Petitioners are not being asked to march on the street. If at this minimal level of effort there are so few takers, what more if greater or riskier involvement were to be demanded.
The rot is status quo; therefore wanting to reverse the situation is challenging the status quo; which means tilting at our entrenched system bound by the nexus of Power, Privilege and Patronage. I’m figuring we’re not Datuks and Tan Sris here, and neither is Haris. What we would then require is strength in numbers for leverage and that’s when the pundits get to talk about ‘critical mass’ and ‘tipping point’.
The inability to rally 5,000 people to commit indicates that this civil society initiative that Haris is spearheading has still got some way to go. His highly idealistic colleague Malik Imtiaz shared some views with me early this year: “At the end of the day, if enough people say something, the government has to listen.
“How many people have actually stood up? You get Charles Santiago and his crew … but at the end of the day, every civil society initiative that we see is 10 people, 20 people, then you get some 200 people turn up at some function somewhere and that’s it.”
The fewer persons there are sharing the load, the heavier the burden on the core twenty. Haris is one of those shouldering more than his fair share. I’d like to lend some insight, if I may and gleaned from my own exposure to the Malay milieu, on the high price I believe he’s paying.
Some stone-throwers accuse me of Islamophobia; of Haris it is “Si Murtad tu”. The ulamas walk out of the room when Haris steps in and refuse to sit at table with him. As for me, I’m confronted by the dreadfully pinched, cast-iron faces of Chinese who – ‘count-me-out’ – exclaim: “Why are you courting trouble by talking against Islam and Malays?”
I’m not bloody ‘against’, I’m ‘for’!
We … ought to be ‘for’ freedom of religion for Lina Joy, ‘for’ freedom of conscience and movement for Revathi, ‘for’ places of worship for all, ‘for’ access to justice for ones caught in the secular-syariah bind; and ‘for’ affirmative action to help poor Indians and anyone else who has fallen through the cracks.
We may sound like dissonant voices but aren’t we kites rising against the wind, not with it? Go with the flow here, and the way the wind blows is to the slough of despond.
As a non-Muslim, non-Malay, taking the above stance does not cost me as much as it does Haris Ibrahim. He is going much harder against the grain and I can well imagine the hostility he has to put up with from the narrow-minded crowd. I have an idea too of the thorns that lined the path which has led him to the People’s Parliament.
But if Haris and the small band of Muslims including SIS had not thrown their weight behind Article 11, the line drawn on the sand could have been interpreted to be even more adversarial. As it is, there was already painted the deliberately polarising picture of two demarcated ‘Us vs Them’ camps facing off. It wasn’t the non-Muslims picking a fight with Islam; the stymied coalition had really been a redoubt.
If we believe in something, we can try to do what we can meaningfully as individuals. Haris is an energetic organiser. But I’m taking time-out and a step back because I don’t wish for my writing to be a personal crusade and I really, really don’t want to turn into an insufferably earnest moralist.
Lina Joy has been a recurrent theme in my essays and finally in a Merdeka eve piece, I confessed that like Lina I could not get married. This disconcerting public revelation was laying bare a facet of my private life and possibly invading the privacy of my two Malay ex-boyfriends and their families.
Writing to persuade or writing for a cause is emotionally draining, and a terrible balancing act. My rationale had been to underscore the point that national politics have the potential to impact the most intimate areas of our lives, and that Lina – what she had tried so hard to do instead of bending to expediency – personally means a lot to me.
My ‘Leaving Joy behind’ article was wrenching to write and though it was cathartic, I’m coming around to believe that it also marked the point where I fell off the tightrope.
Haris is still hanging on but I’m saddened by what I can only describe as the (nothing short of) stony indifference on the larger part of the public to the petition. It’s not his, Haris’ petition; it’s the people’s petition.
But it’s also more than the sum of its parts. Isn’t the core of it about our willingness to each stand up and be counted?
Unless we’re George Soros who can afford to put his money where his mouth is, for the rest of us it’s a trade-off: idealism and activism balanced with making a decent living, or among the younger generation like Nat Tan and his girlfriend, idealism pitted against opportunity cost.
But when everybody prefers to just let somebody else get things done, the higher the cost will be on lone individuals; or exacting an unbearable price like on Namewee, the 24-year-old student rapper who did the MCA’s dirty job for that useless party.
Haris fortified me when he said he and his wife were braced for the consequences of his activism. His affairs are all in order should the authorities suddenly decide his being at large ain’t so hot.
I remember him saying too that Nelson Mandela spent 26 years in prison. If that’s his idea of reassurance, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But nowadays, I think there’s more to grieve about than there is cause for joy, especially for the majority of Malaysians who are neither well-off nor well-connected.
And I wonder if we can remain steely enough to make things better “for the sake of Malaysia” and whether more disillusioned idealists will be lost to the ‘real world’ because so few people care at all.
Reniv
October 14, 2007
“Action without vision is a nightmare.” …Japanese proverb
Vision without action is just a dream but with Vision & action and a whole damn lot of patience & persistence will land you in victory.
Don’t be like a basket of crabs, everyone for himself trying to get out eventually no one does just b’coz their crawl each other back in the basket! It’s prevalent in the Malaysian society today it takes time to change their mindset thru the 4th power (freedom of the press)
trashed
October 14, 2007
Newton’s Law of Motion I:
Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.
farida
October 14, 2007
Haris and Helen,
In my 59 years of life I’ve come to realise that very often the darkest hour is just before the dawn.
I think there is a divine hand in all this, Helen. What I read of Haris’ sharing that a penghulu had got a register for guests to sign the petition just thrilled me to bits. Balik Kampung has taken on a new and crucial dimension.
Just think! The rural landscape is being transformed, albeit slowly, but it is happening.
I have faith and mine is there to uphold yours, my sister, until such time you are ready to get into the arena again. Have a good sabbatical.
farida
Reniv
October 14, 2007
All these rot in the judiciary we have one man to blame,
Dr. Mahathir, This will be his legacy,i will tell you all in a story/analogy: There was this time in the jungle of Malaysia, where there was the King of monkeys who sat at the highest point of a huge tree and all the little monkeys were sitting below him and plucking fruits feeding themself. Each time the King of monkeys look down all activity will stop and all these little monkeys will froze and look up. It has been going for some time. DO U KNOW WHAT THE LITTLE MONKEY SAW WHEN THEY LOOK UP?
They all saw an Asshole! i hope Dr. Mahathir will come out and say. Yes, he mess up, am sorry let’s fix it!
yh
October 15, 2007
i am one of those who wouldnt even bother whos the MP or assemblyman in my constituency until recently. yes, the journey is long and ardous. i am sure she will come back stronger.
best wishes Helen.
Gan
October 15, 2007
Hi Helen,
I understand your disappointment, take your sabbatical, re-charge and things might look different upon your return.
As Farida has aptly put it “the darkest hour is just before the dawn.” – therefore, for all our sakes – I hope dawn is breaking through.
For the greater good of our future generations – we need people like you, Haris, MIS, Steven Gan, Siva and the many others who matters – please do NOT ever throw in the towel as all will be lost.
Take care ….
leithaisor
October 15, 2007
I think even the strongest amongst us must have faced a dark spell of despair. The evil that surrounds us is so pervasive.
I recall that even Mother Theresa had her moments when she had to contend with detractors and opponents.
But to ourselves we should be true.
It may seem as if there can never be change, never be progress, never be the end of all the wrong.
As for me, I shall try with whatever resources, opportunities and energy I have. My efforts may indeed be tiny, but that will not stop me from trying.
And there are many of us. Even puny ants can move hugh burdens when they strive as one.
As for Dr M, going just by his track record, I would not hope for even an admission of wrongdoing on his part, much less an apology.
But his intellect was and still is awesome. He may yet come to his senses and repent. Life-threatening occasions often drive home certain truths into the toughest and most hard-boiled ego-maniacs.
If so, I think he should be welcomed into the ranks with open arms – none of us are sinless, and if he truly is sorry for what he has done and is doing what he can sincerely to right the wrongs, then the door should be open to him.
So perhaps there remains the possibility that all his considerable might, knowledge and resources may yet be brought to bear in the fight for a better and more united Malaysia.
Helen Ang
October 15, 2007
Thanks all, for the comfort & encouragement, especially Farida because for a believer to help keep the space open for other beliefs or unbelief – like what Haris is doing – is going that extra mile. (I’m having a touch of Raya blues as this year I’m not celebrating compared to previous years, and yes, ‘balik kampung’ is a spirited affair, especially to Kota Bharu, a town I’ve happy memories of).
Incidentally, my cousin wrote some political plays and the themes he explored in the 80s and 90s are still painfully relevant to us today. They are: Kee Thuan Chye’s “1984 – Here and Now” which is structured on the Orwell classic, ‘The Big Purge’ published in 1988 & referencing Ops Lalang, while 1994’s ‘We could f*** you Mr Birch’ is analogous to the Sultans constitutional crisis.
animah
October 16, 2007
Helen,
Thank you for sharing. I know of many whose relationships have failed not through lack of love but because the laws in this country do not allow marriage between a Muslim and non Muslim.
I myself was in a long term relationship with a non Muslim and it ended because we could not take that ultimate step – marriage. We had explored various options – living overseas, me renouncing, him converting, but it meant that we would not have been true to our personal selves in doing so.
Now as I am older and a single mother, I would be quite happy to be in a relationship with a non Muslim without the need for marriage. But uh oh, there are still the double standard Muslim laws that hang over me.
You are right about those who dare take the fight for a million indifferent people. I have seen the personal costs that people like Haris, Imtiaz and Farish Noor bear. But I will continue to be there for them, probably as a someone to talk to more than anything, and they know they can count on me. That’s what they need, strong friendship and emotional support.
I am a big fan of Kee Thuan Chye’s work – I know he is very interested in Ayah Pin’s and Lina Joy’s cases from a playwright perspective, and hope that he has contacted Haris or Imtiaz for more details.
Thank you again Helen. Perhaps we will meet one day.
banjaran
October 17, 2007
Hi Helen,
everybody, and I mean everybody needs a break. We’re not robots! Just chill and take time to recharge. Also, and this is just a friendly observation from my point of view, you have made your writing too personal. While making it personal does make for more compelling reading, it also has consequences should you not get the desired reaction to your writing. So, please be careful. And let’s not forget, 3,000++ signatures is not too bad considering internet activism is still something new and Malaysians have been conditioned to be politically apathetic. Contests however are fun and have been around for ages. Give Malaysians some time to re-learn political activisim. My suggestion for one way to increase the reach for this petition is to market it through facebook. Create an invite to a group or event or something. Facebook is quite viral, and I believe a facebook invite is more compelling (and more fun) than an e-mail invite and there are also quite a number of activists on there!
And to Haris – based on what Helen wrote of the retribution you are facing, good on you!
Helen Ang
October 18, 2007
To Animah, thanks. You do understand from having lived it & I agree wholeheartedly about being true to ourselves & how important it is to hug tight the essence of who we are.
To Banjaran, friendly observation also noted with thanks & there is something in what you say. A word on Politics and the Art of Fun: KTC (c.f. my earlier post) did manage to inject some funny moments into his plays, having me LOL when I read ‘Birch’ last week (pity to be ‘reading’ plays instead of watching them).
I’m not plugging him but thought that Kee’s work might be an interesting topic thread b’cos one of his central themes is the very same Idealism; driving his main characters — a journo in ‘1984’. More eerie parallels: over 20 years ago, he was already saying the stuff blogosphere is airing today & his plays also touched on mixed race relationships caught in the middle of race politics.
When ‘1984’ was staged, it was pushing the envelope for its times. It’s possible to talk politics with a pinch of humour… to be differentiated from the outright clownishness that is our daily dose from the powerful clowns of course.