Where is the change Pakatan promised?

hank you readers for the comments and brickbats after reading my piece “Pakatan, no more same-same bullshit please!”

First, we live in a parliamentary democracy. This means a representative system where the Prime Minister and the Menteri Besar or Chief Minister is voted in and confirmed by the majority of assemblypersons.

This is Politics 101 and Democracy for Dummies.

Should Khalid have resigned when he had lost the confidence of his party? No. If he, however, loses the confidence of the state assembly, he should resign.

In the present case, when should the Sultan intervene? There are reserve powers in the constitution and the Sultan has the authority to act and dismiss the state assembly on the advice of the MB or the acting MB.

Again, this is Westminster-style democracy. And there are precedents for this overseas but sadly I will be indicted.

I have been called a Barisan Nasional mah-chai. Sadly, such comments are puerile and infantile and deserve to be dumped as it is utter rubbish.

I have never voted for BN in any parliamentary election but have spent over 35 years campaigning and working to foster an alternative society in Malaysia that is more open and democratic.

As for politics being a game, yes, it’s a political game but why should it be at the expense of the people and citizens of the state?

Some also say it is better the devil you know (as opposed to the one you don’t). Alas, that is sad – we go for poor and fake substitutes and idolise them only to find the ‘emperor really has no clothes’ because it’s all a sham.

My point is that we voted for the opposition because we wanted change and we wanted a better government.

If that is the case, surely they would have to be accountable and held to a higher standard than what the other side is offering.

The alternate government should lead by example and not claim post-facto rationalisations of facts to support their political gaming and strategising.

Is this an illusion or are we all so desperate that we seek false gods and prophets to make us feel secure.

The fact remains: Selangor has the highest incidence of dengue. Selangorians can barely breathe because of the haze (made worse by open burning in the state) and the management of waste leaves much to be desired.

We have elected state representatives to look after our interests. If they cannot do this, or protect us or ensure our safety and well-being, should we not be asking questions and demanding answers from them?

Or should we just accept them and keep paying them to be sleeping drongos?

There are some who say the people did not vote for Khalid but for Pakatan Rakyat. Some also accused me of assuming people voted for Khalid.

The second is a silly proposition and really demands something which cannot be proven by anyone in any country save for those who voted in a presidential-style democracy.

So, it is not worth going down that track but suffice to say that Pakatan went to the people with its record and Khalid at the helm and ipso facto, any sane and rational person can infer that Khalid was the focus, not the party.

Similarly, the claim that “I did not vote for Khalid” is just a fig-leaf defence.

In Westminster-style constitutional democracies, typically, the PM or CM or MB is appointed by royal decree and generally the party with the most seats gets to nominate the candidate.

In Malaysia, there are political exigencies and whilst some of us may not agree with these ‘political realities’, it is the system through which we work in and work through that enable reforms to take place.

I think I have said enough and thanks for the comments.

I remain Wong Mun Loong and look forward to your thoughts and comments. Although I have refrained from responding in the past, I did this time as I believe democracy is best served through dialogue and a willingness to engage despite our differences.

Thank you and all the best.

WHY THE NEED FOR LOCAL COUNCILS?

(Bernama) – Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail today praised Selangor’s administration under Mentri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim for having set aside allocation for implementation of various economic programmes in the state.

However, she said, Abdul Khalid should also pay attention to people’s issues, like “rubbish and road”.

“Although we are proud of the achievement, we should also be sensitive to people’s issues like those related to rubbish and road.”

“If basic facilities for the people are neglected, the state reserves brings no meaning,” she said in the presidential policy speech at the PKR’s 10th National Congress here yesterday.

She said the state administration under Abdul Khalid was often criticised for not building new infrastructure facilities, as well as maintained existing ones, despite having huge cash reserves.

Dr Wan Azizah said infrastructure projects had to be carried out so that the Selangor people would benefit from the state government’s funds.

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What Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said yesterday is actually very true. However, before we discuss this issue, let us first understand the role of governments. And please forgive me if what I am about to say sounds a bit academic or like an essay for a course in political philosophy.

In the beginning, humankind did not have governments. That, of course, was in the era of the hunter-gatherer when people lived a nomadic life and survived off the land, and then moved on somewhere else when the land could no longer sustain life.

When the community eventually grew too large, and there were too many communities within walking distance from one another, it was no longer possible to live the life of a nomad.

One reason was wherever they wanted to migrate to was already inhabited plus moving a large body of persons to a new area is not as easy as, say, moving just one family or a small community.

That was when communities settled down and built a life where they lived. And that meant they could no longer survive as hunter-gatherers but had to transform into farmers (they had to replace the food they scavenged off the land) plus they had to rear livestock (they had to replace the animals they killed and ate).

When communities become too large, they need rules. So laws were introduced. You were not allowed to steal from others or kill your neighbours or rape their wives and daughters. The weak needed to be protected from the strong because the strong will always try to dominate and bully the weak (it is human nature even until today).

Once you have decided to have laws or rules then you need someone to formulate them and determine what can and cannot be done. So you need the lawmakers, who will usually be the elder or elders in the community, maybe a committee of elders who the community has chosen to represent their interests.

Once the laws are in place you now need a judicial system, a body that sits to hear complaints regarding violations of these rules or laws and judges whether this allegation is in fact true and what to do with these lawbreakers and what punishment they should be subjected to.

This would be the process for the implementation of the laws but if you want them to be implemented properly then you need a sort of police force tasked with the job of this implementation. If you cannot enforce these laws then it would be futile to have laws.

So, eventually, communities began to have lawmakers, enforcers and judges and everyone lived within this system, what we would call a government (elected or otherwise). And anyone who did not wish to live under a government can opt to leave that community and become what we would call anarchists — people who reject governments or organised communities.

Eventually, the community became even larger and these governments became more complex and the community demanded more from its government. There was the matter of development (social needs), defence (from the attacks of other communities), and much more.

So a system of tax was introduced so that water could be supplied to the community, roads built, guards employed to patrol the streets, and so on. The individual could no longer do this. The government needed to do it and they needed money to do it, which the people paid for through the tax that was levied.

We have come a long way since then but the process more or less still remains the same and the reason why we do this also still remains the same. However, the system of government today is a bit more complex than what humankind first started 10,000 years or so ago.

Let us talk about Selangor, in response to what Dr Wan Azizah said yesterday (and what Anwar said today at the PKR national congress).

Malaysia, as do most countries, has a federal government that decides on national policies and looks after foreign relations, national defence, internal security, etc., which is headed by a prime minister and his/her federal cabinet.

Then we have state governments that are in charge of state resources (water included but not oil and gas), religion (meaning Islam), and development that comes under state jurisdiction (but not including federal roads/highways and federal agency infrastructure such as schools, military camps, police stations, etc.).

The menteri besar or chief minister and his/her state cabinet or Exco head this state government.

While the prime minister heads the federal government, his/her cabinet decides the policies and brings these proposals to the cabinet for approval. As Anwar Ibrahim said many times when he was still in the Barisan Nasional government, the entire cabinet is collectively responsible for cabinet decisions because it is a cabinet decision and not the sole decision of the prime minister or minister in charge of his/her ministry.

This was what Anwar used to say.

Hence you cannot blame Anwar alone for his education policies when he was the Education Minister, or blame Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad alone. Whatever was done was a cabinet decision, not a one-man decision.

The same goes for the state government. We cannot blame Mat Taib or Khir Toyo alone for how Selangor was run. We need to blame Umno and/or Barisan Nasional. Hence we cannot just replace the Umno menteri besar. We need to kick out Barisan Nasional and change the whole government. It is no use kicking out just the menteri besar if Barisan Nasional is still the government.

This was what Anwar used to say.

So now we have complaints regarding, as Dr Wan Azizah said, “rubbish and roads”. This is why, according to Dr Wan Azizah, Khalid Ibrahim needs to be kicked out.

But who is the one in charge of rubbish and roads (meaning state roads, not federal roads)? Is it not the Exco member in charge of local government, a DAP state representative? And hence, also, would not the local councils come under him?

And is it not the entire Exco and not just the menteri besar that decides the policies? And does the Exco in charge of local government not table his plans, policies and budget at the state Exco meeting for the approval of the entire Exco?

If anyone should be blamed for the failure of the local governments then it should be the Exco member in charge of local government. But it is not his fault alone, just like Anwar cannot be blamed for the deterioration of Malaysia’s education system that started when he was the Education Minister.

Anyway, local councils have local councillors. And these are the people who are supposed to decide the policies of their local councils and make sure that the rubbish is collected and the damaged roads are repaired. They decide what is done and how much money is spent to do it.

And who are these local councillors? Are they not members of PKR, DAP and PAS and are they not nominated by PKR, DAP and PAS? Hence the local councils are run by PKR, DAP and PAS representatives and report to the DAP Exco member who then reports to the Exco.

Are you saying that the menteri besar personally instructs the heads of the local councils, by-passing the local councillors, Exco member in charge of local government, and the entire EXCO?

If so then why did the DAP Exco member in charge of local government say that he does not share the view of the others that Khalid Ibrahim failed to do his job properly? And why did the PAS Exco member say that they could only get money if backed with a proper working paper with sound justification as to why the money should be spent?

In the past, in the days when Umno was running Selangor, they ‘created’ projects as a means to siphon out money. They developed areas that really did not need development (like plant flowers, pave the sidewalks, etc., every few months) so that the councillors can make money from kickbacks.

I have seen perfectly good sidewalks torn up and repaved at great cost, many times more than twice or three times what it should have cost. And many of these jobs were given out to friends and family on a non-tender, negotiated basis.

We have to be very careful that once Khalid leaves and a new menteri besar takes over, Selangor does not revert to the old Umno ways of doing things. RM3 billion is a lot of money but even RM3 billion will not last if we develop the state not because it needs development but because certain people want to make money from kickbacks.

And if the menteri besar and not the councillors decide how the local government operates and what it does, then why the need for local councillors? And if we need local councillors because they must run the local councils then why blame Khalid for the “rubbish and roads” problem when it is the local councils under the Exco member for local government that are in charge?

After all, do we blame Anwar or Barisan Nasional for Malaysia’s poor education system?

WHEN AZMIN SPEAKS OF DEMOCRACY

Today, Azmin Ali said that democracy is under attack. He was addressing the PKR youth movement at the party convention this morning. And Azmin was referring to Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy trial when he said that democracy is under attack. In other words, Anwar’s sodomy trial is proof that democracy is under attack.

It is a shame that political leaders make such vague and sweeping statements. Most Malaysians consider their leaders as smart people so whatever these leaders say Malaysians would believe it.

However, Malaysians do not really understand the concept of democracy or how it works and they think that democracy means holding elections once every five years. Even the ex-Minister of Information, Zainuddin Maidin, thinks so when in 2007 he said that Malaysia is a democratic country because it holds elections every five years.

That is like saying I am a smart person because I speak English. I have met professors in China who do not speak a word of English but are faculty deans of universities that conduct research in grain technology that is far advanced than any English-speaking university.

How do you think China can feed 20% of the world and still have enough food to export?

By the way, just to digress a bit (as usual) I made ten trips to China in the 1990s even as Pudong was still being built and I remember telling my wife that by or before 2020 China is going to overtake the US as the number one economy in the world. (I am very proud of this prediction, of course, and forgive me if I keep repeating this).

In fact, I wrote about this in the mid-1990s (before the days of the Reformasi movement). I even wrote about praying in the oldest mosque in China, which is in Canton (that looks like a Chinese temple), which was built in the 700s and I mentioned how funny it is that Malays call Chinese Muslims mualaf when the Chinese were Muslims 700 years before the Malays discovered Islam. It is the Malays who are actually the mualaf.

Anyhow, back to the subject of the day.

Democracy is a form of government in which all eligible citizens are meant to participate equally — either directly (such as in a referendum) or indirectly through elected representatives — to formulate, develop and implement the laws by which their society is run.

The term democracy originates from the Greek word dēmokratía or rule of the people. Dêmos meanspeople and kratos means power or rule. This concept of government started in the 5th century BC to denote the political systems existing in the Greek city-states at that time, notably Athens.

I call democracy the tyranny of the majority (this is what you will learn if you take a course in Political Philosophy). John Adams introduced this phrase in 1788 and it gained prominence in 1835 in the bookDemocracy in America written by Alexis de Tocqueville.

John Stuart Mill further popularised this phrase in 1859 when he quoted Tocqueville in On Liberty. The phrase was widely employed in the mid-1800s in relation to a series of moral questions that gave rise to organised minority groups in American politics.

Lord Acton also used this phrase in 1877 in The History of Freedom in Antiquity when he said, “The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.”

In 1965, Herbert Marcuse referred to the tyranny of the majority in his essay Repressive Toleranceregarding tolerance in advanced industrial society. Marcuse said that tolerance is extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behaviour which should not be tolerated because they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery and that this sort of tolerance strengthens the tyranny of the majority against which authentic liberals protested.

So you see, while Malaysian politicians and political activists advocate the virtues of democracy, some of the best brains over the last 2,500 years do not think much of democracy. Democracy is flawed at best and unjust at worse. Democracy is not really the ‘cure all’ for a sick society. It actually raises more problems than it solves.

What, then, is the best system of government or what then is a better system than democracy?

Actually, there is no better or best system. Democracy is merely the least of the many evils such as absolute monarchies, dictatorships, autocracies, and whatnot. Humankind has not yet discovered anything better than the democratic system that we have adopted for Malaysia and many other countries all over the world.

The Islamists will say that democracy, being man-made, is flawed. Speak to any PAS activist, privately and off-the-record, of course, and he or she will tell you that the only perfect system is God’s system, meaning the Islamic State. Publicly they will never say this because that will mean PAS would lose the support of the majority of Malaysians, liberal Malays included.

Hence PAS has to pretend it upholds ‘western’ democracy, for the meantime, until it has enough political power to fulfil its dream of the Malaysian Islamic State.

Not only PAS but Anwar Ibrahim also said that at the moment Malaysia is not ready to implement Islamic laws such as Hudud (although Malaysia already has Sharia laws). Malaysians must first be educated regarding the Islamic State and Islamic laws and once they understand how it works and can accept this new system can we introduce it.

You cannot fault Muslims for thinking that the Qur’an and Allah’s system is the most perfect and surpasses any form of man-made system by far, especially since the Westminster system of government was created by non-Muslims who destroyed the Caliph system of the Ottoman Empire.

Even Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Father of Modern Turkey, is considered an apostate by people such as PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang (I have attended his sermons where he said so). Hence the Westminster system of government is no-go as far as Islamists are concerned but they will tolerate it for the meantime until the system can be changed.

Nevertheless, seeing what IS (ISIS, ISIL) is currently doing while giving us an impression that that is what the Islamic State means, even Muslims themselves will prefer the Westminster system above ‘Allah’s system’. Hence these Islamists are doing a great disservice to Islam and the damage they have caused is going to make people reject the Islamic State for a long time to come.

In the absence of a better system, the Westminster system of government can work. After all, it is all we have. But the system can work only if we implement it correctly. Any good system will turn bad if not implemented correctly (Islamic State included).

First, we have four branches of government. We have the Executive, the Legislature (parliament and senate), the Judiciary, and the Monarchy. Each of the four branches must be independent of one other (in other words, one must not interfere in the other) but at the same time all four must work in tandem (complement one other).

Second, we have three levels of government. We have the Federal Government, the State Government, and the Local Government. And, again, each of the three levels must be independent of one other (in other words, one must not interfere in the other) but at the same time all three must work in tandem (complement one other).

That would be how a good government should work (not 100% perfect but as close to perfect as possible). And I say not 100% perfect because 51% and above decide this while the 49% and below have no say in the matter. Worst of all, it is not 51% and above of the voters but those who win 51% and above of the seats — which does not necessarily mean 51% of the voters voted for them (the 2013 general election a case in point).

Most times voters would vote for the party and not for the candidate. Hence the elected representative (called wakil rakyat in Malay, or peoples’ representative) is not really the peoples’ representative but the party’s representative. Hence they serve their party rather than the people who voted for them.

This is one problem.

The next problem is only the parliamentarians and state assemblypersons are elected into office. The local government councillors are not. They are appointed, like the Senators.

Now, the senate is supposed to be the auditor or watchdog of parliament. When parliament passes laws it goes to the senate for debate and if the senate feels that that particular law is unjust, ambiguous, contradictory, violates the Constitution, etc., it sends the bill back to parliament.

However, since the senators are also appointed nominees of their respective parties, most times (or all times) the senate does not contradict parliament. Hence what we get is a rubber-stamp senate that might as well be abolished.

The monarchy too, since Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s time, has had it wings clipped so even if the Agong (or state ruler) does not sign any bill into law it still gets automatically passed into law. So the monarchy, too, has in a way been reduced to a rubber-stamp monarchy.

As I said, the Westminster system of government is not 100% perfect but it can be improved if we restore Malaysia’s system of government to what it should be. We must restore the four branches and three levels of government and we must have the senate and local government an elected body (not appointed like now).

Most importantly, though, democracy means, as how the Greeks intended it to be 2,500 years ago, adēmokratía or rule of the people. Hence the people must rule themselves. Currently, the people transfer the mandate to rule to political parties to do what they like.

And it is up to you, the voters, to decide whether you want people’s power or party’s power as your government. And once you go to the polls and mandate the political parties to represent you in government, there is very little you can do until the next polls.

There are actually good people and bad people on both sides of the political divide. Alas, election after election the voters will vote along party lines. That means good people will get kicked out because they belong to the ‘wrong’ party while bad people will get voted in because they belong to the ‘right’ party.

And ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is interpreted as the party you belong to. And that is why democracy does not quite work the way it should, especially when less than 50% of the voters can decide what government you are going to have.

Anyway, don’t feel too bad about it. Hitler democratically got into power with only 30% support and tens of millions were killed in WWII after that. That, unfortunately, is how democracy works.