Pressed.

• 2013-03-08

  On Lahad Datu clash

  Farish A Noor describes the current power conflict in Sabah the best.

  “It seems that what is confronting us now is a clash between the modern state, driven as it is by its modernist logic of governmentality; and the primordial attachment of some people to land and space that exceeds the confines of temporality and space.” - Between a fluid region and a hard state, Rappler.

  Even when the commotion in Lahad Datu had died down, the past two weeks will continue to haunt Malaysians and their neighbours in the region for years to come. After all, the membership of North Borneo in the Federation of Malaysia was never unequivocally accepted.

  It is pretty clear that any sovereignty claim over Sabah by descendants of the Sulu Sultan will not stand in any court or international tribunal. A jury will have to stretch far beyond what is universally acceptable today if they were to “return” Sabah to members of the Sulu Sultanate.

  However, Malaysians need to come to terms with the realities of the situation and make some compromises to resolve the conflict peacefully.

  Amidst it all, the dominance of federal political figures has eclipsed the people who matter the most, the citizens of Sabah. The pre-Malaysia surveys on the opinions of the people of North Borneo carried out by the Cobbold Commission and the United Nations mission under U Thant were in no way a substitute to a democratic self-determination.

  Now is the right time to open the discussion on a referendum for Sabah citizens. They must be given the opportunity to decide on the state’s membership in the Federation and on the state’s relationship with its international neighbours. The peoples of the Philippines, Brunei and Indonesia cannot be excluded from this process as they have been and will always be part of the history and future of Sabah.

  It is also a good time to reform Malaysian nationality laws. People in the government must recognise the many benefits that liberalisation and openness in the south-east Asia have brought for Malaysians. Relaxing Malaysian immigration and citizenship will go a long way in maintaining peace in the country and the region. 

  There is no harm for Malaysians to recognise the history and heritage of the Suluk people. They should be embraced as part of the cultural diversity in Sabah. Suluk people from the Philippines who wish to settle in Sabah should be allowed to do so, or even better, be granted citizenship in the Federation.

  The government should promote a more open approach towards nationality, for example by allowing multiple citizenships or at least, by adopting the European Union’s “four freedoms” with other Asean members. Such open approach, when realised, will address the socio-economic disparities which have all along been the root of most cross-border conflicts in the region.

• 2012-08-23

  When government sets crime rate targets...

  There’s an anonymous letter circulating in the Malaysian media in which the author explains in great detail how the police could manipulate crime rate figures to appear to be meeting the targets set under the Government Transformation Programme. It immediately reminded me this part of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom:

  “The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends. Although the beliefs must be chosen for the people and imposed upon them, they must become their beliefs, a generally accepted creed which makes the individuals as far as possible act spontaneously in the way the planner wants. If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries is in general much less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine, this is because the totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in making people think as they want them to.”

• 2012-08-14

  What #Stop114A supporters may not know

  Apparently, it is #Stop114A internet blackout day in Malaysia today. The campaign represents an objection against a provision in an amendment to the Evidence Act 1950¹ passed by parliament in April. The amendment introduced a so-called “presumption of fact” in identifying the author of anonymously published web content.

  It is fair to say that opposition against the amendment amongst Malaysian internet users came about rather late. The campaign had only gained traction after the amendment came into effect in July. Some of the loudest voices against the amendment have carelessly branded it as the local version of Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US.

  The truth is, s 114A of the 1950 Act does not even remotely resemble SOPA.

  Unlike SOPA - which broadens the powers of federal law enforcement authorities to block websites potentially linking copyright infringing content - the Evidence Act provision deals with a specific judicial procedure. It allows the prosecutor in a legal trial to rely on the assumption that certain related parties to be the author of an anonymously published content on the web.

  On closer examination, s 114A of the 1950 Act is not particularly about the state curbing free speech. There are a myriad of other laws the state can and will use to deny Malaysians their right to freedom of expression. While I can appreciate the growing scepticism of the state on the part of #Stop114A supporters, I feel that many of them have missed the bigger picture.

  As many observers have rightly commented, s 114A goes against one fundamental legal principle that the burden of proof lies with the one who lays the charges, not the one being accused. The presumption of innocence (“innocent until proven guilty”) is a fundamental right enjoyed by the accused in a fair legal system. Unfortunately, thanks to the rapid expansion of the state, presumption of innocence is long dead.

  Vocal opponents of s 114A of the 1950 Act should be as loud in rejecting similar provisions littered in the Dangerous Drugs, Anti-Corruption and Penal Code Acts, to name but a few. In practice, the burden of proof is with the accused the moment they enter trial. The erosion of the rights of the accused is not exclusive to Malaysia, it’s happening in any country where the state is prevalent. 

  Underneath it all, there is a greater problem which I believe Malaysians need to pay attention to. 

  More than half a century after its founding, the parliament is still shadowed by the attorney general’s chambers (AGC) - where most statute laws originate. The fact that Malaysian legislators are practically rubber-stamping almost all the bills presented before the parliament² begs the question who actually make the laws in this country?

  Considering that the AGC are both legislative draftsmen and public prosecutors, it is difficult not to think that they have an incentive to write the statutes to their own advantage. The legislature’s reliance on and the centralisation of power in the AGC pose a real threat to the freedom of private individuals in Malaysia.

  Malaysian advocates of liberty and justice should not stop short at calling for the repeal of s 114A. They must reclaim the legislature and the legal system from the dominance of any branch of the state.

  ---

  1. Apart from inserting s 114A, the amendment of the 1950 Act also updates the definition of “computer”. It is quite interesting how computer has been redefined. The original act defined it as “any device for recording, storing, processing, retrieving or producing any information or other matter, or for performing any one or more of those functions, by whatever name or description such device is called” and added that “where two or more computers carry out any one or more of those functions in combination or in succession or otherwise howsoever conjointly, they shall be treated as a single computer”.

  2. In an interview with a Malaysian paper, renown constitutional scholar, Prof Shad Saleem Faruqi said, “Something like 80% of the bills over a period of five years from 1991 [until] 1995 were passed without [even] a comma or a fullstop being amended. About 15% of the bills were withdrawn by the government. Because of MPs’ input, or inputs by the NGOs, or international pressure, the government decided to withdraw and relook at the bill. Only 5% of the bills did parliament make any impact in terms of amendments, and these amendments are incorporated by the government. So, it is quite clear that the legislative process is basically an executive process, not a parliamentary process.” (‘The all-powerful executive’, The Sun Daily, 8 April 2011)

  The statistics for more recent years can be seen in the AGC triennial report (the charts in this report may be misleading). Out of 135 bills tabled in parliament between 2007 and 2009, more 87% were passed, despite the fact more opposition MPs elected to the lower house after 2008 general election.

  It is also worth noting that there is a staggering mismatched of investment between the AGC and the parliament. The Drafting Division of AGC employs more than 70 staff members while the parliamentary legal advisor’s office has less than 20 staff members, most of whom are parliamentary researchers working for all 292 members of parliament.

• 2012-07-17

  My TEDxKL experience

  I was initially going to attend the event as a spectator but a few weeks before the event, a friend asked me to help out with organising it. Before I left university, I vowed to never again work for free - or what some people call volunteering - thinking I was done with being an unpaid worker. I eventually let myself being pulled in and actually learned a lot from being involved in organising the event.

  I tend to get unusually shy when I meet people who I look up to. I met Yasmin Ahmad at the first TEDxKL but I was so starstruck that I didn’t say anything to her. I found myself in similar situation when I met Jo Kukathas whose work I admire. When I learnt that she would be playing Puan Badariah, my heart jumped. During her talk, Jo stepped in and out of her character a little bit, being somewhat in between herself and her character.

  Jo captured the theme of interdependence rather well - one between an artist and her art. There are very few actors out there who can truly appreciate the fact that an artist is merely a medium of the art and that art lives beyond the artist. Her social commentary made me ponder if the dying cultures and traditions are just recurring characteristics of nature. There are old cultures and traditions that have long died. Some have been replaced with new ones, others have evolved into different forms.

  I enjoyed Dr Ille Gebeshuber’s talk about understanding the design of the nature. She struck me as one of those scientists who are very approachable to science-challenged people like me. Froya’s performance was very refreshing. One of her songs, ‘woo-hoo’, really stuck in my head until the end of the night. 

  One huge lesson that I learnt is to appreciate migrant workers. The venue was largely staffed with workforce brought in from south Asia. Working with them backstage, I had some brief but insightful chats with these underpaid, overworked labourers. It dawned on me that, the foundation of an upper middle income nation like Malaysia is not its own citizens, but the migrant workers from poorer countries. 

  Because of these people, most Malaysians can afford to live comfortably, and some in luxury, rather cheaply. Of course, they are better off working here than being unemployed at home. But as much as they depend on us to provide jobs, we depend on them to take up jobs that we do not want. It bothers me that we fail to accord them the tactfulness we have for our own citizens, expatriates or tourists, as though they are of lesser humankind.

• 2012-01-03

  Big Think: Media and Journalism

  *Adam Bryant, senior editor for features
  New York Times 

  Alan Webber, founding editor
  Fast Company 

  Alan Weisman, journalist

  *Andrew Sullivan, journalist

  *Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief
  Huffington Post

  Bill Wasik, senior editor
  Wired 

  *Calvin Trillin, contributor
  New Yorker

  *Carl Bernstein, journalist
  (formerly with Washington Post)

  Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief
  Wired 

  *Dana Cowin, editor-in-chief
  Food & Wine 

  David Broder, journalist
  (formerly with Washington Post)

  *David Remnick, editor
  New Yorker 

  *Evan Wright, journalist

  Frank Rose
  (formerly with Wired) 

  Gabriel Sherman, contributing editor
  New York Magazine

  *Jere Van Dyk, journalist

  *Jessica Valenti, founding executive editor
  Feministing

  Jeff Sharlet, contributing editor
  Harper’s 

  *Joe Randazzo, editor
  Onion 

  John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief
  Economist

  Jon Meacham, executive editor
  Random House (formerly with Newsweek) 

  Keith Gessen, editor
  n+1

  *Kurt Pitzer, journalist

  Matt Bai, chief political correspondent
  New York Times 

  *Matt Taibbi, journalist
  Rolling Stone 

  Michael Idov, contributing editor
  New York Magazine

  *Michael Lewis, contributing editor
  Vanity Fair 

  Peter Beinart, senior political writer
  Daily Beast

  *Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor
  New Yorker

  *Ronen Bergman, journalist
  Yediot Achronot

  *Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief
  Epicurious

  Tyler Brûlé, editor-in-chief
  Monocle

  * recommended based on Google search.

• 2011-12-28

  [Journalists] are out there to be judicious, not judicial

  — Carl Bernstein in ‘Page One’. 

• 2011-12-21

  Why we must not fear SOPA?

  The hotly debated piece of legislation in the US known as Stop Online Piracy Act is the latest, but not new, attempt by a government to regulate the Internet. The legislation seeks to protect intellectual property by criminalising almost every aspect of unlawful sharing of copyrighted materials over the Internet.

  Many people have discussed the constitutionality of this legislation and its impact on net neutrality. However, there is actually not much to worry about it. If we look at previous attempts by governments to regulate the Internet - like China, Iran, Malaysia, Egypt, Libya and the list goes on - all of them have been futile.

  The Internet and the World Wide Web are not owned by anyone. There may be governments, private companies or individuals who own the Internet infrastructure, but the Internet itself is not owned by anyone. For a piece of legislation like SOPA to be effective, access to these infrastructure has to be blocked or greatly restricted. 

  SOPA will undeniably increase the cost to set up Internet-related business in one way or another. Should SOPA be successful in the US, ‘online piracy’ will just spread elsewhere. Web hosting providers, file hosting websites, online payment websites will just set up their businesses in other countries outside the jurisdiction of SOPA. This, of course, has already been happening. 

  Furthermore, the technologies that power the World Wide Web are rapidly advancing. It is almost impossible for regulators to play catchup with the technological changes and update legislations every time there is development in a technology.

  The Internet can only be effectively regulated by a completely totalitarian rule with all-encompassing regulations to restrict freedom. It will certainly not happen because the costs of a totalitarian rule outweigh its benefits. Even if, hypothetically speaking, one free nation-state society survives today, the Internet would still be alive and that society would rake all the benefits that it would bring, ‘online piracy’ or otherwise.

• 2011-12-05

  They never struck me as being a sort of business in the consumer’s interest. They’re a ruthless, money-making devil.

  — Waterstone’s CEO, James Daunt on Amazon. The problem is though, offering products at low prices coupled with excellent customer service are in the interest of consumers. Some execs really should not make the fool of themselves by speaking to the press.

• 2011-12-02

  Elastic intelligence

  Elastic intelligence can be described as the ability to be stupid and to be intelligent at almost precisely the same time.

  For example, for one to be able to appreciate extremist political opinions and laugh at them, one needs to have elastic intelligence.

• 2011-11-15

  Part 2 | Part 3

  I saw this interview recently and found myself going back to watch it again several times over the past week.

  Lady Thatcher is such a dominating interviewee that even the brashy Jewish New Yorker of Larry King softened. I wonder how journalists should deal with such interviewees. I’ve seen her done the same with Frost.

  Pretty extraordinary.