901

It really would be quite anti-climactic to write on anything other than the 901 gathering this morning, considering the kind of attention that it has managed to gather since about a week ago.

To be quite honest, I’d already given up on this case a long time ago. When Sodomy II first made the headlines, it was like 1998 again for many. It was deja vu, it was like the ‘people in power’ could no longer come up with newer, fresher ideas. For me, it was a ridiculous case, simply because it seemed, and is, a trivial matter if compared to the problems we’re facing in our education system, our deficit-budget and other such large-scaled issues. An opposition leader’s sexual preferences and practices just didn’t seem quite so important.

But still, perhaps there is some reason to why this issue was blown into such huge proportions. It has ties to whether our police force is impartial when it comes to arresting/detaining suspects and how fair they are when dealing with all those involved in the case. It has ties to whether the politics in our country is really so bankrupt that one has to resort to cheap personal attacks to bring down the other side. It has ties to whether the judiciary is independent enough to handle a case that has such high-profile personalities.

With all these issues involved in one man’s case, it is hardly surprising that come the day when a judgement would finally be made, it would be sensational. This morning was the morning when the courts were to decide whether the prosecution had any case against Anwar. If he was to be announced guilty, the opposition would have found themselves lacking one leader figure. If he was pronounced innocent, would this have meant that the opposition won this battle?

So when there was a call for a support rally at the courthouse, it came without much surprise. It is only natural that such a high-profile case would attract such a reaction. The Sodomy II trial had gone on for far too long. It was time that it ended. And Anwar’s supporters wanted to be there to see it, no matter what the result.

The build-up to this 901 gathering was, surprisingly, quite low-key. Anwar supporters didn’t make a helluva noise about coming all out to support their leader, nor did PKR members spread banners and emails and Facebook messages. Instead, what made the gathering gain publicity was through what the government did and said themselves.

Hishammuddin, Home Minister, had last week said that Pakatan Rakyat had to “guarantee” that the 901 gathering would be a peaceful one, and that it would not turn chaotic. This statement I found rather out-of-place, and a little funny. The ones who are given the task to “guarantee” that the rally remains peaceful should be his boys in blue, the police. It is after all their duty to maintain public peace.

What’s even funnier is the heavy police presence at the gathering this morning. A little sidetrack story: a friend of mine involved in filming had intended to invite some 20 policemen to their shooting today, as they had a scene involving the police. They were told that no one from the police force was free, as all of them were ordered to be on standby for the 901 gathering. And this is as far as Klang.

All in all, though, the case ended without much fanfare. Anwar was acquitted as the prosecution could not prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that Anwar was guilty. There were 3 small explosions outside of the courthouse after the verdict was announced. The gathering dispersed without much hoo-hah. Sodomy II ended in a completely different manner from Sodomy I.

Whether or not this shows that the police are impartial, or whether our politics is bankrupt, or whether our judiciary is independent is really up to our own interpretation. But for now, Sodomy II is over. Let’s hope it stays over.

.. and a Happy New Year

It’s the beginning of a new year. You know this because people have been sending their best wishes to you and yours for a better year ahead. You also know this because people start asking you the one question that represents the new year: “What’s your new year resolution?”

I’ve never been quite fond of this question. In fact, I find it quite interesting that the general consensus is that you make new goals only at the start of a new year, and not as and when the time is right, regardless of when during the year we are in. People around me are making plans to “change” their way of going about their business because, and I quote, “the methods we’ve been using are (a)not up to par; (b)wrong; (c)outdated; (d)making things difficult for me..” etc. Wouldn’t it have been better if they had realised this earlier, and changed their game plan then, instead of waiting for the new year, and wasted those few months doing something that was wrong?

But still, I guess identifying where you’ve gone wrong, and doing something about it, is still in essence a good thing. And if the new year spirit brings about these changes, who am I to go against it?

So with that in mind, I scanned the pages of the news to see what we might be in for in this new year. Among others, I found out that the Home Ministry has decided that there should be no more use for the Film Censorship Board. Apparently, if this news is correct, the authorities have finally decided that filmmakers should just apply self-censorship when producing their works.

It’s a happy surprise, definitely. For me, this is definitely a step in the right direction. In our time and age, censorship is becoming less and less relevant. Especially when it comes to the arts, this decision to do away with the censorship board will definitely open up a lot of avenues for artists/filmmakers to express their creativity. Of course, as is in all cases, there will be a couple of so-called ‘bad apples’ who will take advantage of this and make the entire industry look bad. But if we’re patient, and if we believe in our audience, surely only the fine ones will stay and shine bright.

Another piece of news that caught my attention was actually a commentary on Adam Adli and the student activism movement. For a long time coming, the Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA) formed the shackles that kept students from expressing their opinions whenever it came to politics. The “logic” behind was that students would get distracted from their main purpose – studying – if they got involved in politics in any way. What this law failed to recognise is that politics plays a huge part in a student’s life, especially if they are to grow into responsible citizens.

That there are now students like Adam Adli who stand up to create awareness about what the UUCA is all about, is something to be proud of. The going will be tough, as shown by the incidents that occurred during the UPSI student protest. 17 students have been arrested, and one of them injured after the protest met with the police. Investigations are still carried on as to whether or not the students were assaulted by the police. But one thing is sure – the students have won the psychological fight.

It is one thing to simply know that there is something wrong with the system. It doesn’t take a genius to find that out. But to be willing to do something about it in order to change, that is what the real fight is all about. It’s about coming to the realisation that something has to be done, that we cannot just sit and talk and do nothing. As Adam Adli so rightly puts it, “The future now belongs to the youth.”

Here’s wishing everyone a Happy New Year 2012.

Tis a season to be jolly?

Today is the beginning of the last week of this year. This is also the time when people start thinking about what they’ve been up to for the most of this year, and whether they have achieved what they set out to do.

It’s the same for me. For the past week or so, I’ve been assessing my achievements and non-achievements – identifying the things I’ve done and the things I didn’t manage to complete. Of course, in the process, I realised that there have been a substantial amount of uncertainties and surprises that suddenly sprang my way.

I suppose this is what happens to everyone – we can never be too sure about what will happen in the next minute, next days, weeks and months.

Take last week for example. The marriage of Ariff Alfian Rosli in Ireland to his same-sex partner made headlines in Malaysia. I’m sure for him, the kind of media attention he got was something he did not expect.

Perhaps, for himself, it was an achievement of sorts. After all, being officially bonded to the person you love is an event of huge influence to one’s life. It’s a celebration, a joyous day, a cause to be happy. It’s that one day, one event, that changes the course of your life.

Of course, when this was “exposed” by the local media, many jumped, with or without good reason. So now, instead of it being a meaningful day for the happy couple, it has become a circus of differing opinions and suggestions of what should be done to “save” this young man from deviating.

The government of the day has also decided that they are not going to be ‘left out’ of this incident, and apparently are going to send a representative over to ‘talk sense’ into the young man and ‘bring him back onto the right track’. It’s also disturbing to know that Petronas, which gave him his education loan, decided to retract and demand repayments from his parents.

I’m in no position to comment about the legality of Petronas’s action, though I do think that it’s rather abrupt and very ill-willed. And basically, the articles and commentaries that have been written in response to the “exposure” of this little piece of news have been very unsavoury.

Reading all this, and during a week like this, makes me wonder if we’ve made even the slightest move forward in our pursuit to be more tolerant of each other, and less prejudiced towards those who are different from ourselves. It’s a little depressing, taking a look back at the year that has been. It feels like for every little step that we seem to take forward, we’re actually moving slightly backwards. And we don’t even know it yet.

Our Prime Minister announced that the ISA would be repealed. That’s a step forward. But then we got the Peaceful Assembly Bill, which basically took us two steps back. We’ve seen Seksualiti Merdeka being organised for a few years with hardly any hiccups, and yet this year, the police declared it illegal and stopped the organisers from going any further.

So, in hindsight, what have we done this year? What have we, as a nation, accomplished, and what is it that we are still lacking? Are we moving in the right direction? Judging from what’s transpired in the past week, it looks like we’re still lacking of a strong enough captain to steer this boat.

But as I’ve said, there’s really no predicting what might happen next. So in the spirit of the holidays and season of cheer, let’s all have a little more faith in the goodwill of our own people.

To rid of UMNO

In this beloved country of ours, we have never been short of abbreviations, or three alphabet “words” that represent an association or other. We even have abbreviations for the multitude of government policies and agencies, growing exponentially every day. Even laws and acts are given alphabetical “short forms”, as if we have such short-term memory that we simply cannot remember them by their full names.

We have laws like the very well-known ISA, UUCA and PPPA, amongst others. We have policies like the NEP (or DEB, depending on your preferred language), the NKEA, the ETP. We have political parties like UMNO, MCA, MIC, PKR, PAS, DAP, SUPP and the list goes on. We have so many that it’s hard to keep track of which is what (or what is which).

The latest addition to this increasing long list of “initials” is the ABU, which is relevant in both English and Malay. It stands for Asalkan Bukan UMNO/BN, or Anything But UMNO/BN.

ABU’s objective is obvious from the name itself – it wants anything but UMNO/BN in power. Although it is comprised of MCLM, SAMM, PSM and PRM, which are parties that were never BN-friendly, ABU is probably the first group to be formed based on a united hatred of a third party, which in this case, is UMNO, and is not afraid of telling it straight from the naming of the group itself.

More than just form a group and preach to the converted, it appears that ABU has taken the bull by the horns – they have identified that in order to be rid of UMNO, they have to get their message across to the majority who keeps on voting UMNO back into power – the Malay heartlands. It was reported last week that ABU had produced 200,000 copies of a documentary, in DVD format, and distributed these into Malay villages. From this first distribution, it is hoped that the rural Malays would no longer be blinded by mainstream news that is controlled by the government, and instead be exposed to other views and opinions.

I’ve watched the 104-minute documentary – it is uploaded in 6 parts on YouTube. Instead of making a new documentary from scratch, ABU took bits and pieces of video from news clips and online media, and even included Fahmi Reza’s documentary “10 Tahun Sebelum Merdeka” as part of a whole. Smart move.

Because of the nature of the documentary, which is a mish-mash of old and recent news, most of it was nothing new to me. But the target audience of this DVD video is not us, the internet-savvy crowd who already know of all this. We are already converted, there is no need to preach to us. It is the Malays in the rural areas with no access to news other than what is found in Utusan Malaysia and TV1 that ABU is wanting to reach out to. And I think the video is just right for that purpose.

I do have some reservations on whether the video was ‘fair’ – for me, it focused too much on Malay and Islam-centric issues. Putting aside my own feelings in this scenario, however, I also believe that this video could potentially “enlighten” at least a quarter of those who had previously only received skewed information.

This is an era where those with information is the stronger. Empowering the rakyat is about giving them information, and enabling them to make decisions based on that information. You don’t force them to follow you – you give them the facts, and let them tell right from wrong.

It’s like the NEP, which was initially formed to close the economic/financial gap between the races, and bring the poverty rate down to as near zero as possible. Put it to them, show them the riches of some, and the poverty of many. If only half of the rural Malay folk see this, ABU would have done what it set out to do.

How to maintain your parents

I was listening to the radio, chinese channel 98.8, the other day, when I heard some snippets of an earlier call-in session that caught my attention. The radio station replayed some of the comments that callers made to an issue that was being discussed on air. One of these comments, more or less, went something like this:

“In a place like KL, someone with a wife and kids can barely survive with RM3000 per month. Let’s say they give their parents RM100 each month. What if the parents complain that this is not enough, and sue their children?”

At that point in time, what piqued my curiosity was that I didn’t know what issue they were discussing that warranted a comment like that. Why would parents sue their children over how much money was given to them each month? And on what basis would these parents press charges?

That’s how I found out about Karpal Singh’s proposal to the Parliament that a law to protect parents from being abandoned by their children.

There isn’t much in the news about this proposal. From what little that I have read about it, Karpal made this proposal in view of the results of the Fourth Malaysia Population and Family Survey, which stated that one in every 3 senior citizens are abandoned by their children.

Now, one in three is a very steep figure. It’s one that prompts us to rethink our so-called “Asian values” and how important parents really are in that set of values. As Asians, we practically pride ourselves over our filial piety and how much more we appreciate and take care of our parents, compared to our Western counterparts. The statistics tell a whole different story to what we have, or well, I have, always believed in.

It’s not to say that I believe in fairy tales where all adult children are play their filial roles, and all elderly citizens are kept happy and well-fed till the end of their days. I personally know of people who would gamble away all their earnings, and still have the guts to come home and ask for money from their retired parents instead. But I also know of people who slave their butts off just to make ends meet, and the only contribution they can afford is a to give their parents a roof over their heads.

It goes to say that “abandonment” is a very strong word, and the news piece I read did not state the definition used by the survey. If children pay for their parents to live in old folks’ homes, but never go visiting ever, are these senior citizens being abandoned? Similarly, if children live with their parents under one roof, and all their food and clothes are paid for, but they just don’t get any cash, would that be defined as “abandon”, seeing as there is no financial support?

No doubt, there are similar laws in other countries like the one he is proposing. In Singapore, the Maintenance of Parents Act allows parents to make “maintenance claims”. In India and Taiwan, parent abandonment is punishable by way of hefty fines and even imprisonment.

It’s just a little disturbing to think that filial piety and “parent maintenance” is something that we need to enforce by law. I for one had grown up thinking that it’s something you do to pay your parents back for all their love and time and effort. It’s even more disturbing now to find out that not only are there other countries that implement such a law, the examples I’ve found are all Asian countries who boast of “Asian values”.

Back to the comment made by the caller. It’s a little far-fetched, I think, to suppose that parents would sue their children over money. But in the world that we’re living in today, and especially because the caller specifically mentioned KL, there really might be such people. And then what do we do?