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?

The makings of electoral reform

When Bersih 2.0 first made their 8 demands for electoral reform, they were met with quite a bit of cynicism and scorn from the authorities, despite the strong show of support from the internet-savvy population. After the Bersih 2.0 rally, however, it was obvious that the Barisan Nasional government had to rethink their position and strategy. Despite the heavy lockdown of the city centre, tens of thousands of citizens showed up to show their support for a cleaner and fairer election process.

This meant that the BN could no longer ignore calls for electoral reforms. Hence, a Parliament Select Committee (PSC) was set up.

Last week, the PSC presented an interim report with 10 recommendations on how to bring about electoral reforms. Their recommendations were, in no particular order:

1. Allow use of indelible ink to prevent repeat voting
2. Early voting for armed forces and police
3. Allow Malaysians residing overseas to cast votes
4. Allow East Malaysians to vote in Peninsula, and vice versa
5. Change in voting area to be done via Statutory Declaration and submitted to the EC
6. Clean-up of electoral roll (including removing deceased, persons with identical MyKad numbers etc.)
7. Lengthen the period to check on additional voters
8. Revised voting process (including no serial numbers on ballot papers etc.)
9. Less restrictions on nomination process
10. Strengthen and ensure the independence of the Election Commission (EC)

What’s interesting to note is that from the 10 recommendations above, 4-5 of them echo Bersih 2.0′s 8 Demands (as underlined):

1. Clean the electoral roll
2. Reform postal ballot
3. Use of indelible ink
4. Minimum 21 days campaign period
5. Free and fair access to media
6. Strengthen public institutions
7. Stop corruption
8. Stop dirty politics

What this goes to show us, and the government, is that these are not issues and problems that the Bersih 2.0 steering committee plucked from nowhere. This is not about picking a fight just for the fun of it. These issues are real, and have to be addressed in order for us to have free and fair elections.

The first, most obvious issue, which really should be a non-issue, is that the EC has to seriously look into the electoral roll, and give it a good cleaning up. Multiple voters with same MyKad numbers and names of the deceased still on the electoral roll only proves that the EC has not been doing a good job in keeping the roll up to date. Perhaps in addition to just cleaning it up, the EC should be made to come up with a comprehensive process in which the roll is constantly kept updated, and mistakes like these are kept to barest minimum.

Another point worth making is the enabling of overseas Malaysians to cast their votes. Having myself just returned from New Zealand last year, this is one of the most important recommendations in the PSC’s list of 10. Not having the necessary set up to allow Malaysians residing overseas to vote is akin to robbing them of their right. It’s not about whether they are savvy about the political climate in Malaysia today – in fact, Malaysians overseas can easily access web portals to keep themselves abreast with local news – it’s about Malaysians being part of Malaysia’s democracy process, regardless of where they are.

Of course, there is much more that can be said about the improvements that should be done to the current election process – it looks like the EC will have a busy time ahead. For the time being, the 10 recommendations from the PSC’s interim report is going in the right direction. The PSC will be holding hearing sessions throughout Malaysia, with the last one on the 12th and 13th of January, 2012. Let’s see what their final report will give us.