No one could have missed his presence. He was loud. Even at that young age, he was already a boisterous champion of Malay rights. Ibrahim Ali was indeed an angry young man. We non-Malay students were more than annoyed with all the noise he was making. That was in the immediate aftermath of May 13 and that’s the way things were then. Everyone just tolerated unreasonableness.

Ibrahim Ali is still an angry man, even if he has grown older by 40 years or so. He has just launched a pribumi NGO called Perkasa, meaning “mighty“ in English. He’s still berating others over Malay rights and is as loud as ever. And still unreasonable.

He is not alone. Other racists too wanted to hold a May 13 rally. Thank goodness for fear of losing Chinese votes in the Sibu by-elections, the government scrambled to call it off.

But Ibrahim Ali or Perkasa are no racists, so they tell us.

“I am not a racist. We are only asking what is due to the Malays under Article 153 of the Constitution. We are not saying, don’t give this or that to the non-Bumiputra. Nowhere in my speeches do I say take this from the Chinese, don’t give that to the Indians,” the Perkasa chief who is also the independent MP for Pasir Mas was quoted as saying.

Racism is a sociological phenomenon. One dictionary defines racism as:

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

But that does not tell us what makes a person racist.

I have a family friend. She and her husband are Chinese to the core but they are very friendly to everyone they meet. Even to strangers.

One day the wife surprised us by saying that she has told he daughter who was then studying in Sydney in no uncertain terms that she is not to marry an Australian. Not even an ABC or Australian-born Chinese.

Is she a racist? Why, she wouldn’t even hurt a mouse. It’s just that she wanted her daughter to marry only a Malaysian Chinese. By no stretch of imagination would she ever consider herself a racist.

The Chinese in Malaysia call themselves Malaysian Chinese, Malaysians first. Both my paternal and maternal sides are Peranakan, or Straits-born Chinese. We speak a kind of Hokkien that is not spoken in China or for that matter anywhere else. It’s uniquely Penang-Hokkien with Malay incorporated words like sabun, tuala, sendok to mean soap, towel and ladle respectively. Our food has a dash of this and a garnish of that, so it’s called nyonya culinary; neither Chinese nor Malay but a blend in between. Very nice; hot and savoury at the same time. So we are equally at home being both Malaysian and Chinese at the same time. We are the original 1Malaysia before someone else plagiarised that idea.

When we were living in Australia, all the fair dinkums considered themselves Aussies regardless of whether they are Brits, Vietnamese, Italians, Chinese, Germans and so on. There are 142 ethnic groups in Australia and all of them consider themselves nothing other than Australians. Except for permanent residents or foreigners. So we identified ourselves by our nationality as Malaysians rather than Chinese. But that didn’t make us any less Chinese. We were glad no one called us pendatang or penumpang the six years we were there. That’s being civilised. That doesn’t mean that there are no racists in Australia. Sure there are, Pauline Hanson being a notorious example. And she was even an MP at one time.

We would become less parochial if we think of a Malaysia that has 182 ethnic groups. According to language mapping specialists, an Orang Asli language group in Pahang known as Mintil may have no remaining speakers. It is reckoned as one of the 473 languages in the world that are endangered or nearly extinct.

In Sarawak there are 46 living languages; of these 44 are living languages and two have no known speakers left or have become extinct. Among the endangered languages in that state are Punan Batu 1 that is spoken by an estimated 30 people in west of Long Geng, in Belaga. The other is Sian or Sihan with 50 speakers still alive; also in the Belaga region.

Sabah is said to have 52 living languages and none extinct but some like the Serudung Murut in the Tawau district may have only 350 speakers left, thus close to extinction.

I hope the next time before Datuk Ibrahim Ali draws his keris and brandish it in defence of Malay rights as he did at Perkasa’s recent launching, he will also consider the rights of all others including the Sians, the Serudung Muruts and the Mintils, especially when they are also primbumis like him. They too enjoy a special position under Article 153 of the Federal Constitution. In the face of extinction, there’s urgency to tend to their plight in merely having to survive as a people.

There are 15.47 million people who are eligible to vote. Of this, nearly one third or 4.39 million have not yet registered as voters. This potential new 4.39 million voters will make a significant difference in how the country is governed. Among them are Christians who have also not registered.

The Christian block of voters is the largest after Malay and Chinese votes. It is even higher than what MIC can deliver.

Yes, the Christian vote makes a real difference. It does not matter who or how you vote but vote you must. If you have not registered, do so now. If you know someone in your church who has not registered yet, get them to do so. Better still get your church to start a registration campaign.

Romans 13 talks about governments being ordained by God. You can ensure that the next government is a just and righteous one. Register now unless you choose to be remain an unbiblical Christian.

It is no coincidence that God has made it out that every one out of ten persons in Malaysia is a Christian. Don’t be a merely a statistic. Be a Christian voter. There are Christian lawmakers on both sides of the political divide. Make sure you vote the godly ones. That’s not only your right but your responsibility. Say yes to voter registration now.

As a strategy do not register in the Klang valley even if you work and live here. Register to vote in your hometowns to spread out the voters nationwide. My wife and I are registered to vote in Taiping. In the last general elections we drove back there to cast our votes. Our two votes were among the many that made the difference. It was worth driving all the way back to Taiping.

Yes, the tyranny of an iron-grip of a taken-for-granted two-thirds majority in Parliament can be broken. It must remain broken. Please register now as a voter. Every precious vote counts for your own future, that of the your children and their children and the future of the church in Malaysia. To God be the glory.

Some Christians who have emigrated made it a point to fly back just to vote at the last general elections. That cost them a lot in airfares. You need only to register and go to the nearest polling station at the next general elections. It costs you virtually nothing to exercise your right. If you can’t do even that, then I am afraid, there’s not much left.

We get the kind of government we deserve. If you are not a voter, you have chosen the worst form of government by default. We deserve a righteous government. Vote for one. God will do the rest.

By Bob Teoh

(Proud to be a voter since 1969)

Hebrew 10:11-16

at the old altar

much offerings the priest made

yet my sins remain

our High Priest offered

just one sacrifice to God

yet good for all time

that one act alone

has set me free forever

no more guilt and shame

a new covenant

in their hearts and minds inscribe

will I, says the LORD

My daughter was really pleased when she chanced upon her six-year-old praying: “Dear Lord, please let mummy buy a house with a swimming pool for us. Amen.”

“Oh, no! Not a swimming pool please Lord,” my daughter pleaded. Swimming pools cost a fortune to maintain even if it’s not used in autumn, winter and early spring as it’s too cold.

The little one has a knack for praying and soon her mummy begins to have second thoughts about not having a swimming pool. She talked it over with her husband and both thought maybe it’s not a bad idea to buy a house with a swimming pool. After all there are five in the family. The girl is already swimming like a fish and her younger brother has started swimming lessons. It would not be long before the seven-month- old takes to the water. Yes, it makes sense to buy a house with a pool after all.

They live in Sydney and property prices are sky-high. They can’t get anything less than a quarter of a million (Aussie dollars that is) if God decides to answer their daughter’s prayer for a swimming pool. Since my daughter is staying home to look after her three mites, her husband would have to bear the mortgage alone, possibly for the next 30 years. And that’s a life time.

Having a roof over heads is a basic human right. But we spend our entirely life fixated on owning our dream house instead of just a plain roof. I remember, once upon time, my wife and I were toying with the idea of having a dream home. It began without much drama. Since there were only three of us, we just needed a nice little cozy place. Of course, it would be nice if our dream home could be in quiet a cul-de-sac. It didn’t take very long for our little dream home to come with a little brook running through it and a long and winding garden path looping the quaint-looking house.

That was our dream home. The real one we are living in now is a little 850 sq.ft flat. Yes, there’s a common swimming pool so I guess that’s why the developers call it an apartment. My wife and I have moved house 24 times from the time we were born so we are contend to not to pursue our dream home. By the way, we are in the midst of packing up and ready to make our twenty-fifth move; this time to Thailand. Six weeks thereafter, we are scheduled to relocate to Indonesia for another three years or so.

Houses affect our lives more than anything else. We spend a life-time chalking up mortgages just to have a roof over our heads. And we are always on the lookout for a second and a retirement home as well while we are at it.

Even on our way to our graves we are still planning to buy some choice real estate in the world beyond. Some, by choice or by circumstances, may buy a columbarium to live in an urn in a pigeon hole. Others may opt to live in a rose garden of a memorial park and yet others still may make a grand statement by living in opulent graves complete with statues and expensive headstones.

It was just a few days ago that I helped conduct a funeral service for my wife’s relative who passed away in an old folks’ home, or a destitute home as what these public homes truly are. Her husband died a while ago and they have no children and that’s how she landed up in his home.

She came from a fairly well to do family and had lived in all sorts of houses from bangalows to shop houses and ordinary house. She was even living in London at one time.

In my short funeral message, I reminded those present that it does not matter now what sort of homes the deceased had been living in the past as she had gone to a better home. A dream one not made by human hands. Therein lies our hope.

The fast escalating dispute arises from perceptions of aggrieved parties. On the one hand, to some Muslims, the court’s decision and indeed the whole due process initiated buy the Catholic Church is perceived as an affront to the sanctity of Islam, particularly since it is the official religion of the land.

On the other hand, the originating summons filed by the Catholic Church against the government, arose out of its unhappiness over the manner in which the government is perceived to restrict its rights in the light of constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. The Sikh Gudwara is also unhappy as such restrictions affect it as well because the same word Allah for God is also used in their Scriptures.

The heart of the matter concerns the sanctity of the Federal Constitution. More than this, it can also impact the parallel system of Syariah law in an unpredictable manner. It may also involve the Sultans as heads of the Islamic administrations in their respective states. Already there have been suggestions to seek the intervention of the Sultans as keepers of the faith.

There have also been questions as to why the matter was allowed to be heard by a non-Muslim judge in the first place.

Other questions also cropped up. What if the judge was a Muslim and he or she came up with the same ruling? Would this not surely affect our administration of justice if we continue to raise such questions about the religious affiliation of our judges instead of their judicial competence?

Incidentally, another case also concerning the use of the Allah word brought about by the Sidang Injil Borneo (Borneo Evangelical Church) of Sabah is currently before a Muslim judge. Let us not impose on our judges conditions not envisaged nor required in their qualifications for judicial office.

Where do we go from here? Both parties apparently are determined and prepared to go through due process from Court of Appeal and then to the apex Federal Court. There are also suggestions that the matter should be placed before the Syariah Court as the competent authority. How that is to be done is indeed an interesting proposition.

Despite what many may claim, it is still not too late for a cooling-off period instead of rushing to matter up to the Court of Appeal. In the interim, the Home Ministry, whose earlier decision was the cause of the current suit, has still room to manouevre for an equitable solution that would not interfere with due process. That is what we call creative administrative law making decisions to which the minister is legally entitled to do so.

Interestingly, Madam Justice Lau may have provided a clue to such an approach in her judgment. In allowing the church continued use of the Allah word, there seemed to be a conditionality. Take a closer look and it may not be a bad judgment after all. We must not allow political expediency to take precedence over equity for justice to prevail. Therein lies our hope.

Those in the Jewish political and religious establishment in those days knew about this plan for it has been already announced by prophets like Isaiah some more than seven centuries earlier. As it came to pass, Jesus came to be born on Christmas day. Those in the know immediately recognised the Christ as the promised king.

The problem is there was already a King of the Jews – King Herod – so there was no room for this new kid on the block. Never mind the fact Herod was not really a king nor even a Jew but a puppet propped up by Caesar to ensure his domination over Palestine and West Asia, the western most flank of the Roam empire. Thus begins the conspiracy at the first Christmas.

Let’s take the story from the Bible from here:

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived unexpectedly in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.”

When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. So he assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people and asked them where the Messiah would be born. (Matthew 2:1-4 Holman Christian Standard Bible)

The Bible tells us Herod was “deeply disturbed” but it is difficult to fathom his state of mind as this adverbial phrase was originally written in New Testament Greek. Various English translations have rendered it as – very upset, terrified, greatly troubled, confused, thoroughly shaken and even greatly agitated. Some Bahasa Indonesia/Malaysia translations have put it as “terkejut, gelisah, bingung” or shaken, uneasy, confused.

As the story unfolds we find that Herod was later fuming mad when he found out the wise men had given him the slip. Instead of reporting back to him where Jesus was to be found so that he could kill his presumed rival, they went home the other way.

The conspiracy continues:

“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been outwitted by the wise men, flew into a rage. He gave orders to massacre all the male children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, in keeping with the time he had learned from the wise men. (Matthew 2:16).

However, Joseph and Mary having been warned by an angel of the Lord, had taken the child Jesus and fled into Egypt for safety.

Thus the first conspiracy to kill Jesus was fortuitously aborted. But that did not stop the final conspiracy against the Christ some three decades later. They nailed him to the cross.

But Jesus refused to play dead and rose from the dead three days later, to the horrors of his conspirators. Immediately new conspiracy theories had to be spun to nail down the resurrection as this was the central claim by Jesus to his divinity. Without the resurrection, Christianity would have been still born.

Fast forward. Two thousand years later, conspiracy theories still abound about the real Christmas and the real Jesus.

Just four days ago Sydney Morning Herald posted online a defence entitled “Christmas message holds true”, by Ross Cameron, the former federal member for Parramatta.

He wrote: “From whatever perspective we come, thinking people ought to be able to agree, the birth of Jesus was a good day for mankind. I suspect I may never quite shake the childlike hunch that there is some uniquely divine imprint on the central individual of the human story.”

Cameron’s piece immediately attracted 132 comments, mostly hostile, for the next 17 hours and 12 minutes following the online post:

…I am a thinking person and I don’t agree that the day Jesus was born was a good day.

…What a load of codswallop. Ross seriously considers how Jesus ‘rose from the dead’. Unbelievable.

…Why is the Herald even running this rubbish? By all means print intelligent articles on religion, but this is wrong on almost every count.

…And for the record, no reputable scholar would suggest that any aspect of the Nativity story can be historically accurate.

…This whole article is based on the assumption that ‘Jesus’ did actually exist.

…What a joke. No one really knows anything about Jesus.

…Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus.

…As a Muslim, I believe in the message that Jesus (may peace be upon him) brought to the world. It was indeed a message of hope and peace and it was directed to every human being that walked the earth then and now.

…I reckon Santa has to be the most influential guy! Apparently Jesus was so hated he was crucified. Not Santa! And Santa is just as faith dependent as Jesus.

Yes, it all boils to a matter of faith which the Bible defined as: “…faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. (Hebrews 11:1).

Is the Christmas conspiracy about Jesus or Santa? Either way it takes faith. The only difference is that Christ requires only a change of heart while Mr Ho!Ho!Ho! wants your credit card.

Merry Christmas and may you be blessed.

Originally published in MySinchew. Republished with permission.

Can we say this of our national day? To begin with we are never sure of our national day. Is it Merdeka Day on 31 August or Malaysia Day on 16 September? Where does our Malaysian story start? When we begin to forget our collective story, we begin to forget who we are.

Let’s get our story right.

The declaration of independence of the Federation of Malaya on 31 August 1957 was preceded by a Qur’anic doxology:

In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Universe and may the blessings and peace of Allah be upon His Messenger.

This clearly acknowledges that Islam is the official religion of the land but the country is a not an Islamic state by any stretch of imagination.

The newly independent nation is to be known as the Persekutuan Tanah Melayu or the Federation of Malaya comprising the Malay States of Johore, Pahang, Negri Sembilan, Selangor, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, Terengganu and Perak and the former Settlements of Malacca and Penang, both being previously dominions of the Imperial British Empire while the others were protectorates. The Malay characteristic has never been in doubt, hence Tanah Melayu.

The new nation is founded as a constitutional monarchy based on parliamentary democracy. The supremacy of the Constitution is never in doubt. No other parallel system of law is envisaged.

On this understanding and undertaking Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Abdul Hamid Halimshah, as the first Prime Minister of Malaya, proclaimed independence upon the principles of liberty and justice.

Six years later three other political entities; Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo or Sabah as it is now known entered into an agreement with Malaya to form an enlarged country of Malaysia on 16 September 1963. The Sultanate of Brunei had earlier declined to join the new federation. Singapore mutually separated two years later after an acrimonious short-lived affair.

The moot point to note is that Sabah and Sarawak did not join Malaysia. They entered into an agreement with Malaya to form Malaysia on 16 September 1963. So why are we celebrating 31 August as our national day?

The basis for putting together the Malaysia Agreement is the so-called 20 points presented by Sabah and Sarawak. For Sabah, the first of the 20 points was on religion:

While there was no objection to Islam being the national religion of Malaysia there should be no State religion in North Borneo, and the provisions relating to Islam in the present Constitution of Malaya should not apply to North Borneo.

So how far have we come after 46 years? Or it is 52 years?

Have we forgotten our shared vision of living in peace based on the principles of justice and liberty, of a constitutional monarchy, and a parliamentary democracy?

I am afraid we are a forgetful nation. We have forgotten that the supreme law of the land does not allow us to cane a woman for drinking beer in public even if she deserves a good 80 lashes under some subordinate laws.

I am afraid we forget too many things that are important and fundamental.

I am afraid we forget too easily that it was in the name of compassion and mercy that we proclaimed ourselves to be a free and independent nation.

I am afraid there’s little reason to celebrate Merdeka this year. Even the government has downscaled the celebrations apparently because of the (A) H1N1 flu, among other things.

Yes, I can still remember Australia Day even though I have given up my permanent residency Down Under. Yes I remind myself not forget to remember why there was a 31 August and a 16 September in the first place.

Dengan darahMu, Kau telah menebus bangsa Malaysia.

Originally published in MySinchew. Republished with permission.

Yasmin Ahmad
(1 July 1958 – 25 July 2009)

I was shocked by a scurrilous attack on the late Yasmin Ahmad by Kosmos, the tabloid published by the Utusan Melayu Group.

It was not only in bad taste but thoroughly wicked coming one day after her burial.

This is the lowest form of tabloid journalism yet. Both Kosmos and Utusan Melayu owe the family of the late Yasmin an apology.

I couldn’t think of anything else. This 1973 song by Elton John came to my mind:

Goodbye Norma Jean
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled

They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name

chorus

And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in

And I would have liked to have known you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did.

I knew Yasmin, like the millions of Malaysians, through her stories and her films but
I would have liked to have known you.

So I posted my thoughts on her blog. Unfortunately, it would not appear as it would need to have the approval of the blog owner, who is now dead.

Yasmin started her blog The Storyteller under the url http://yasminthestoryteller.blogspot.com/

This is what she said about herself:

I am optimistic and sentimental to the point of being annoying, especially to people who think that being cynical and cold is cool. Everyday, I thank Allah for everyday things like the ability to breathe, the ability to love, the ability to laugh, and the ability to eat and drink.

Yasmin uploaded her first posting on Thursday, 26 August 2004:

Am I sentimental, or just mental?

Late last year, a British book reviewer asked Arundhati Roy, the award-winning author of “The God of Small Things”, why she had “slipped” into such extreme sentimentality in her then latest book. I found her reply to the question at once refreshing and reassuring.

“Why are you so afraid of your sentiments?” she said, or words to that effect.

For years I had been pooh-poohed by people in the advertising industry for the unabashedly sentimental stories I tell in my Petronas festive season commercials. Ms Roy’s words reassured me that I needn’t apologise for any of it.

Why? Well, try this test. Step One, look back on your life. Step Two, remove every bit of sentimentality from it. What have you left? Only the worst life imagineable, that’s what.

And so, with or without Ms Roy’s encouragement, Yasmin-the-Incorrigible marches on.

First it was those saccharin tear-jerking, button-pressing Petronas ads for Independence Day. Then it was “Rabun” — that diabetic tale about a wrinkly old couple soaping each other in the garden.

Someone’s mother-in-law actually told her to turn off the tele immediately while “Rabun” was showing, because she couldn’t stand the sight of old people being lovey-dovey. (She doesn’t seem to mind the scenes of Malay husbands shouting at, slapping around, and two-timing their wives in Malay TV dramas, though.)

And now “Sepet”. Cynics and lovers of restraint and subtle cinema, please seriously consider bringing barf bags into the theatre with you — we have a scene where young man asks young lady, “How long do you think it takes to fall in love?”, to which young lady replies, “A minute.”

Better still, don’t go! Give it a miss. Don’t waste your eight bucks, only to walk out spitting and cursing afterwards.

BUT.

If, like me, you feel there just aren’t enough hearts worn on sleeves these days… that crying at movies is something to be happy about simply because you still can… and that the demands of the day would be a lot more bearable if we held back from getting angry and being nasty, but jumped at every chance to be sweet and kind… then I’d like you to look out for my next sentimental Petronas commercial, and find time, if you can, to see my next film.

This post attracted immediately 39 comments and her blog grew tremendously popular. Four years later on 31 Dec 2008, started another blog Storyteller Part 2 using a new url http://yasminthefilmmaker.blogspot.com

Yasmin, like many Malaysians, was shocked by the suspicious death-in-custody of Teoh Beng Hock, 30, the political secretary to an Opposition lawmaker. He fell mysteriously from the 14th floor of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, where he had earlier assisted in an investigation into an alleged misappropriation of constituency fund by his boss on Thursday 16 July 2009.

On that very day Yasmin posted her blog:

Someone please wake me from this nightmare and tell me that this did not happen in my country and that Teoh Beng Hock is safe at home with his family.

Six days later Yasmin posted her last blog at just past midnight with a YouTube :

A song of longing I’m hoping to use for the ending in Wasurenagusa.

Ahmad was working on two international productions at the time of her death, including Wasurenagusa, a co-production with Japan’s Wa Entertainment which won the first prize, the Pusan award, at the 2008 Pusan Promotion Plan. It tells the story of a Malay girl on a visit to her ailing grandmother in Japan.

The YouTube song she posted was Puccini’s Turandot rendition by Maria Callas as the legendary Chinese princess whose icy heart is melted by the power of love.

The following day Yasmin suffered a stroke. After more than 48 hours after the surgery, Yasmin Ahmad succumbed to her injury passed away at 11.25pm on 25 July and was laid to rest the next day. She was 51 and is survived by her husband, Abdullah Tan Yew Leong.

Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did.

Indeed DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang whose party had campaigned vigorously for it immediately dismissed the RCI as announced today as an outright as a political sleight of hand.

Although the terms of reference for the royal probe have yet to be announced, Lim has already concluded: “There will be no Royal Commission of Inquiry into the causes of Teoh’s death although an inquest would be held.”

The question is Lim jumping the gun? How did he come to this conclusion?

Prime Minister Najib Razak in announcing the Cabinet decision did give some inkling that the RCI may not be what the man in the street may have in mind – a full probe with no holds barred.

Bernama quoted him as saying a Royal Commission is to be set up to scrutinise the mode of questioning employed by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to determine whether human rights have been violated during the questioning of the deceased. He was the political aide to a DAP Selangor state exco member, Ean Yong Hian Wah, and was called as a witness to an alleged misappropriation of a paltry sum of RM2,400 of constituency fund. He was subsequently found dead apparently having fallen to his death from the 14th floor of the building where the Selangor head office of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission is located in Shah Alam.

Najib then went on to add that the Cabinet, at its meeting today, also decided that an inquest be held next week to determine the cause of death of Teoh.

He also said that Home Ministry and the police had been instructed to complete investigations into the case as soon as possible, and that a report on the matter would be made public.

He promised the government, “…would do whatever was necessary to find out the truth and that he himself would convey the outcome of the investigation to Teoh’s family “ and assured that “the process of investigation will be forthright and transparent.”

Responding to reporters’ question, he said the police could wrap up the investigation “very soon.”

He also said it was up to the court to decide who should be the magistrate to conduct the inquest but he expected the inquest to start sometime next week.

Thus far, a few things are clear. Four investigations are to be pressed into service – by the Home Ministry, Police, Coronial court, and the Royal Commission. The first two are essentially internal probes but the Prime Minister has promised the findings will be made public. The other two are public and legal hearings.

What would be the sequence of holding all four investigations? Probably the ministry and Police probes will go first, followed by the coronial hearing and then the Royal Commission. But they may in some ways criss-cross one another only to complicate an already very complicated situation.

How far the RCI will go depends on its terms of reference . The findings of the three probes before it would also have a material bearing on the final outcome.

The two internal findings can be open to dispute up to the Royal Commission stage. But the coronial probe is a legal court finding which, although rare, can only be challenged through a judicial review. So will this hold up or constrict the Royal Commission? Maybe.

Is Lim Kit Siang right in dismissing the proposed Royal Commission? It depends. If the focus of the RCI is “to scrutinise the mode of questioning employed by the MACC to determine whether human rights have been violated during the questioning of the deceased,” then the outcome can be just that.

The Cabinet decision indicates that “the inquest into the death is left to the coronial court which is normally conducted by a magistrate into, among other things, unexplained deaths as Teoh’s case.

A coronial inquest can be by jury like in some Commonwealth countries but in Malaysia, there is not jury trial. Although the coroner’s finding is legal, it is not a trial, so the coroner cannot and must not blame anyone. So who will look for who to blame? We will get the answer in due course, no doubt.

What happens at the RCI stage? If they return a finding that MACC had indeed violated the investigation procedures or techniques, then it can either apportion blame and prescribed punishment or propose new preventive mechanisms or both. Will the commission apportion blame or guilt for Teoh’s death? That depends whether the scope of their terms of reference allow them to do so.

Will the public outrage over Teoh’s unexplained death be appeased by a no holds barred RCI? It all depends on the yet to be announced terms of reference.

Although this is MACC’s first death in custody, there have been 1,353 custodial deaths in the country thus far, according to social scientist Farish A. Noor. There have been nine Royal Commission of Inquiries, all of which have not been up to reasonable public expectations.

The RCI into Teoh’s unexplained death is the first litmus test and opportunity for 1Malaysia to put its best foot forward. Let’s wait and see and not jump into conclusion. There is yet room for cautious optimism.

Originally published in MySinchew. Republished with permission.

no politics please
someone shouted back at him
that really riled me

someone’s dead damn it
if we can’t be right what’s left
don’t outrage me please

A valediction forbidding political correctness. Teoh Beng Hock plunged to his death at the Selangor head office of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission on July 2009 in mysterious circumstances.