“When the chips are down, Rela will be with this government to defend the country. Do not cause havoc in this country because the 2.8 million Rela members will not stand idly by and watch the country descend into chaos,” he thundered to the noisy approval from a crowd of 30,000 Rela members gathered in Kuala Lumpur last Saturday.

Najib seems at variance with his Transformation Minister Idris Jala. The GTP roadmap for combating crime requires Rela to help police keep“omnipresence” in 50 identified crime hot spots in the Kuala Lumur, Selangor, Johor and Penang.

But Najib talks about using Rela as a vanguard or vigilante when Umno or Barisan’s chips are down and he wants Rela to contain demonstrators out to create public disorder.

How do we expect a rag-tag army of volunteers to rein in demonstrators when even the specially trained red-helmeted FRU could not handle the peaceful Bersih 2.0 Rally last year without resorting to brutality? And Bersih 2.0 was not even out to create public disorder at that.

There is hardly any time nor resources to train the volunteer army. According to the GTP roadmap, less than 400 Rela/JPAM personnel were trained and deployed in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor in August and September 2009; about 280 personnel were trained and were deployed in Penang and Johor in October and November 2009. That’s a tiny drop in the ocean of 2.8 million Rela volunteers. If it takes just ten hours to train one Rela, it would take 3,240 man-years to train all of them round the clock! What we likely to get is a largely untrained but a vigilante force sanctioned by Barisan.

The recruitment for volunteers for this auxiliary security force shot up almost five-fold from 600,000 to the current 2.8 million within two years. It is the biggest peace time civilian mobilisation and is 25 times bigger than the country’s standing army as well as that of the police force.

The bulk of the new Rela recruits are from frontline states. Selangor has half a million, Penang (220,328), Kelantan (222,910), Perak (271,396), Sabah (258,162) and Sarawak (199,991) as at 31 July 2011. This works out to be two thirds of Rela’s total membership. Given that in the 2008 elections, some marginal seats were won or lost by less than 50 votes, the extraordinary Rela presence in these states is more than a concern.

This massive build-up seems extraordinarily strange especially when Malaysia already has a better police personnel to population ratio than even industrial countries. For every 100,000 persons, Malaysia has 301 policemen. According to UN criminal justice statistics, this is higher than Denmark (196), Canada (200), South Korea (202), Japan (203), Sweden (206), U.S. (229) and Australia (247).

On top this, the country also has its civil defence force of 67,000 as well as the Police Volunteer Corp, both of which are much more disciplined and experienced than Rela.

RELA has a bad reputation having drawn flak from foreign attention for its human rights abuses of nabbing aliens without valid entry permits for a bounty of RM80 per head captured.

In 2007, Human Rights Watch called for RELA to be disbanded, “The government has set up what’s little more than a vigilante force to target foreigners. Given RELA’s repeated abuses, it should be disbanded right away “said Brad Adams, its Asia director.

In that same year the Malaysian Bar Council passed a resolution at its Annual General Meeting, calling for the repeal of the legislation that established RELA and extended the powers of RELA officers to, amongst other things, enforce immigration law.

Ikatan Relawan Rakyat Malaysia (RELA) or the Peoples’ Volunteer Alliance was established on 11 January 1972 under the (Essential Powers) Emergency Act 1964 – Essential Rules (Ikatan Relawan Rakyat) (Amendment) 2005.

This law presumably will be defunct within six months after the repeal of the emergency declarations by Parliament last September and is to be replaced by what Najib calls a new Rela Act presumably in March. But he gave no details.

Another worrisome sign is that the Home Ministry has recently installed a RM6.65 million high-tech virtual shooting range for Rela youth cadets or teenagers to handle simulation firearms. The centre at the Rakan Muda Complex in Kuala Lumpur can cater to up to 14,400 trainees a year.The virtual firing range will run on South Korea’s Intelligent Marksmanship Training Simulation System (IMTS) for its police force.

Added to this is the claim by Perkasa, the extreme Malay right wing group, that a Rela subgroup called Briged Setia Negara had been established by Selangor Perkasa chief, Abdullah Mansor, in December last year. This was later denied by Rela.

Rela is also a strain on the Home Ministry budget as it would cost millions to maintain such a big and superfluous outfit. Najib has also proposed to increase Rela allowance by RM2 per hour. This will effectively double the full time volunteer allowance for non-officers to between RM800 and RM900 a month which is more than what a ketua kampung or longhouse tuai rumah gets.

The good shepherd knows his sheep. He knows all that there is to know about us – 100%.

His sheep know him. How we are to do this is a vast subject which we cannot deal with here. Obviously, the bible, the church and our conscience are key factors.

On earth, we shall never reach the ideal of knowing the good shepherd just as the Father knows him and he knows the Father. Their knowledge of each other is perfect and that is the goal for which we should be aiming.

The good shepherd does not only know his sheep, he lays down his life for the sheep. That is how much he cares for us. This should give us an even greater desire to obey and love him.

The good shepherd has other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. He must bring them also. He uses us to carry out this task and retirees (and not only retirees) must make time for intelligent and widespread prayer – including both for the persecuted Christians and their persecutors. Prayer leaflets and the internet provide plenty of topics for which to pray.

As I continue in the last stage of my earthly journey, I find the following song both meaningful and also one which I should seek to put into practice!

The timing is perfect. The question was posed on January 17 and this answer (albeit inadvertently) came in within two days. What remarkable service! I have no doubt whatsoever that the minister was honest and open in making the point. The reason he reportedly gave was that such revelation regarding assets of ministers and their immediate family “may endanger them” (again as reported by Malaysiakini.com). Here again I am not questioning the minister’s concern; in fact to a certain extent, I can even agree with him on his concern.

What concerns me is that in being open in the way he had spoken about the issue of asset declarations by government ministers, the prescription he made, nevertheless, was to revert to the practice of secrecy. According to reports, the minister had said that such asset declarations by cabinet ministers are to be made only to the prime minister and only if there are allegations of corruption, also to the MACC (Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission). I am afraid that this falls far short of required good governance protocols and such a prescription gives little if any confidence or satisfaction to many already very concerned Malaysians who fear for the resources, financial or natural, which they have entrusted to the powers that be.

Like anybody else, including cabinet ministers, I too believe that we human beings need and should have a certain degree of privacy without which life will be rather uneasy and troubling. But personal privacy can never be absolute. Certainly not to the extent that personal freedom and privacy will engender as well as hide crimes committed against others. Many countries including our own are fond of telling other countries to mind their own business or back yard and not try to sound the alarm about dirt in our garden. While there is some credibility in such arguments, if I should be committing spouse or child abuse in the privacy of my own house, should my neighbours who come to know about this remain forever silent? Is this good neighbourliness? If there is a fire in my neighbourhood, I shouldn’t call the fire brigade because it isn’t my own house on fire?

Self-monitoring or internal monitoring isn’t sufficient to fight crime or put out fires (of all kinds). Prevention is better than cure. If given the choice, and we do have the choice in a democracy, I would prefer that the government in my country does not have the choice to monitor itself. I say, to “SAVE THE PEOPLE’S MONEY” which is critically important for our present generation as well as our future generations, holders of public office must be required to publicly declare assets in their names as well as their immediate family members’ names.

If I can’t or won’t do this, then public office is not for me. To a certain extent, it may be unfair that servants of the people are forced to surrender their right to privacy. For certain, there are out there unfair critics who will abuse good governance practices and processes for their own benefits. Indeed, some critics will abuse such or for that matter whatever available facility to put others down. In this respect, education is required by people on both sides of any argument.

Be that as it may, to fight corruption involving public money and other resources, self and internal monitoring isn’t enough and cannot be a safeguard. If the people’s resources are to be secured, we will need the resolve to have public disclosure of personal assets alongside other effective instruments of accountability to ensure that no sin against the people will be effectively kept from exposure and discovery. In this matter, secrecy will only encourage more crimes against the people with impunity.

(from http://ongohing.wordpress.com)

Firstly, Saiful is not the victim. The charge against Anwar was not for rape but for sodomy. The prosecution did not try to prove that Anwar raped Saiful. Merely that sodomy had taken place.

And so for Saiful, his father, the Deputy Prime Minister, and TDM to call for an appeal against the verdict, is not a call for justice as we would understand justice. It is a call to continue to persecute Anwar.

Secondly, as Kim Quek wrote in his article, the fact that these samples, 56 hours in the rectum, and another 48 hours in the office of the police investigating officer, at tropical room temperature, could still be found in “pristine” condition (as reported by the Malaysian government chemist) pointed irresistibly to the fact that these were not the original swabs retrieved from the complainant’s rectum, but fresh substitutes presented to the laboratory.

In not as many words, this was the finding of the judge as well.

Simply put, the public does not believe there is a case against Anwar. And so to pursue an appeal is to spend Malaysian tax ringgit to continue to persecute Anwar.

Finally the insinuation that Pakatan wants to fight for “the freedom to sodomize”.

Sometimes what your enemies say about you carries the most weight.

Obviously the battle to defend the rights of a “despised” minority is one that pays little dividend but carries a great deal of downside. Anwar could easily have sidestepped the issue during the BBC interview but he said, “We Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia generally believe and are committed to support the sanctity of marriage between men and women, but we should not be seen to be punitive and consider the archaic law as relevant,” acknowledging that religious and sexual differences should not be grounds for punishment.

One accusation by the religious establishment of the day against Jesus was that he was “a friend of sinners.” Jesus embraced the charge, saying that only the sick needed a doctor.

If Pakatan is, as charged, a party that fights for freedom, defending the rights of the minority, even at a cost to their own interests, then it is a party that I am interested in. To TDM, freedom is “to sodomize” and is merely western liberalism. Clearly he, and his party, is not interested in defending freedom. The persecution of students seeking their rights and the heavy-handed prosecution of another student for what he wrote in his facebook, obviously in jest, are just further evidence of this. Arrested and investigated for criminal intimidation, the Star reported that the police are investigating if he has any terrorist links. The Sun quoted the IGP as saying that the student is incapable of carrying out any bombing. In the meantime, the student is released on police bail, on “humanitarian grounds”, to take his exams. The offense, according to the Star, and the subject of 3 police reports, is a posting on his Facebook saying, “najib is coming to our campus… let’s bomb his helicopter…”

When I get to the polling booth this coming general elections, the question among others that I will ask myself will be: Which of the two contesting political party coalitions will be more likely to move against those who have allegedly committed crime against the country by misusing the people’s financial resources?

This issue concerns me because, despite the fact that I myself may no longer be poor, it is unconscionable that so many Malaysian families are today still deprived of so many essential goods and services in their daily lives while some in positions of power or have connections with those in positions of power seem to be able to live it up either by paying themselves exorbitant salaries, packages and bonuses or awarded contracts which are worth a lot.

Bona fide business must of course be given space to start and grow to create jobs and enhance taxes to increase the nation’s wealth which in turn can generate work opportunities and more essential goods and services for all our people. But there must be opportunities for qualified Malaysians to bid for government contracts through openly conducted open tender.

Issues of good governance are of great consequence because no country is so wealthy that it can allow an unmitigated drain on the people’s resources and yet not have adverse effects on national development and impact on its people. If we have “Save Water” and “Save Electricity” campaigns which we as the people must take very seriously, can we as a nation afford not to have a “Save the People’s Money” campaign?

In a “Save the People’s Money” campaign, we should not just be so zealous about going after pick-pockets while neglecting to focus on those who go after very much higher stakes whose targets are the country’s resources no less. Call it “gravy train” or any other name, this is sinful by God’s value and poor families are our constant reminder that we cannot allow this practice to continue.

It is no use comparing our country favourably with other peoples’ countries. I don’t want my country just to be better off than a country like ….

When I get to the polling booth this coming general elections, I will be asking myself how much better off my country can be and how many more poor families can be alleviated from their daily hardship and anxieties if only we stop powerful people from putting their fingers into the people’s coffers.

The way to this desirable and necessary goal is that I join other Malaysian voters to return the next government of Malaysia who is more likely to bring those guilty of sinning against the people’s resources to book. Let the investigation and the subsequent trial be fair. Accord those accused proper and full opportunity to defend themselves. Let there be no lynching, libel or character assasination but a fair investigation, prosecution and trial.

But there must be guarantee that crimes against the people will face just retribution so that such crimes against the people will be stymied.

(from http://ongohing.wordpress.com)

2. Mohd Saiful
Anwar’s accuser said, “As a servant of God, I believe that everything happens for a reason and God’s plan is certainly more powerful than man’s. My faith and confidence in God remains strong.”

3. The Prime Minister
Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said that the verdict proved the independence of the judiciary and cleared the Government of accusations of conspiracy.

4. The Bar Council
It welcomed Anwar Ibrahim;s acquittal by the High Court on his sodomy charge, stressing that the decision was made in accord with the evidence presented.

5. The Human Rights’ Watch
Phil Robertson, an observer with New York-based Human Rights’ Watch, said: “Anwar was acquitted on charges that should never have been brought in the first place.”

We do well to remember that every time in the criminal courts when the accuser and the accused, under oath, make conflicting statements, that there is a God in heaven – the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. He both knows the truth and acts justly.

Don’t be misled, a swallow doth not a summer maketh. We are still deep in the winter of an emasculated judiciary frozen since the Mahathir ice age. We need more evidence of courage and boldness from our judges before we can hope to thaw into a new spring.

But credit must be given to where it’s due. Recent judgments indicate some judges are willing to go into early retirement or be put into the cold storage by going the extra mile in their adjudication. The High Court’s judgment against the government in the Allah case is a case in point. There are a few others that are noteworthy.

The Najib administration must undo what Mahathir has done to the judiciary for the 23 years he was Prime Minister. Najib’s predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, made a feeble attempt by apologising to the former Lord President Tun Salleh Abbas and other judges sacked by Dr Mahathir in the late 1980s when they didn’t deliver the judgment that Mahathir wanted. Abdullah didn’t survive the wrath of Mahathir over this, among other things. In stepped Najib, Dr M’s original choice as successor.

But Najib must stand on his own now. One of Mahathir’s muzzles on the judiciary was the removal of the power of judicial review of executive action. One by one, new legislations were introduced or existing ones amended by taking away the court’s inherent power. From the Internal Security Act to the Industrial Relations Act, this phrase was inserted: The minister’s decision shall be final and shall not be challenged in any court of law. Thus began our slide into a judiciary dictated by the whims and fancies of an increasingly autocratic executive branch of His Majesty’s government.

Najib must restore to the judiciary what is rightly theirs to act as check and balance in a parliamentary democracy by removing all anti-judicial review clauses from the country’s laws soonest possible.

Najib must also bite the bullet by reviewing the controversial amendment to Article 121 of the Federal Constitution curtailing judicial power in that “the (civil) courts shall have no jurisdiction in respect of any matter within the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts.”

The bone of contention is that this amendment impairs the sanctity of the Federal Constitution as in Article 4 (1) in that “This Constitution is the supreme law of the Federation and any law passed after Merdeka Day (31 Aug 1957) which is inconsistent with the Constitution, shall to the extent of the inconsistency, be void.”

This constitutional amendment has posed a serious problem to those seeking conversion and apostasy hearings to the extent that it infringes on their rights regarding fundamental liberties like freedom of religion provided under Article 11.

The Syariah amendment known as Article 121(1a) has served as a convenient escape clause for some judges to avoid hearing such cases and to hide behind the judicial sarong of their cowardice.

An increasingly arrogant and powerful Attorney General adds to the maladministration of justice through selective prosecution and manipulation of due process like delaying or expediting hearings to suit the establishment’s convenience.

Take for instance the Catholic Herald’s Allah case which the High Court ruled against the government that it had no inherent right to prohibit others from using the word “Allah” to refer to God. There are two other similar cases filed much earlier than the Herald case but these have been held in abeyance because the AG has filed an application to the Court of Appeal for a review. But it has been more than two years now since the Herald judgment and yet the AG is in no hurry. This robs plaintiff of their judicial victory. Justice delayed is justice denied.

In the interim, people of other faiths particularly Christians are still prevented from using the word “Allah”. This is a travesty of justice considering that two thirds of the Christians in Malaysia are bumiputras who use the Alkitab or Malay Bible where God is referred to as “Allah”. Mahathir banned the Alkitab in 1981 five months upon coming to power as PM. He claimed that it posed a threat to national security. It is still under a restricted ban through various extra-judicial decrees and even under Najib’s ludicrous 10-point solution to the Alkitab problem. The Alkitab remains a threat to national security.

Make no mistake about it; the judiciary is still in the winter of emasculation. But my prayer and hope is for a new spring. I remain optimistic it will come – sooner than later.

Bob Teoh is a retired journalist and author of the book “Allah – more than a word.” He now lives in Indonesia but plans to return to vote in the forthcoming general elections.

An unusual but very meaningful and relevant blessing for the year ahead!

Since I do not know the details of the suit, it could well be that Justice Rohana had confined herself to the case itself, without any consideration of any other relevant issues. But given the nature of the suit, it could hardly be claimed that she was not aware that the Malaysian constitution gives every eligible citizen the right to vote and denying overseas citizens “absent voter” status tantamounts to denying them that right because it forces them to return to the country, fulfill the residency requirement, in order to vote. What the 6 want is the right to vote, in this case, as “absent voters”.

Once again, let us check the relevant article in the constitution so as to make an informed opinion.

Article 119 (1) says:

One has to appreciate that when you define a right for every citizen, only a well-defined exclusion should be allowed to exclude any citizen from that right. This is commonsensical.

“Every citizen who is 21years and above” and “is resident or if not so resident, is an absent voter” is entitled to vote, “unless he is disqualified”.

The issue about “residency or absent voter” is that everybody is to vote under a specific constituency and that no person should vote in more than 1 constituency in the same election.

The problem comes in Clause 4:

(4) In this Article “qualifying date” means the date by reference to which the electoral rolls are prepared or revised, and “absent voter” means in relation to any constituency any citizen who is registered as an absent voter in respect of that constituency under the provisions of any law relating to elections.

Which defines “absent voter” as one who is “registered as an absent voter in respect of that constituency under the provisions of any law relating to elections”.

The question is whether the requirement for registration is intended to deny any qualified citizen from his or her right to vote, or whether the requirement for registration is intended to ascertain which constituency that absent voter has to vote in. Commonsense tells us that if the constitution wants to deny anyone the right to vote, that would have come under Clause 3 and therefore Clause 4 is not intended to exclude anyone who wants to be registered as an absent voter. The whole idea of being registered as an absent voter is to determine the constituency that the absent voter is to vote in. The intention of Clause 4 is administrative, to ensure that electoral rolls are properly kept and the constituency that absent voters are to vote in is clearly stated in the electoral rolls because, “no person shall in the same election vote in more than one constituency.”

Thus the constitution clearly gives overseas citizens the right to vote as absent voters, as long as they are properly registered in the electoral rolls.

The questions I ask are these:

1. Is it the duty of the High Court judge to consider whether the right to vote has been denied to overseas citizens? Is the case before her “ludicrous” as she describes it?
2. Is it in the power of the Election Commission to deny anyone of their right to vote, where such right already exists, or is it their duty to ensure that as many as possible who wants to vote will have the opportunity to vote? The mechanism to vote from overseas as absent voters has existed for a long time, enabling overseas students, armed forces and civil servants to vote. Is it not the duty, ethos, of the Election Commission to extend that mechanism to as many overseas citizens who want to exercise their right to vote?
3. Is it the duty of the elected government to ensure that laws that are passed do not inadvertently deny citizens their rights? And if confronted with such a case, are they not duty-bound to rectify the situation as soon as possible?

It seems that we have people working for us in the government, appointed to highly responsible positions and paid by tax revenue, or elected by us, who do not care about the citizen’s right to vote and the issue is now left to organizations such as Bersih, who are made up of ordinary citizens, unpaid and harassed by those who are in government. This is unacceptable.

The only resort left is to vote out the present government, and hope that the next government will care about our rights as citizens, enshrined in the constitution. And if the next government do not look after our rights and welfare, we should vote them out too, because the duty of any government is to look after the rights and welfare of citizens.

———-

Addendum: Article 119 of Malaysian Constitution

119.

(1) Every citizen who-
(a) has attained the age of twenty- one years on the qualifying date; and
(b) is resident in a constituency on such qualifying date or, if not so resident, is an absent voter,
is entitled to vote in that constituency in any election to the House of Representatives or the Legislative Assembly unless he is disqualified under Clause (3) or under any law relating to offences committed in connection with elections; but no person shall in the same election vote in more than one constituency.

(2) If a person is in a constituency by reason only of being a patient in an establishment maintained wholly or mainly for the reception and treatment of persons suffering from mental illness or mental defectiveness or of being detained in custody he shall for the purpose of Clause (1) be deemed not to be resident in that constituency.

(3) A person is disqualified for being a elector in any election to the House of Representatives or the Legislative Assembly if-
(a) on the qualifying date he is detained as a person of unsound mind or is serving a sentence of imprisonment; or
(b) having before the qualifying date been convicted in any part of the Commonwealth of an offence and sentenced to death or imprisonment for a term exceeding twelve months, he remains liable on the qualifying date to suffer any punishment for that offence.

(4) In this Article “qualifying date” means the date by reference to which the electoral rolls are prepared or revised, and “absent voter” means in relation to any constituency any citizen who is registered as an absent voter in respect of that constituency under the provisions of any law relating to elections.

In Romans 12:15, we are told,

‘When others are happy, be happy with them. If they are sad, share their sorrow.’ (THE LIVING BIBLE).

As we enter 2012, we can, in a tiny way, share in the life of Asia Bibi. Each day, we should give thanks and pray for her and her family.