(AP: this is another case of gaining fame/notoriety by aRsEsociation:( If you have it, flaunt it! If you don't have it, cook up sumthin'! Please attribute the precedent to Desi, knottyaSsusual:)
When I started my blog Desiderata-YL Chong, nicked also My Blue H'aven, I quoted often enough from The Bard. Yes, I acknowledged too and I offered no apologies for the fact that I was more anglicised in language and culture than Malaysianised because we were of THAT generation when English lit was our compulsory diet in school -- ask Sdr Din Merican, Bernard Khoo, Anwar Ibrahim, et al.
So it was gratifying that indeed the PM-in-waiting was also joined by his mentor ertswhile comrade, ex-PM Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in quoting Shakespeare's in putting forth issues wit' gusto. Remember his famous "There is someting rotten in the state of Denmark"? when the state of NegaraKu under his successor Pak Lah was "disdainfully" (my word, okay!) compared with Denmark.
Now I present to you another politician on the rise -- and to be on the rise you must learn the Bard's opus JULIUS CAESAR -- PKR Treasurer General William Leong, a first time MP for Selayang, offering his analysis of the current PM's dilemma, caught in an unenviable position of having crossed the Rubicon, and then......
From cpiasia.net
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Abdullah Badawi: Wading Back from the Rubicon
Media Monitor
Written by William Leong Jee Keen
Monday, 22 September 2008 06:42
By William Leong, MP for Selayang
September 20, 2008
Thank God, Teresa Kok (DAP MP for Seputeh) has been released from the ISA. The Abdullah Badawi administration’s lame excuse of not finding any reason to detain her further sounds as ludicrous as Sin Chew's reporter Tan Hoon Cheng’s detention is for her protection. Unfortunately, Malaysia Today editor/blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin is still detained. Since the crack down began last week, mosques, churches, temples, places of worship and all other places where the public congregate, have seen vigils and prayers for the three detainees and for our country. All religions have in the course of their development been victims of oppression. They are therefore familiar with OPPRESSION and are quick to recognize one when it happens. But there is a word that is more appropriate than oppression to describe the sinful act of the Badawi administration in the misuse of the ISA, it is TYRANNY!
In ancient Rome, the legions of centurions were for the protection of Rome and thus were required to be encamped beyond the shores of the river Rubicon. Caesar in leading his legions to cross the Rubicon used the legions not for Rome but for his personal goal and changed Rome from a republic to a tyranny, an act finally punished by his assassination. Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in using the ISA, not for the protection of Malaysia but for protecting his waning administration after having crossed the Rubicon last week. Once crossed, Prime Minister Badawi has to bear the consequences of his conduct and releasing the detainees after 18 hours or after one week is not going to change the effect of his act. One cannot wade back when the Rubicon is crossed.According to all religious tradition, once it is established beyond doubt that a particular ruler is a tyrant or a particular regime is tyrannical, it forfeits the moral right to govern and the people acquire the right to resist and to find the means to protect themselves from injustice and oppression. In other words a tyrannical regime has no moral legitimacy. It may be the de facto government and it may even be recognized by other governments and therefore be de jure or legal government. But if it is a tyrannical regime, it is from a moral point of view an illegitimate government.At what point does a government become a tyrannical regime?A tyrant is some one who exercises authority without respect for its function of supplying the conditions for a normative order. In the philosopher John Locke’s view, “Wherever the power that is put in any hands for the government of the people and the preservation of their properties is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary irregular commands of those that have it, there it presently becomes a tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many… Wherever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another’s harm.” The traditional Latin definition of a tyrant is “hostis boni communis” - an enemy of the common good.
The purpose of all government is the promotion of what is called the common good. To promote the common good is to govern in the interest of, and for the benefit of, all the people. Many governments fail to do this at times. There might be this or that injustice done to some of the people. And such acts of injustice would indeed be criticized. But such lapses would not make a government an enemy of the people, a tyrant.To be an enemy of the people a government would have to be hostile to the common good in principle. Such a government would be acting against the interest of the people as a whole and permanently. This would be the clearest in cases where the very policy of a government is hostile towards the common good and where the mandate to rule in the interest of all the people is used to govern for the interest of only some of the people. Such a government would be in principle irreformable. Any reform that it might try to introduce would not be calculated to serve the common good but to serve the interest of the selected few.
The justification for having the Internal Security Act ceased long ago. The need to protect the country from the communist insurgency ended with the laying down of arms by Chin Peng. The ISA has been used to detain opposition members. The use of the ISA is not only against the three detained but also against all of the people. It is to warn the people that this administration will not tolerate dissent. The ISA is the tool used in the politics of fear. It is not used for the common good but to preserve the position of the few. When the ISA was again invoked last week, there were some voices of dissent from cabinet ministers but only one minister, Dato Zaid Ibrahim showed that he means what he said and does what he means. The rest once again proved that what they do is far from what they say. Each of them and more so by the inelegant silence of the rest shows that all of them that remains in Badawi’s administration have also lost their moral authority to govern. They have mortgaged their souls for power.
A tyrannical regime cannot continue to rule for very long without becoming more and more violent. As the majority of the people begin to demand their rights and to put pressure on the tyrant, so will the tyrant resort more and more to desperate, cruel, gross and ruthless forms of tyranny and repression. The reign of a tyrant always ends up as a reign of terror. It is inevitable because from the start, the tyrant is an enemy of the common good. It will use repressive measures, detentions, bans, prohibitions, propaganda, states of emergency and other tyrannical and desperate methods. Hamilton writes “In all ages the favourite and most formidable instruments of tyranny is unwarranted searches and seizures, the arrest and punishment of men without trial”. A regime that is in principle the enemy of the people cannot suddenly begin to rule in the interest of all the people. It can only be replaced by another government, one that will govern in the interest of all the people.
William Leong Jee Keen
Treasurer General Parti Keadilan Rakyat
Member of Parliament for Selayang
20th September 2008
*******************************************************
UPDATEd @5.29PM:
I surfed over to blogger matey rockybru's, and when I saw the ****NEWS BREAK, I was stumped for a moment.
May the GOoD Lord bring some sense to these BN-UMNO leaders still living in denial post March 8, 2008.
Mayhaps reading Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR will teach them to realise its the BRUTUS within their own ranks who will commit murder. Not the Rakyat at large -- they are mostly common folks who wish to see the country progress and they can stand up upright and proud to declare: I AM A MALAYSIAN!
****They have sent RPK to Kamunting
Two-year detention, sans trial. I was hoping that Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar would do the right thing and not use the Internal Security Act on Raja Petra Kamaruddin. The Malaysia Today editor has already been charged for sedition and criminal defamation. He should have his day in court.
Using the ISA on a blogger confirms that the Government of Malaysia tolerates neither dissent nor media freedom. We used to be able to say that the Malaysian Government did not censor the Internet, and therefore we enjoyed gret media freedom (even though our more traditional Press are not as free). Now we can't go around making that claim.
You can try, but you'll never be able to justify sending a free man to Kamunting. You may hate the man's guts, his agenda or his political masters, but you can't do this.to another human being. Remember the late Pak Samad. King Ghaz called him Kominis and took 5 years of his freedom. It turned out that Pak Samad was a Socialist.
That was 30 years ago. It's the 21st century now, Syed Hamid.
Read Nuraina's ISA Detention - Then and Now.
Syed Hamid to release 12 detainees before Hari Raya? Read here.
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