The Courting Game

For the longest time since all this talk of defection started, I’ve been wondering why the BN lawmakers seemed to be doing everything else to get around the problem (like organising trips to Taiwan and invoking the ISA), except taking head on, the provision that’s causing them so much grief.

And now I have my answer.

Both the Barisan Nasional-led Federal Government and the PKR-led Opposition have been trying to pinch Members of Parliament from the other side following the March 8 general election.

This was the main reason why both sides rejected the proposal for an Anti-Hopping law, disclosed Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Zaid Ibrahim.

“Now, we are in uncertain times with speculations (of a change in government) about Sept 16 rife.

“I do not know how real is the threat by (PKR de facto leader) Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim for him to successfully oust the Barisan-led Government.”

Yet separately, in response to the threat of the Opposition taking over the Federal Government tomorrow, a BN man (Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi) was quoted as saying:

Anwar’s goal to capture enough Barisan MPs to topple the government today was an unnatural political act.

“If they want to form a government, it has to be done through the democratic process of the general election, not through the back door,”

Safe to say, political laws can be a double-edged sword.

They can work for you; They can work against you.
And you’ll never know when they might fall in your favour again.

Tomorrow ought to be an interesting day to watch in Malaysian politics.

Press Freedom

Candlelight vigil to protest against use of ISA. Photo: Luncheah

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

1. As reported in the papers today, a senior Sin Chew Daily journalist based in Penang has been arrested by the Malaysian ISD under a tough security law.
2. Ms Tan Hoon Cheng reported on a seditious remark made by (now former) Bukit Bendera UMNO division chairman Datuk Ahmad Ismail at a ceramah during the Permatang Pauh by-election period, describing the Malaysian Chinese as ‘squatters’ (pendatang).
3. This caused a national uproar from the Chinese community as well as BN’s Chinese based parties, MCA & Gerakan, which severed ties with the state UMNO after Ahmad Ismail repeatedly refused to apologise and even went on to reaffirm his stand.
4. To soothe mounting racial tension, the UMNO Supreme Council finally on Wednesday (Sep 10), meted out punishment to the defiant statesman, and suspended him from the party for three years, on top of stripping him of all posts.
5. Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi reportedly warned that the government would invoke the tough Internal Security Act law against anyone who attempted to stoke racial tensions.
6. And that was exactly what they did last night when they came for Ms Tan at her Bukit Mertajam home.
7. Two others – Mr Raja Petra and Ms Teresa Kok (who got embroiled in a religious matter concerning the use of loudspeakers at a mosque) – were also separately arrested on the same day, but Ms Tan’s case cut close to the bone because the only reason she got involved was none other than that her byline preluded the article.
8. That often seemed to be the case when action is taken against an article that was viewed as contemptuous by people of authority or power. The name that was printed alongside it gets the lion’s share of the blame, when in truth, anyone who knows the workings of a paper knows that under such repressive press culture, the reporter is really little more than the person who filled in the words.
9. He certainly does not have the last say – that is if he has any say at all – in the angle and the voice of the article, especially when it comes to political stories.
10. What he does is merely to brief the editors on what has been said and observed, and maybe give a suggestion or two about how he wants to structure his piece.
11. They are the ones who approve the content. They set the direction. They vet the sentences. But even before all that, whether the report gets an airing or has to be dropped due to OB (out-of-bounds) markers concerns, it is not for the reporter but the editors to decide.
12. Journalists do not make that call.
13. As such, it is most unfair that when toes get stepped on, the journalist is one held responsible and then penalised accordingly.
14. But having said that, in the context of this controversy, can the media be accused of stoking racial tensions in running a report on Ahmad Ismail’s racist comments? Is Sin Chew Daily wrong to put it in print?
15. Sin Chew Daily issued a statement last Monday, which maintained it did not overplay the remarks made by Ahmad Ismail. The newspaper said it’s report comprised only three short paragraphs and appeared on page eight as a sidebar to the main article, which was on the speech made on the same occasion by Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak.
    (Source: Bernama)
16. “The report contains 144 words, and was a mere 1.89 per cent of the total layout of that page. The reporter was reporting the event factually and did not have any intention to play up Ahmad’s speech,” it said.
    (Source: Bernama)
17. Sin Chew Daily also pointed out that Mr Ahmad did not make any clarification or denial of the report; neither did he request the newspaper to make any correction.
    (Source: Bernama)
18. “It was only ten days after the report was published that Ahmad Ismail held a press conference. He admitted he said the Chinese are lodgers, but it was an interpretation of the history which depicted the role of the race prior to Merdeka.”
    (Source: Bernama)
19. The newspaper also said: ” We believe firmly that we have to handle it in the manner we had, and it is only right for us to handle it that way.”
    (Source: Bernama)
20. Along with The Sun and Suara Keadilan, Sin Chew Daily was handed a show cause letter yesterday for alleged manipulation and highlighting of sensitive issues, putting it’s print permit under threat.
21. My personal thought is that the government is probably looking at the matter from the point where even though such remarks were actually made, that factually the article had no mistake, only those few hundreds odd present that night at the ceramah would’ve been ruffled by it had it gone unreported.
22. But now that it has gone to print, a whole nation is shaken up.
23. Therein lies the rationale behind the show cause letter.
24. Many are left questioning however, if this is not a case of shooting the messenger but letting off the perpetrator with a slap on the wrist. Ahmad Ismail was not among those hauled in by the ISD.
25. Referring to the show cause letters, Norila Daud, President of The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Malaysia, described the worrying trend as being tantamount to further restriction to press freedom.
    “Only a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi mentioned that the media should write the truth and there should be no fear in writing the truth. Look what has happened now.”
    (Source: The Star)
26. Malaysian Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar in turn admitted that the decision to detain people and issue show cause letters would be unpopular and would be criticised but it had to be done.
    “While we may want to be popular, freedom without responsibilities has ramifications.”
    (Source: The Star)
27. I wonder if this were to have happened in Singapore, will similar measures be taken?