The people will triumph
February 24, 2013
The fear of losing power haunts BN,
making it desperate in action and in word. The left hand sometimes doesn’t know
what the right hand is doing.
COMMENT
As the 13th general election draw near, the will of the people hangs in the
balance as the question of free and fair elections remains unanswered.
The right to such a process is
recognised in all democracies. Three conditions must be fulfilled: an
independent audit of the electoral roll, a minimum campaign period of
reasonable duration, and allowing international observers at polling stations.
The Najib administration’s action
last week in detaining and deporting Australian senator Nick Xenophon who was
in Kuala Lumpur to meet with me as well as leaders of the ruling party to
discuss ways and means to meet those conditions has rendered the demand for
free and fair elections an exercise in futility.
Meanwhile, the opposition coalition
Pakatan Rakyat remains severely disadvantaged in campaigning.
There is no access to the mainstream
print and electronic media which, despite being largely funded by tax payers’
money, are used as a propaganda machine in ways not seen since the time of
Goebbels: vicious lies are spread about the opposition’s mismanagement of the
state governments, characters of key opposition leaders are assassinated and a
movie is set to be screened nation-wide calculated undoubtedly to sow hostility
and hatred among the indigenous Malay community towards ethnic minorities
particularly the Chinese.
So we resort to self-help to travel
the land and take the message home directly to the people. But where’s the
right to security on our lives and property? Campaign buses and cars get pelted
with stones and splashed with paint. Speakers are attacked and some supporters
were knifed, violent acts caught on camera.
To ensure free and fair elections,
there must be protection of the law, but complaints to the police fall on deaf
ears.
The Home Minister tells the media
that he can’t guarantee our safety. Yes, this is the same man who issued the
ban order on Senator Xenophon and then proclaimed that this was a routine
matter.
Labelling a visiting law maker from
a friendly country “a security threat” and “an enemy of the state” is a routine
matter?
Menace of phantom
voters
Meanwhile, the veracity of electoral
rolls remains unresolved with hundreds of thousand phantom votes in the list.
In an on-going inquiry on
citizenship-for-votes it was revealed that for the State of Sabah alone, more
than 40,000 registered voters were on the highly suspect list. Other
independent checks in other states have likewise revealed similar major
discrepancies.
This is fraud perpetrated on a grand
scale with the Election Commission itself being culpable.
Helmed by people who were card
carrying members of the ruling Umno party, a fact that had remained secret
until it was exposed by independent watchdogs, how can anyone expect it to
remain fair and impartial?
Complaints about the presence of
significant numbers of phantom voters are ignored. The commission chair and
deputy then go town to bash the opposition for ‘selling out’ the country’s
sovereignty by calling for international observers. Right wing groups brand it
as an act of treason.
Former prime minister Dr Mahathir
Mohamed has called for the co-chair of Bersih, our democracy reform Coalition
for Clean and Fair Elections, to be stripped of her citizenship.
Indeed, the test of free and fair
elections is not merely allowing international observers but welcoming them
with open arms because they lend credibility to the process as well as the
outcome.
If our elections are free and fair,
what’s there to hide?
In this regard, Nick Xenophon as
well as other international would be observers will no doubt be a threat but
only to those who believe they are entitled to perpetual power.
The fear of losing power haunts them
making them desperate in action and in word. The left hand sometimes doesn’t
know what the right hand is doing.
And no one shows this up better than
the prime minister himself. On the one hand, he invites the international media
to cover his economic transformation programme and touts it as a decisive move
towards democratic reform.
He tops it up with visits overseas,
Australia being one of the first on the itinerary. In Melbourne and in Sydney
he spoke to local audiences about how genuine his government is in steering the
country towards freedom and democracy.
On the other hand, as the Xenophon
debacle illustrates, his administration now decries ‘foreign interference in
its internal affairs’ and declares that ‘outsiders must keep their hands off
our electoral process.’
People will triumph
People will triumph
Well, Mr Prime Minister, you can’t
have it both ways. First, you blew away millions of dollars of the tax payers’
money in travelling to other countries to promote your persona as an emerging
reform-driven democratic leader.
Then you tell law makers from those
countries who are coming to verify the truth of what you have been saying that
this is none of their business!
So, Nick Xenophon was indeed a
‘security’ risk but not to the Malaysian people. The only rationale for his
expulsion is that he represents a serious threat to the Umno government because
of his advocacy for clean elections in Malaysia.
But as I have said on day one of his
arrest, Malaysia does not belong to Umno. It belongs to all citizens regardless
of their political affiliation.
Facile acts of reform done with much
fanfare may help in the promotion of one’s persona. But it only takes one act
of desperation to tear the veneer of hypocrisy and diabolical manoeuvring.
To repeal the Internal Security Act
only to replace with another law which gives the police even wider powers of
detention is a classic example.
Expelling a law maker on a mission
for electoral reform is yet another.
However, come polling day, despite
the cheating and the fraud, we believe the people will triumph.
Anwar Ibrahim is Malaysia’s
opposition leader - FMT
