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Sorry But It Was a Black Day

‘Abiding Times’, theSun, 15 May 2009

MY interest in the democracy of our country began during the 1995 General Election campaign. Added to the mix of the usual playground fighting at the Alice Smith School was a new excuse to divide: political parties. Among 12-year-olds, party choice was determined mostly by how close you lived to a party leader, and all the Ampang kids, including my Scottish friend, supported Ku Li and drew S46 logos in homework books.

Interest in politics lay dormant until I was in the Lower Sixth in England, after I was appointed house representative for Amnesty International and roped in to organise letters calling for the release of prisoners of conscience. They had deemed Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim as falling in this category and soon my housemaster received a call from the Malaysian Students Department asking about me. In any case I had to quit Amnesty to focus on my A-Levels: in History I was studying the causes of the English Civil War and committed to memory Speaker Lenthall’s reply when Charles I tried to arrest MPs in the House of Commons.

Later at university in London, I was extremely excited to learn that citizens of Commonwealth countries could vote in British elections (including for the European Parliament!), and indeed that Malaysian students before me—including past Prime Ministers—had participated in politics in the UK. So I followed suit, and I chose the Conservative Party. In Britain itself it was clearly the party of freedom: it supplied the Prime Ministers who abolished the slave trade, repealed the protectionist Corn Laws, beat the Nazis and defeated the Communists. But it was also a party whose members helped our country after World War II: during the Malayan Union debacle it was Conservatives like David Gammans, John Foster and Lord Marchwood who assisted opposition to the centralised polity. Even after Merdeka and Malaysia Day (supported by many Conservatives), it was with Edward Heath’s government that we signed the Five Powers Defence Arrangement which continues to be to our strategic benefit. And while Margaret Thatcher and John Major visited Malaysia as Prime Minister, Tony Blair only came after he resigned.

“If the obduracy of the parties continues, the costs to taxpayers and to democracy will spiral further.”

At the same time, I encountered the various Malaysian political party clubs in London, but they all seemed vicious or ingratiating, so I was content to serve at my university’s mainly social club with a sprinkling of intellectual activity. Simultaneously, my political philosophy modules convinced me firmly of the principles of individual liberty and free trade: principles which seemed to naturally complement my adat and my religion.

Working in the Houses of Parliament was a hugely satisfying experience: I helped to amend legislation, solved a myriad of constituents’ problems and worked on projects which forced the government to improve flawed procedures. Wow, I thought, backbench MPs can improve the lives of their constituents. That is why I established the Malaysia Think Tank’s Backbenchers’ Research and Analysis Service: to enhance the capacity of backbenchers to serve their constituents, without regard to political party.

After a stint at the World Bank, in which I witnessed the insidiousness of corruption and the extent of sheer decadence in assorted countries’ political and bureaucratic systems, I became even more convinced of the need for limited but effective government. Strong check and balance institutions, rule of law, accountability and intelligent decentralisation were some of the best antidotes to poor governance. In Malaysia, we already have the historical narrative of constitutionalism dating back to at least 1326 and the legal framework to install all the things that good governance requires, but yet we stall, for whatever reasons—real or imagined—that some of our politicians attribute.

So what happened on 7 May in Perak was a shameful day for our democracy. It was a disgrace that the Regent had to wait five hours. To see the police invade the august chamber was heartbreaking. It utterly violated the spirit of separation of powers. And it insulted the courage of Speaker Lenthall, who on behalf of all future Westminster assemblies, had ‘neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak’ but as the House directed him.

If the obduracy of the parties continues to lengthen this debacle, the costs to taxpayers and to democracy will spiral further. Though I maintain that the root cause of all this is the insufficiently democratic method in which candidates are selected—which weakens their loyalty to their constituents—all our noble institutions have been besmirched. I read what my childhood political figure living in Ampang says, and perhaps geographical proximity is no longer the only reason to support him.