On Arrogance, Complacency and Cruelty

From time to time he has chosen to speak, without fear or favour, on the burning issues of the day, whether they touch upon the interests of people living in Perak, or in Malaysia as a whole, or in the world at large.
Often in the recent past, his advice to society here and there have been gems of wisdom most timely and apt for the practical endeavours of everyday life.

I am of course meditating upon the courage and sagacity of the Regent of Perak, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah.

Raja Dr Nazrin Shah's speech on March 20, 2008, in Ipoh, at the Perak state level Maulidur Rasul (Prophet Mohamed's birthday) celebration at the banquet hall of the Darul Ridzuan Building, for example, is a classic of his gems of wisdom based on solid scholarship and research.

On that special occasion, he advised Malaysia's leaders to refer to the records of world history to learn from the causes of the fall of many empires and governments, and even monarchs and national leaders.

The Regent of Perak said there was historical evidence that many people were given the opportunity to become leaders, but only a handful of individuals rose to be successful leaders who charted history and built civilizations.

He explained: "This happened because many of those given the opportunity to lead allowed the joy and passion of having power to lead them astray. Some among them became complacent, some went astray, some were ill-advised, some adopted wrong decisions and some made miscalculations."

Raja Dr Nazrin Shah said that Islam dictates that a leader must be trustworthy, humble, honest, sincere, disciplined, committed and willing to make sacrifice as well as be God fearing and be always aware that he is being evaluated by his followers."

How apposite and timely indeed is the reminder from the learned Regent of Perak. And what he said about the values of leadership dictated by Islam actually also prevail in other religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity. Thus these are universal values which have been treasured and respected by human beings for thousands of years.

However, sadly, history tells us time and again that the great majority of leaders the world over have been paying lip service to these leadership qualities and values. In many cases, this great self deception sooner and later catches up with the perpetrator himself.

Consider some examples of this disease on the world stage in recent months, weeks and days: Tony Blair, George W. Bush, John Howard, Pervez Musharaff, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Thaksin Shinawatra and Robert Mugabe. Invariably, their downfalls have to do with arrogance, complacency and cruelty, not necessarily in that order.

Consider the tragedy of Robert Mugabe. In 1979 during the Lancaster House talks in London on the political future of Zimbabwe and in 1980 when his party Zanu PF won the most number of parliamentary seats in the newly independent country, he was rightly hailed as the liberator after a successful long armed struggle against the white racist regime led by Ian Smith in what was then known as Southern Rhodesia.

Hailed as a hero not only in Africa but throughout the world by people who loved justice and freedom. My fellow students from various parts of Africa and I then doing a Dip. Ed. Course at London University, I can still clearly remember, were jubilant and proud for Zimbabwe and Africa and the Third World as a whole.

Sadly, after some years, repression and brutality set in against dissidents. By 2000 the retaking of farming land from the whites started to be badly mishandled. A former food basket of Africa was turned into a land economically ruined: inflation hit 100,000%; millions of Zimbabweans were forced to flee to neighbouring countries including South Africa to find jobs.

Still, amid the ruin and desolation, Mugabe continued to bestride the world of Zimbabwe like a colossus, inflated by his own vanity and the armed forces and police he commanded. As things got worse he became even more repressive.

As the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran has lamented, "Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful."

Let's hope fervently that the just concluded elections in Zimbabwe will help to lead its long suffering people to a new beginning.

Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is another case in point. Of course, not merely about his decline and coming fall, but that of UMNO and the BN coalition as well. Umno is the predominant party in the BN, and so when Umno collapses, the BN will simply follow.

After the political tsunami in the March 8 general elections, it looks increasingly probable that the days of UMNO are numbered. The intense in fighting in Umno these days are only growing as time passes. Knives are being sharpened not only by old political foxes like Mahathir and Tengku Razaleigh but also other ambitious elements in the party to finish off Abdullah politically.

Initially there was a desperate attempt to postpone the Umno General Assembly till next year. Now the compromised new date in December 2008. But it is an uneasy compromise. The Abdullah government could collapse any time, what with some defections not only in Sabah and Sarawak but from within UMNO in the Peninsula itself.

Abdullah now faces the unenviable task of not really knowing for sure – perhaps except for his son in law Khairy Jamaluddin - who his people are in Umno these days. When he has to find it necessary to repeat, almost on a daily basis, that he is not resigning as prime minister and Umno President, then things must be pretty bad, if not precarious.

When Hindraf (Hindu Rights Action Front) held peaceful demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur in November 2007, Abdullah Badawi arrogantly declared that he detested challenges. In other words, he sounded off a thinly veiled threat that he would deal harshly with what he most arbitrarily considered as "challenges", including the Bersih and lawyers' marches.

It was a clumsy piece of leadership from someone who came into power four years earlier billed as a "Mr Nice", always smiling, always saying and promising that he was going to be a prime minister for all Malaysians regardless of race, colour or religion.

And so from one arrogance to another; cannon water, arrests, ISA detention of five Hindraf leaders. Enough of arrogance not to accept petitions and memoranda; and even more arrogance to brush aside young children offering flowers!

Arrogance was so much in ascendancy in Abdullah, in Umno, in MIC, in the BN that even paranoia not be cited as an excuse. And so a legitimate plea for civil rights and justice was fobbed off; a genuine cry of anguish was bottled up. Or so the powers that be thought, complacently, arrogantly and cruelly.

As though they have not learned, and as though they will never learn, now they try to perpetuate the lie that the Hindraf 5 were arrested and detained under the ISA "solely" in the best interest of the country's internal security.

What do they know about internal security? Abdullah and his team have failed miserably over the last four and a half years on most mattes relating to internal security. That was one of the main reasons the people voted against them. So they are not qualified to tell us what constitutes "internal security".

Now that the "new" Abdullah government is trying hard to look good – although the "feel good effort" is as dead as a dodo – minister in the prime minister's department Zaid Ibrahim has said that he will suggest that the government apologise to Tun Salleh Abas for the horrible things that were done to him in 1988 by the then Mahathir government. Nice try.

Zaid claims that he did not endorse the sacking of Salleh Abas then. But did he speak up against it, even if he was not then an Umno MP? If not, why not?

To ensure that such atrocities and brutality against our judges and the judiciary as a whole do not happen again, ever, people like Mahathir, former Attorney General Abu Talib Othman, who is now – ironically – chairman of SUHAKAM (our National Human Rights Comission), and people like former top judge Tun Hamid Omar should be put on trial in an open court of law, for subverting the judiciary and the Constitution.

If we really want to clean up our judiciary once and for all, let's do it the right way, the just way and the bold way, instead of tinkering and beating around the bush forever and ever.

When and if we dare not have a proper conduct of our old national accounts, how on earth are we to handle our new national accounts? Just like internationally, too, while we protest and call into account injustices and war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere, we must also ensure that there is accountability and closure for past injustices and past crimes perpetrated by the racists and the imperialists.

On April 4 forty years ago, American black civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize winner, was assassinated in Memphis, Tenneesee. Has true justice been done?

Forty years ago – on March 16, 1968 – as many as 504 villagers, nearly all of them unarmed children, women and elderly – in My Lai in Vietnam were massacred by members of the US Charlie Company.

What justice for the Vietnamese victims and their families from the United States of America, the socalled land of milk and honey and freedom and justice under law?

And, on an even much larger scale, what justice and future for the more than three million Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange and Super Orange, herbicide and defoliant used by the US Armed Forces in its Herbicidal Warfare programme during the Vietnam War?

Between 1963 and 1966, 6 million gallons of agent orange were used in Vietnam. Agent Orange caused ailments including birth defects and cancer. The US government has claimed sovereign immunity, whatever that means.

A US court has in late February 2008 dismissed a suit against chemical companies by Vietnamese victims. Some civilization indeed.

Just like the victims of the gas leak in Bhopal in India in 1984 at an American chemical company. After almost a quarter of a century, why still no justice for the victims by Union Carbide?

War crimes and crimes against humanity and sins and injustices. Never again? When never again?

Or, is Lord Acton's phrase that "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" destined to haunt us forever?

Lord Acton, in one of his lectures as Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge in the 1890s, reminded us that between the 15th and the 17th centuries the "Protuguese acknowledge no obligations of international law towards Asiatics."

It seems to me that four centuries later, what the Portuguese enjoyed long ago is still being enjoyed today with impunity by the Americans. On the domestic scene in Malaysia, some political crocodile also seem to be getting away with gross injury and injustices against some innocents. Cry, fair world. Rage! Be angry, be very angry!

by Fan Yew Teng
Harakah Daily