The growing anti-ISA rebellion in Malaysia

Three discrete incidents yoked to the Internal Security Act interplayed with Lim Kit Siang’s urgent House motion filed today demanding the Speaker allow its deliberation tomorrow in the Dewan Rakyat. Kit could not have chosen a more opportune time to shove this motion that entangles Raja Petra Kamaruddin’s unexpected release from ISA detention and the Home Ministry’s push to have him re-arrested, with Umno’s show cause letter to its rebel ex-Minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim for collaborating with the Opposition to repeal the ISA and the Bersih’s anti-ISA vigil that concluded chaotically with police arrest of demonstrators.

It has always the DAP MP for Ipoh Timor’s pitbullish mission to dismantle the Internal Security Act, in particular its most galling provision of detention without trial that had been inflicted on the DAP supremo, his son and their many comrades over the past 40 years. If there is a an agenda of the highest order in his series of campaigns to neutralise what he perceives as underhanded Government tactics, the ISA’s dismantling would be his crowning glory, perhaps more profound than the slimmest idea of becoming Deputy Prime Minister.

For now, Kit is seeking that the Cabinet overrule the decision of Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar to appeal against the Shah Alam High Court’s decision to free Raja Petra, he of the Malaysia Today infamy, and force the gadfly of sordid web tales to return to Kamunting. Invoking Standing Order 18, Kit injected his motion with an appeal on the “positive reflection” in the last five months of the Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s premiership, hoping, in his own words, that the PM would “direct the Cabinet to fully review draconian laws and uphold the doctrine of separation of powers by repealing laws institutionalising executive usurpation of judicial powers and independence.”

Generally, and under the police recommendation, the Home Minister acts independently of the Cabinet in signing away detention warrants so Kit’s motion is, while not exactly an exercise in futility, a long shot that the Cabinet may weigh favourably. In any case, Kit has to surmount that formidable martinet of a Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia, who by any level of expectation, would likely to summarily dismiss the motion in the time he thumps his gavel.

Kit’s true mission, it can be discern, is to dismantle the ISA as an institution that needs to be trashed to the gutters of history, but is there any affection for Raja Petra himself, the gadfly of the hour? Not everyone have that kind of affinity for the blogger whose notoriety surpasses his reputation. RPK, as he is better known, has less to do with trust for his writings than with the infectious fantasist tales of murder, political connivance and general mayhem that he routinely publishes.

If you troll the people who react to RPK’s grisly tales, you would not fail to notice that he commands a humongous horde of zombies (or a few zombies firing off thousands of missives under a slew of nom de guerres), who flames anyone who criticises or even questions RPK’s facts, fancies and fantasies, even if the critique was contributed in good faith and laid out constructively. Like snarling Rottweilers, the zombies will claw away, first at the commentator’s manhood, than lineage and then organisation, in despicable language and menacing tone without ever addressing the substance of the critique. RPK, it seems, can do no wrong, even when his accusations are wild, brazen and unproven.

RPK also does not play according to the rules. If the whole political shebang was a game of football, RPK is the player who would nonchalantly score using illegal Hand of God and an ill-will tackler of such ferocious intensity that he’ll break your legs with a two-footed tackle rather than let you advance into his goalmouth. RPK thinks nothing of committing fouls, accepting condescendingly a first yellow card and then inviting a second from the referee for another indecent foul that leads to the consequential send-off.

But no, he is so disdainful of any fouls that he feels he is impervious to any form of red-card offence, so he defiantly stays on the field continuing as if the game cannot resume without him. The exasperated referee would have no choice but to instruct the security handlers to bundle away RPK out of the field while he shouts and screams that he is the victim of a mass conspiracy. That’s the way RPK enacts his brand of journalism: devise, imagine or concoct stories of murder, mayhem and debauchery that forces the target of his attacks to retaliate by filing a libel lawsuit, which RPK would ignore as if it was an inconvenience by refusing to appear in court to defend himself. When the plaintiffs win a judgment by default, RPK sneers at it contemptuously and declares that he won’t pay a single sen in damages.

Regardless of the scorched earth assault he launches on his victims, RPK is roundly hailed as hero, saint and martyr. Very much infallible, indefatigable and indestructible, his shocked release from ISA detention was willed as evidence to his invincibility. So what’s a RPK victim to do? Two of his perennial targets – Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and Umno Youth pretender Khairy Jamaludin – have restrained themselves from launching lawsuits against RPK despite their strong case, realising that no matter what action is constructed against RPK, it would be like firing Teflon bullets that simply glosses over a halo-like forcefield. Is this why RPK had to be restrained under the ISA?

Zaid Ibrahim, on the other hand, does play by the rules, the populist ones at least. When he was fortuitously appointed as a Cabinet Minister as de facto Law Minister, he set forth a couple of axes to grind, the sharpest abrasion leaned heavily on the sins of a certain ex-Prime Minister strongly accused of being instrumental in the sacking of Tun Salleh Abas and four other senior judges for, among others, misusing their bench and insulting the then King in 1988.

Zaid plays the politician so powered by principles that, after persuading the Cabinet to pay a massive RM10.5 million compensation to the five tribunally-expelled judges, resigns in a hissy fit over the ISA detentions of Teresa Kok (DAP-Seputeh) and a journalist, and then sets himself up for imminent punishment from Umno when he openly allied himself with the Opposition’s anti-ISA bandwagon.

The question is, what was Zaid doing in Umno all these years enjoying all those lucrative perks bequeathed to him while he was suckling in the bosom of his Umno patronage? Knowing full well that Umno had been the bulwark behind the ISA’s continuity, why remain in the party, contest in the general election under its ticket and yet spit on your party’s policies while playing to the populist dogmas of the Opposition? A sudden dawning of conscience? Or something else that could explain his impending defection?

In the media conference today, Zaid, who received the show cause letter a fortnight ago over his show-cause letter by Umno over his strident opposition to the ISA, bellowed that the Government failed the people in repeatedly reneging on Tunku Abdul Rahman’s promise that the ISA would “never be used to stifle legitimate opposition and silence lawful dissent.”

Many pundits are gleefully speculating that Zaid is already flirting with the idea of leaving Umno and joining PKR, on the startling supposition that he would hold an extremely senior post should Anwar Ibrahim make good his promise after promise to hijack Federal Government rule by his threats of deducting the BN simple majority into becoming a deficit in Parliament.

As for the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih) candlelight vigil at the PJ New Town that collapsed in a fiasco of arrests, Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar was steadfast in his defence of the police detention of 23 activists. “If those who are unhappy with the way police had dispersed the rally, you should lodge police reports.”

Syed Hamid saw nothing sinful about the detention. “Police work is police work. They are responsible for maintaining law and order. This is routine police work,” he asseverated to reporters at the parliament lobby after fielding stinging rebukes from Kit and his son, Lim Guan Eng (DAP-Bagan) even as he professes to being unaware of details of the incident.

Guan Eng was unrepentant in his attacks against Syed Hamid, expressing shock over the way the police had acted brutishly in rounding up the 23 and breaking up what had been seen as a peaceful rally. “I cannot understand why peaceful citizens and elected representatives were attacked,” Guan Eng said as he shook his head over the arrests that included Tony Pua (DAP- PJ Utara) and Selangor Exco Ronnie Liu, a DAP assemblyman and Lau Weng San, the Kampung Tunku assemblyman.

How’s this for some theatrics in victimology and saintliness? Pua showed reporters the shirt he wore during his scuffle with the security types, pointing fervently to the buttons that had been ripped out due to manhandling by certain policemen despite his willingness to cooperate and walk to the police truck after he was arrested. On a more serious charge, he accused one policeman of kneeing him in the gut while another tried to kick his shin. Lau insisted that police charged the crowd while they were singing “Negaraku” to end the night’s proceedings, a charge vehemently disputed by Selangor police chief Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar. Lau alleged that he was punched twice by a police officer, pointing to bruises on his cheek.

Three discrete incidents, all hounding on the iron-fisted appliance of the ISA’s governance. The growing anti-ISA rebellion has begun to grow exponentially, more so after Zaid is steadily burning his bridges with Umno on his scorn for the ISA and support from Parti Rakyat Sarawak’s Billy Abit Joo (BN-Hulu Rajang) for an Opposition petition for a parliamentary debate to review the ISA.

It’s still premature to question whether the ISA can survive this mass rebellion but Kit is now riding on a Harley-Davidson rather than a trishaw in his quest to fulfill his real destiny – the end of the ISA.

Lim Kit Siang