It is too much for the rakyat to ask for a judiciary that is not only
independent, but also seen as such? The three pillars of good
government, the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary must be
separated. The legislature legislates laws, the executive executes them,
and the Judiciary checks its implementation.
But in a Westminster parliamentary system, we shouldn’t put too high a
hope because the Prime Minister is the head of the legislature and at
the same time heads the Cabinet which is the executive. These two
entities are seamlessly interchangeable.
In Britain, the separation of powers rest squarely on the Judiciary.
In 1984, Clive Ponting, a senior civil servant in the Naval Affairs
office after the Falklands War, was charged for leaking information to a
Labour MP. Ponting’s bosses at the defence ministry had been
systematically lying to the parliamentary committee investigating the
sinking of the cruiser General Belgrano.
Ponting believed that when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered
the attack on the Argentine cruiser, it was already leaving the war
zone. There were 368 Argentine lives lost in the sinking, and many
Britons were killed in reprisal.
Feeling that, two years later, a cover-up was still in effect,
Ponting decided he owed a higher allegiance to truth and to Parliament
than to his bureaucratic superiors.
Arrested and tried by the government, Ponting was eventually
acquitted in a much-publicised trial at the Old Bailey by a jury of 12
men and women who, like their fellow citizens, saw no harm in a civil
servants insisting on honesty in government.
In Malaysia, the Barisan Nasional leaders had reduced parliament into
a rubber stamp. And with the sacking of Tun Salleh Abbas, had further
provided Barisan leaders with near absolute judicial power. Now they
can change and interpret laws as they please.
Just like in a quasi-democracy, the Malaysian Judiciary is seen as
another extension of the Executive. Should we, the rakyat be contented
with the state of affairs that we are in now?
With our neighbours’ democratic space expanding, Malaysia’s is
shrinking. Even Burma is taking baby-steps towards the direction of
democracy.
Apparently there is no reason whatsoever for the BN leaders to lead
our country into the abyss of dictatorship. Only we can stop this trend
through the ballot box.
“Whereas animals live by instinct and therefore do what they do
directly, we can decide between alternatives, and this choice is
possible because we can reflect on how we are going to act.” – George
Grant in “Philosophy in the Mass Society.”
Thus don’t look the other way because the choice is ours!
No comments:
Post a Comment