The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
– Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
In every sphere and corner of society, and in every realm of human activity, dicta and dogmas define, dictate, and determine who we are in discovering and realising the purpose of life, and the reason for existence. We are still lost in the labyrinth of normalcy.
It has been said that when we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, a philosophy, we become automatons. We cease to grow. But we seldom seek exit and escape routes.
Ideas produce dicta and dogmas that are unwelcome, worthless, and usually lopsided, but when it’s officially accepted, or forced into our collective psyches, it becomes government policy. Ideas always begat consequences.
Government manufactured dicta and dogmas are delusions assuming intellectual gladiatorial feast and duels. Secrecy — see Article 43(6), Malaysian Federal Constitution (FC) — helps.
Dicta and dogma create suspect belief and fake knowledge. This is exactly what government does in secret while planning and plotting pernicious policies.
Take the ‘rule of law’ as an example. What does it actually mean? It is certainly not from a higher non-human source. Do we need proof and evidence that the cosmos and all of Nature is the cause, reason and purpose of a higher non-human source?
In 1977 the man-made rule of law embarked on a peculiar trajectory when the judicial oracle declared, inter alia, that “another salutary principle to observe is that this is not a court of morals, and I am not to allow any moral disapproval to colour my judgment on matters of fact”. See PP v. Harun Idris [1977] 1 MLJ 15. In jurisprudence, it is an open secret that a mind opened by wonder is preferable to that closed by belief.
This case illustrates a startling concept that morals and the rule of law are two alien concepts not at all inter-connected. The roots and the shoots are not germane to each other. Un-common knowledge and uncommon sense are unnecessary punctuation marks in the sentence of life’s purpose.
For thousands of years, the definition of democracy has eluded clarity, consistency, conformity or certainty. Socrates, duped by the delusion of misguided dicta and misled dogma which outlawed thinking, received the death penalty for opening the minds of Grecian youths.
Written constitutions, generally invoked as the ‘supreme law of the land’, deviate and degenerate into the ‘extreme law of the land’. Native Americans, and all other global Indigenous communities, clans, groups and tribes, guaranteed recourse, resolution, relief and remedy from it, were, and are still, systemically and systematically, deprived of fundamental human rights.
A proactive political manufactory creates a Pied Piper for every generation. The voting public willingly subscribe to this state of affairs sitting on the other side of the equation. It’s worse than the Stockholm Syndrome.
It is no different in Australia with a written constitution that offers no human rights except for freedom of religion in Section 116 that’s fraught with exceptions, exclusions, and excuses that renders the right uncaring and meaningless.
Malaysian dicta and dogmas revolve around the trite phrase ‘national unity’ that serves as a constant mantra to keep the people focused instead on bread-and-butter issues. Inflation is celebrated as a problem needing solutions and remedies.
Steve Jobs made a point that we should not let the noise of others’ opinions drown out our own inner voice. To grow, and to acquire mental stability, we must turn a deaf ear and cast a Nelson’s eye in a concerted effort to reject exiguous government promises that insults the public’s intelligence.
The citizenry must be on constant vigil and high alert. The most dangerous tendency today is the manner in which bogus theories are given the force of dicta, dogma which eventually becomes doctrines of doubt and dismay.
The dicta and dogma of Article 145 FC concerning the powers of the Malaysian Attorney General has recently aimed a huge missile into the hornets’ nest of the public’s beliefs and opinions. The law reform minister and other MPs remain eminently silent on this issue.
With a two-thirds majority in the Dewan Rakyat, it should be a walk in the park to amend Article 145 FC in a super-effort to give credence and credibility to the rule of law before it becomes a cliché.
“The Attorney General shall be elected by general consensus of the voting public, and be answerable to them through a Royal Commission of Inquiry in the event there is evidence of suspicious activity in initiating, maintaining and or discontinuing criminal proceedings which have entered the trial phase in a court of law.”
Such an amendment is pure oxygen for a gasping constitution being choked by political interference in the administration of justice. This is 24-carat fascism. The rule of law, and the law of rules, are harbingers of untold and unwanted chaos.
The Local Government Elections Act 1960 was mysteriously repealed and replaced by the Local Government Act 1976, and its section 15(1) explicitly puts a stop to all municipal elections. Yet, the public has to pay taxes to an unelected entity. Law reform is a proverb.
Sad that you can’t teach an old dogma new tricks, or throw a bone to dicta.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
