“The most important element of government is the method of choosing leaders.“
– Frank Herbert, science-fiction author
THERE is a growing corpus of jokes about lawyers and politicians in America where nonsense and nuisance find expression in the absence of new sense associated with the spurious method of choosing leaders.
Frank Herbert had warned that good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. Usually, it’s the optics in personal qualities of a ‘good leader’ that’s open to analysis that encourages criticism.
Leaderless and rudderless government is the price attributed to the nature of a voter whose skewered belief in the personal qualities of a wannabe elected official defies new sense.
New sense began with the New Economic Policy (NEP), the National Development Policy (NDP), and the New Vision Policy (NVP) that has begotten Eleven Malaysia Plans. The moniker Never-Ending Policy (NEP) begat the New Economic Model (NEM).
Is there a secret we are missing? “Politicians often claim secrecy is necessary for good governance or national security,” claimed Heather Brooke. The Malaysian oath of secrecy for elected officials requires robust debate,
“The electorate is starved for honest debate and for good governance that follow from it,” cautioned Bret Weinstein. Honest debate is always met with the vise grip of the Sedition Act, so naturally, people dare not cross the red line despite its section 3.
“We should not be mere consumers of good governance, we must be participants; we must be co-creators,” advised Rohini Nilekani. And that’s where the electorate fails to demand new sense as their democratic and patriotic duty.
Take Malaysia’s national unity ministry as an example of new sense being officially and deliberately sabotaged. This ministry is said to be subservient to JAKIM, a federal religious affairs agency that oversees Islamic affairs.
But Islam is constitutionally and morally under State authority with the State Ruler being the Head of Islam. Is JAKIM created by constitutional amendment and/or statutory fiat? New sense demands answers.
During British colonial rule in Malaya, land laws evolved from indigenous Malay customs to incorporate English legal principles, with the introduction of the English Deeds System and later the Torrens system, impacting land ownership for stakeholders.
If this is true, why did the recent fracas evolve with the relocation of a Hindu temple in Jalan Masjid India? Why did indigenous Malay customs clash with politically inspired confusion that debilitated and mocked new sense?
New sense, like DOGE in the Trump 47 administration, must be adopted and enforced by the Madanieers if there’s a serious belief in a clean slate that permanently rids the nation’s number once cancer – corruption.
New sense needs a stable and sturdy stronghold in the first-past-the-post or first-preference plurality voting systems with its bizarre rules. Why use imported versions of nonsense and nuisance? Local adat is new sense.
We are still plagued by alien law-making habits. Can we not be original and stick to our original way of doing things that withstood time and tide way before the Cholas, Sri Vijaya, Parameswara, and the Portuguese arrived on our shores?
Malay adat law, like the adat-recht of Indonesia has a long history of scholarship that did not escape the envious insights of Western trained lawyers and administrators. New sense must prevail.
Let say our Malaysian society comprises 60 per cent Malays, 30 per cent Chinese and 10 per cent Indians.
Shouldn’t the elections yield 60 per cent Malay, 30 per cent Chinese and 10 per cent Indian elected leaders? In other words, sectarian elections reflect the reality of the existing sectarian communities.
Will sectarian elections eradicate the nonsense and nuisance of race, region and religion? Or must we still stay with imported British systems, methods and standards requiring British remedies and reliefs?
We see new sense replaced by nonsense and nuisance in Indun v. Haji Ismail [1939] M.L.J. 65, where the British-operated courts said that adat (custom) was said to be only law when embodied in statute.
Thereafter, new sense prevailed in Haji Hussin v. Maheran [1946] M.L.J. 116 which culminated in Maani v. Mohamed [1961] M.L.J. 88, that reasserted the principle that ‘a living body of customary law cannot be destroyed by a written law except by express declaration or by necessary implication’.
Are we not politically mature to create a corpus of Malaysian law? The government has made Bahasa Melayu compulsory bordering on compulsion, but adat must wait hat in hand? Pretzel logic defies new sense.
The new sense of doing things fair, just and right is disturbed by the nuisance of man-made laws and constitutions that willing sacrificesadat. This is unpatriotic, unruly, unconscionable, unjust and outrageous.
The Federal Constitution has nine fundamental liberties for all Malaysians. The rest of the Articles is about the government’s entitlement and eligibility to rule and reign while raining oppressive laws on the marginalised and the dispossessed.
In all fairness, our Federal Constitution and a majority of the written laws underscore what’s fair and just. It’s the politicians and politics that disturb the new sense. Reform exists in the shadows.
We have come a long way from the scandal-ridden nonsense and nuisance that interrupted our consciousness and the consciences of the perpetrators beginning with BMF in the late 1970s and culminating in a pause mode with1MDB.
With Madani appearing maddened at the unassailable corruption culture, people must ask whether new sense will prevail as the new norm given the vagaries of politics.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at ChiefJudge@secamtektektribe.org.
