Even as we rejoice in YB Theresa Kok’s release, we must not forget the dangers lurking that got her arrested in the first place. These dangers are still lurking and ever present. I wish to say something about them.

No one doubts that Malaysia is replete with more than our share of repressive preventive detention laws inimical to civil liberties, eg the ISA, the Public Order (Preservation) and Prevention of Crime Acts, Emergency (Public Order and Prevention of Crime) Ordinance and Emergency (Essential Powers) Ordinance etc.

Repressive laws per se don’t represent a problem if they are properly applied. Society is protected from terrorists, jihadists and bombers and triad societies by judicious application of such repressive laws.

So what is the real threat to civil liberties, rule of law and democracy in Malaysia?

It is this trend – a compound and mix of these several elements:

1. An overly sensitive attitude of people or groups of people who get easily offended by others remarks or actions alleged to be sensitive in terms of race, religion with the scope expanding to cover other tyhings as well. I call them the ‘egg shell’ cases because their feelings are as fragile as “egg shell” easily angered and overly sensitive.

2. Their modus operandi : coalesce as a group and lodge police reports. They seldom file a civil suit to seek redress to their injured feelings. Why ? Because they have to prove their case before court of law which they know they cannot succeed because basically they either have no justification in law/cause of action or the evidence to prove it, and if they lose the case they not only have to bear the cost of engaging their lawyers but also pay costs to the other side for an unsuccessful action. Now lodging police report incurs no cost but is beneficial in terms of ingratiating themselves with certain political groups or persons when such report lodged advances the latter’s political agenda.

3. The problem of 1 & 2 above is Ok and manageable provided the investigating and police authorities do their work properly, which requires of course (i) they’re familiar with the law (ii) investigate the facts thoroughly and if unsure of how the lawapplies to the facts investigated consult at least capable officers of the AG’s chambers and (iii) arrest only after investigations are completed, and the facts suit the offence. Now we have a real problem if they use the repressive laws to arrest first on the first complaint and do the investigation later using the extensive time afforded by these repressive laws to remand the person complained against to investigate the facts. This is bad because if the person is innocent as as Theresa Kok’s and Reporter Tan Hoon Cheng’s case have shown (where they are freed within a shortwhile after investigation) their civil liberties would have already have been violated. They have gone to jail for nothing, and have been released subsequently without knowing what they have done wrong!

4. The problem of 3 is compounded by lack of accountability and oversight on relevant Minister of Home Affairs’s part when he said he did not give the Ok for either arrest or release of the detainees.

The above 4 phenomenae interacting in combination is a clear and present compound of threat to our civil liberties and development of democracy.

Problem 3 may be addressed by IPCMC and 4 perhaps by change of Minister. I am worried about the trend stated in 1 and 2 above, about which I have got more to say.

//I don’t think we should be worried of charges under the Sedition Act// – Godfather which implicitly assumes (1) that although complaining group talks about “sedition”, authorities won’t invoke ISA even if language of complaint fits language/parameters of ISA and (2) PM won’t aboutfaceturn on what he said about not using ISA. Do these assumptions hold? He said he won’t use ISA on Anwar for political objectives but if what he did (say make false claims) fit the language of ISA as complained by this group, are you still sure the ISA won’t be invoked?

I agree about the suace for goose/gander bit since even DAP lodged reports against Ahmad Ismail. The danger is this then when everyone becomes a “cry baby” using police reports and action (instead of civil suits) as a means to sek redress and assuage fragile hurt feelings, then nobody else would be safe when the police have proven themselves gungho…