With the prevalance of universal corruption practices in Malaysia, I simply have lost all my confidence in the law enforcement systems of Malaysia. Even if Pakatan Rakyat is going to take over the Federal Government, it will not be effective for Pakatan Rakyat leaders to solely depend on the existing Law Enforcement systems in order to carry out an effective rule on the Malaysia subject due to uncontrollable corruption problems. Pakatan Rakyat leaders will still need a tough law like the ISA for purpose of prevention of anarchy situation and sabotage attempt by sending all the corrupted Umnoputras and the hardcore rebels to solitary confinement in the future when Pakatan Rakyat begins to rule at Federal level.

Let’s talk about abolition of the ISA at a later stage when Pakatan Rakyat can effectively control the Federal Government someday in the future. It is no point wasting too much time on this issue now because Umnoputras already make it clear that they are not going to abolish the ISA in the near future!

He will try to abscond more public funds from the people because he need to square back the funds he invested to garner the votes he needs. It is a profitable investment for ISA.

In ancient China when the empire was ruled by “sage kings” or “philosopher kings” absolute power yielded desirable results and people were well taken care of. I am afraid in the kind of society that we have now ISA will become a heartless path that will kill us.

The DAP and PKR may want to wake up to this reality and make amends now instead of 2013…

I agree that it is not necessary to harp on the continual existence of ISA.

The stifling political climate in Malaysia is not solely because we have ISA. The government of the day have enough other legislations and apparatus in its arsenal to deal with the oppositions. Therefore those anti ISA signboards put up in Penang are really a waste of time.

lkt-56,
For your information, I am not the only ex ISA detainee who is still advocating its continued use. The Defence Minister from Umno, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, had been detained for about one week during September 1998 in Kota Kinabalu. He is also a strong advocator for the continued use of the ISA.

The solitary confinement of the ISA detention is a very effective way to cut off the detainee’s communication with the outsiders. It is a very effective way to put check on the advance of the enemy.

A politician’s ultimate goal is to be able to grab the political power in order to put his/her ideology into practical implementation. If the ISA is going to be a legacy left over by Umnoputras for use by Pakatan Rakyat leaders in the future, no one ambitious Pakatan Rakyat leader will refuse to give a serious thought about the use of it if it can really help the Pakatan Rakyat leader to uphold his/her political power someday in the future.

Whether the ISA is good or not will all depend on whether the Home Minister who invokes the use of it will have a good heart or a bad heart or have no heart at all!

Mist,
Just take a look at Lee Kuan Yew. If Lee was only allowed to use the normal law instead of the ISA, many political watchers commented that Lee would most likely be replaced by the socialist leader such as Lim Ching Siang as the First Prime Minister of Republic of Singapore. With the invocation of the ISA for the arrest of some leftist leaders, Lee was able to put the roadside bomb threat in check during early 1960s. Many Chinese philosophers would prefer the decision making quality and the leadership quality of individual leader to the adoption of popular suggestion advocated by the public majority as the effective way of performing the duty of public administration.

I had my youthful days been spent in learning the political change of Communist China, that was during an era when the maxim of the late Deng Xiao Peng “No matter whether it is a white cat or a black cat, it will surely be a good cat as long as it catches the rat!” had become very popular in early 1980s. I learn to be pragmatic through learning from the wise and experienced seniors.

I don’t think we can do anything for the repellation of ISA at the moment if Umnoputras insist on keeping it, except for putting in much more effort to educate the people that Umnoputras were blatantly wrong when they deliberately advocated the moral correctness of technical corruption.

On the other hand, I believe that the ISA is much easier to implement in the hand of a righteous leader than the normal law because the invocation of the ISA detention will require lesser bureaucratic involvement as compared to the legal court proceedings. In Malaysia, a legal court ligation will sometimes take about 6 years to get a court judgement. However, in case of security emergency the Home Minister can invoke the ISA detention within several hours of giving instruction to the Inspector-General of Police. Therefore the ISA is a much more efficient law in case of security measure urgency happening in Malaysia.

Onlooker Politics :

The answer is a big “Yes” only when there is no serious corruption problem in existence in Malaysia. However, with Najib’s giving consent to the practice of corruption by the ambiguous excuse of “corruption is acceptable if it is a technical corruption”, I can only find a big “No” to the questions raised about the adequacy of Malaysia’s existing law for safeguarding against abuse and wrongful injustices and for maintaining peace and order.
How do you expect me to trust a legal enforcement system, a prosecution system and a judicial court system which all have been greatly influenced by the universal corruption practices? I would rather choose to rely upon a high handed authoritarian leader to resolve and eradicate all the prevalent corruption and power abuse problems.

I am really lost with your blatant illogic. If normal laws are subjected to corruption and abuse isn’t ISA with far more elements of arbitrariness be an even more convenient tool ?

Help me understand your point of view.

If the policemen, the Investigating officers, the Prosecuting officers, and the court judges can all be technically bribed because it is not wrong to offer a technical bribe by Najib’s standards, then what other system can still be used to put deterrent forces on Najib from committing possible crime besides the ISA detention?

If the ISA invocation power is put in the hand of the righteous politician, it can help to prevent racist conflicts. However, if the power is placed in the hand of an evil politician, it will become the bloodshed knife of a tyrant. A law is just a law. Whether the law can be used in a beneficial way or not will all depend on the integrity and judgemental quality of the person who is vested with the power to invoke the law.

Since Umnoputras are not going to repeal the ISA, why don’t we just vote Pakatan Rakyat into the Federal Government someday in the future and let Pakatan Rakyat leaders to decide on whether to choose to keep the ISA or to repeal it through the parliamentary law amendment?

First, I think its a waste of time debating this. PR must first win the next GE.

Secondly abolishing ISA was one of the key promises of PR. If they do not uphold this promise, then they are lying, untrustworthy opportunists of the worst kind. I don’t think any voter with a conscience would vote for PR ever again if they pull such a stunt.

Malaysia only has about 52 years history in nation building (if there is indeed any nation building effort being put in by Umnoputras). The racism is already deep-rooted and still growing very strong within Umno. If Pakatan Rakyat leaders are to resort to education to teach the Umnoputras that racism is wrong and should be foresaken, they will probably take another 150 years to accomplish the task, based on the extended projection referring to the American experiences.

Who is going to wait for another 150 years in order to see a Prime Minister being selected among the Pakatan Rakyat leaders? Most Pakatan Rakyat supporters would like to see that Anwar or Nik Aziz or YB Kit to be chosen as the Prime Minister since yesterday. In order to make such sweet dream of Pakatan Rakyat come true, Pakatan Rakyat leaders will have no choice but to remember in the future to resort to the invocation of the ISA for purpose of keeping the racist Ketuanan Melayu fanciers under the police custody in order to impair the Umnoputras’ capability to create damages to the social peace and racial harmony! Since Umnoputras are not going to repeal the ISA, why don’t Pakatan Rakyat leaders just take it as a gift to be handed over by Umnoputras to Pakatan Rakyat since the ISA can be a useful tool for putting check on the spread of unwanted racism in Malaysia?

I cannot agree with you that the best thing that Home Minister Kit could do is to behave exactly like his predecessor. I am in rough agreement with you that some elements may not accept the result of a General Election which ended UMNO’s run. I must hope that they are in a sufficient minority, and sufficiently even-tempered that their malice would either be easily dealt with or subside with time.

In any case, raising a bogeyman to counter the incumbents’ bogeyman is only going to increase the already deeply divided electorate, and does nothing to convince supporters that they really are going to get change. Violence begets violence. I think we should adopt a more conciliatory tone. If we do not, I fear GE13 could be a lucky time for Chua Soi Lek’s “We Heart Malaysia” party!

Let us not act out of fear. Besides do you think having the ISA will guarantee PR’s continued governance if it does come into power? Do you recall Benazir Bhutto being gunned down and never having a chance to even stand for election? Look hard at the law for the evil that it represents, pleeease…..

OrangRojak :
We are being asked to ’support change’. If that is not a change of government at the next GE, what is the nature of the ‘change’ that is being sold to us?

What? You mean you still don’t know? We are not asking for change in government from BN to PR. We are asking for change in the manner of which the government is being run and the policies which it practices.

A name change from BN to PR is useless to the rakyat. If PR cannot offer a better alternative government then why change? As always: The devil you know is preferable over the devil that you don’t know.

In BN can somehow miraculously convince the voters that it has reformed and improved, then a BN government would be preferable.

We are being asked to support change. What change is PR trying to sell us? Just a name change from BN to PR? Then as a voter aptly put it: “What for vote for PR? No difference what.”

OrangRojak,
As a former ISA detainee, my personal experience told me that many injustices, such as police brutality, unjustified ISA detention of an innocent news reporter Miss Tan Hoon Cheng and the illfully-trapped YB Teresa Kok, happened in Malaysia because of the reason that some racist police officers and the racist Home Minister were sitting at the helm of the ISA invocation power. I do not believe the Police injustices happened in Malaysia can be reduced into an exception rather than a rule. So long as the racist ideology of Ketuanan Melayu still persists within Umno, we will continue to see the happening of more and more police injustices in the future. The ISA can be put to good use by YB Kit if YB Kit can be appointed as the Home Minister in the future.

If YB Kit can become a Home Minister in the future, the first thing I would suggest him to do is to put the racist hatred inciters in the ISA detention camp until Pakatan Rakyat is able to keep the peace and order intact in Malaysia. We have to be cautious that those racist proponents of Ketuanan Melayu ideology would quickly rise up to incite the racist hatred in the event that Pakatan Rakyat seems likely to stand a good chance to take over the Federal Government from Barisan Nasional in the future. If Pakatan Rakyat leaders do not sort this racist hatred thing out with Barisan Nasional leaders, there will never be a true democracy in existence in Malaysia. This is because in case Pakatan Rakyat is going to win the Parliamentary majority, it is very likely that Umnoputras will not hesistate to take the militant short-cut along the path that had been gone through by the late Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia or the late Ferdinand Marcos of the Phillipines.

Policing is by and large normal (including pro-UMNO / anti-everyone else bias) in the PR-run states isn’t it? Perak is a different matter because the machinery of government (which the police would not normally question) gave the impression that the uniformed services’ duty was to deliver Najib’s prize. It seems perverse to even say it, but I’m not convinced we can fairly blame the police for their actions in Perak. The blame lies much higher up the chain of command.

As for the subject of a bombing campaign, I don’t think the question even arises for a Pakatan Rakyat government. If it is the work of a network of disenfranchised bigots, then the normal agents of the law can deal with them. If the normal agents of the law are carrying out the bombing out of some higher allegiance, they are not likely to arrest and convict themselves. We have to hope if your forecast bombers do materialise, that they are the former and can be dealt with with healthy, reasonable laws. If you really believe the latter is likely, then why are you wasting time on this blog instead of chartering an aeroplane? I’ll take 4 seats. I’m not interested in a luggage allowance.

Onlooker Politics: If the United States as a nation of holding high respect for civil liberties
Ahahahaha, they are only perceived to hold high respect by those in no danger from their policies!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_invocations_of_the_USA_PATRIOT_Act

Come on OnPol, the UK and USA’s, and arguable most of Europe’s reputation for civil liberties was forged long before USA PATRIOT and the Terrorism Act. Those two pieces of legislation are reviled in their home countries. They cannot be wielded fairly because they give the Establishment arbitrary powers of enormous magnitude over their citizens. If they were ‘rigidly checked and balanced’ with ‘better supervision’, they would be normal, reasonable laws! Those Acts are always used to cement the incumbents’ position of power. The terrible events that precede them are just a stroke of ‘luck’ for governments who fear they could lose at the next election.