RPK’s reprieve will sadly have to depend on whether you – Anwar & Pakatan Rakyat – can take over the reins of federal & parliamentary power with your so called “numbers”.

If others take over from Pak Lah, RPK’s predicament will become worse!

What other ways?

You have to look at the avenue of the Rulers, being the fountain of Mercy.

The King, the Ruler or Yang di-Pertua Negeri of a State have the powers to grant pardons, reprieves and respites in respect of all offences which ought to include ISA.

Look at article 42 of the Federal Constitution.

However the problem is Rulers can proceed to dispense mercy if Pardons Board recommends.

And your PR controlled state govt(s) may or may not be able do something about who sits on the Pardon Board.

However the road block, as I understand it, is that our Attorney General (AG) also sits on Pardon Board, and the most difficult road block here is, acording to my understanding, that the Pardons Board must listen to and abide recommendation of AG (constitutionally that is). So it may be a dead end here…

I have looked at the other angle whether Rulers being constitutionally head of Islam and Islamic matters could question and overrule police or Home Minister’s view for incarcerating RPK under ISA (ostensibly for insulting Islam) but have come to another road block : the Rulers might have a say only if the offence RPK is accused of is based on Sharia jurisdiction under some Sharia Enactment.

The ISA however is Federal Law and therefore outside HRH’s purview.

Perhaps your constitutional and legal experts can look further into this article 42(3) of Federal Constitution relating to Royal pardons. RPK is related royal family and has many friends within the Royal Circuit, isn’t it so?

I guess “Give me liberty or give me death” will take some time to be internalised by Malaysians. (Situation is of course changing with freedom fighters like RPK, YB Kit and the many NGOs proliferating today).

Our people are Asians, and Asians political values generally are said to be “authoritarian”.

Since Malacca Sultanate, feudalism was the authoritarian social or political organization found in the Malay world.

Yes we learn something from colonialist masters about human rights written into articles 5 and 8 of our Federal Constitution in 1957 independence, about 50 years ago.

The English on the other hand started fighting for liberties more than 800 years ago.

In 1213, barons and bishops forced despotic King John to sign Magna Carta, the first English Bills of Rights, by which King could not ignore certain basic rights of citizenry. 400 years thereafter the English Parliament also pressured another despotic King Charles I to sign in 1628 the Petition of Rights, whereby King could not force military conscriptions in peace time, could not force anyone to lend him money or imprison men without just cause. Parliament also exerted its will to pass the Bills of Rights in 1689 giving parliamentarians freedom of speech, enshrining certain rights, forbidding King to inflict cruel punishments.

The Magna Carta, The Petititon of Rights and the Bill of Rights were the substratum – the bible – of English liberties, hard fought for by many, beheaded, quartered, tortured or sent to Towel of London to get to where the English are today. They don’t even need a written constitution. The judges of England will protect as custodian their liberties.

Principles of the right to life and liberties were taken from the old world by the Pilgrim fathers to the New World – America – in the Mayflower. And when the American colonies became free from the British, they had brilliant libertarians like Thomas Jefferson to hammer out a written Constitution over there, and Abraham Lincoln to fight white against white for the rights of the black man!

Whilst the English were fighting for their liberties, here in Malacca, Hang Tuah fought and killed his closest childhood companion, Hang Jebat out of complete deep and blind – loyalty for Sultan Mansur even when the Sultan sentenced Hang Tuah to death without trial for allegedly having an illicit affair with one of the Sultan’s concubines. …

You see the difference in cultural and political tradition.

taiking1, are you sure RPK has a computer? Definitely no access to Net in Kamunting for him to directly operate his blogsite or else why put him there in Kamunting, & I doubt very much access to any computer/notebook. If you visit MT, the posting of RPK’s “Give me liberty or give me death” was posted by one “kasee” on his behalf.

When Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) was a teenager, his Welsh mother said, “Lets go back to England”. “But Malaysia is our home..I may have been born in England but I will die here in Malaysia and be buried here. My father is buried here. My grandparents on my father’s side are buried here. We all should be buried here in the family plot in Kelang. We all should remain in Malaysia”, RPK retorted.

Mother said, “It’s not dying that I am worried about. It’s the years I have left alive that I am concerned with. What kind of country do you think Malaysia is going to become? There will be no freedom. The government will arrest you anytime they feel like it. You go against the government and they will put you in jail. He police will beat you up. You will never be allowed to do or say whatever you like. You will be a prisoner in your own country. Malaysia will be like Hell on Earth. Get out now while you have the chance…England is a “civilised country where you are free to do and say what you like, where you will not be put in jail if they don’t like you, where the government w ill not brutalise you, where you don’t have to go through the day scared out of your wits….”.

“Oh don’t exaggerate,” RPK said….He added : “When it was clear that I would not follow her, my mother left without me. Many years came to pass. My mother died a few years later and was buried in England…Then one day to my horror, I realised my mother had been right all along. Her prediction had come true though I might not initially have realised it….”

Excerpts extracted from Raja Petra Kamarudin’s foreword in his book “The Reformasi Trail” .

The US Constitution vests federal powers in foreign and military affairs, civil liberties and national economic issues with broad powers left with states on premise that they retain balance of whatever powers not surrendered under laws and constitution to Federal Government.

However, as time passes it does not mean Federal govt plays less and less role (decentralisation): the opposite may be truer.

Whenever dispute on distribution of powers, it will fall on Supreme Court (SC) to decide. I may be wrong but assume the likelier case, SC justices (appointed by President, though aproved by Congress) would tilt towards expanding Federal Power.

This is not necesarily bad intentioned. Sometimes as civilization progresses, and national life more complicated, it is to common weal of all Americans, that on key areas, there is uniformity or else why called it a nation or the united states when they are not united?

There is the need to respond to challenges of the time. For Eg 1930s Depression right through World war II, there was great debate of Capitalism versus Communism, in US there’s need to extol the former’s virtues (ala Adam Smith style) and mitigate bad effects (ala Karl Marx’s version) so there’s need for more welfare policies and programs to be implemented via expanded federal powers during time of Roosevelt’s New Deal & Lyndon B. Johnson Great Society programs.

In 1960s, the national government under Democrats promoted and defended civil rights and liberties. When Memphis University barred Brown (black) from registering, would AG Robert Kennedy send state troopers to the state to escort Brown to register to uphold constitution if Federal law enforcement did not encroach to then state’s?

Immediately after civil war with Northern victory, Federalism was strengthened by 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution ending slavery, defining national citizenship, limiting the power of the states in the areas of civil rights and liberties, and, generally, established the supremacy of the national Constitution and laws over the states…From that starting point, Federal govt has strengthened over time.