by Tunku Abdul Aziz
mysinchew.com

Whenever I think of my friend Karpal Singh, I am reminded of my great headmaster, the late Dr. Frank J. Rawcliffe who taught us the importance of being consistent, even if meant sometimes upsetting some people.

You may say what you want about Karpal’s manner, his magisterial pronouncements often delivered with a great roar full of fiery passion, but you cannot accuse him of being inconsistent in the position he has taken over the years on matters involving both personal and public ethical principles.

While Karpal clearly recognises that there are, in politics, no permanent friends or foes, he believes devoutly in the importance of “permanent principles.”

Unprincipled politics as we have seen in Malaysia can very quickly degenerate into unmitigated disasters. The unsavoury Perak affair is a case in point.

I believe in, and will fight for, my right to say what I like within the law. I naturally accept willingly the accompanying responsibility that such rights impose on me.

I should expect to be free from threats of violence for my views, and I was, therefore, shocked to see on TV a disgraceful act of intolerance by a group of UMNO youth, and for a second or two I thought I was watching a familiar scene from a 1935 newsreel showing the storm troopers of the Third Reich pouncing on a hapless Jew in a wheel chair.

On this occasion, it was in the hallowed grounds of the national parliament, no less that the brave Malay warriors chose to flex their muscle. The only difference was that UMNO’s storm troopers were not wearing the dreaded brown shirts of their German counterparts of days gone by. Read the rest of this entry »