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Friday, September 5, 2014

On sedition: what must be done – Christine Hu




It feels like we are returning to the worst days of Tun Dr Mahathir’s rule. Opposition politicians are being prosecuted left and right, and even academics and journalists are being charged just for doing their jobs.
Amidst all this oppression by BN, decent people all over the country are condemning and criticising it, and even more are asking what is to be done. I have heard many suggestions: “submit a petition to the government calling for the repeal of the Sedition Act”, “organise forums on it”, “organise roadshows on it”.
Unfortunately, these tactics will have little effect. If you go through the trouble of collecting signatures for a petition and submit it to the government, the government officials will probably say, “Thanks for that, we’ll take it into consideration”, and then throw it onto a pile of all the other things they were supposed to read and go back to persecuting the rakyat.
Here’s something that shouldn’t surprise anyone: BN doesn’t really care about being condemned and criticised; BN doesn’t really care if you give it a petition; BN doesn’t really care how much “awareness” people have if they don’t act on it.
The truth is this: it’s all about power. This is the way it always has been, and this is the way it always will be. It is pointless to appeal to the sense of honour of those who have none. Unless you have power, you have no hope of getting BN to listen to you. You gain power in two ways: 1) You have something BN wants, and you hold it out as an enticement, 2) You find something BN really doesn’t want you to do, and you use it to threaten them. Carrot and stick. I do not think the rakyat have much of a carrot to offer, but they potentially have a stick – if they know how to use it. And the time to use it is now.
The “stick” I am talking about is mass civil disobedience. BN has attacked many different communities around the country and is in a vulnerable position. If these different communities can coordinate together, they will truly be a force to be reckoned with. If BN faces open revolt in Sabah and Sarawak and Penang, and if the patriotic people in the cities simultaneously hold mass demonstrations against it, even it, with its control over the army and the police, will be stretched. The rakyat will have the power by threatening to make the country very difficult for BN to govern, as should be the case in a democracy. You get into a position of strength and then use that to negotiate for what you want. This is how you obtain power. This is how you get results.
Such civil disobedience will be a direct challenge to the power of BN, and can break their power. It will be like Bersih, except that unlike Bersih, it must not finish at the end of the day. Instead, it must be a continuous series of demonstrations until the demands of the rakyat are met. Such tactics have been used successfully by the people of Egypt, by the people of Ukraine and of Thailand, and are being used by the people of Hong Kong now. I refuse to believe that Malaysians are by nature so much more cowardly than those other people that they cannot do the same to defend their country.
But who will lead such a movement? It will fall to the opposition politicians and civil society leaders to do so. I call on Anwar Ibrahim, and Lim Guan Eng in Penang, and Jeffrey Kitingan in Sabah, and party leaders in Sarawak, and Ambiga Sreenevasan, and student activists and leaders all around the country who care about freedom and justice to lead such an effort. And if some say that Malaysians are too apathetic to get behind something like this, then those leaders must do what leaders are there to do: lead. It is the job of a leader to spur people into action and show them what is necessary and what is right – even if it is difficult.
If the rakyat can work together and stand firm, a movement like this could accomplish many things. It could force the repeal of the Sedition Act and the reprieve of all those who have been so wrongfully charged under it. It could force the resignation of the IGP Khalid Abu Bakar and Home Minister Zahid Hamidi for using it as a weapon against the rakyat. It could unite Malaysia – both the peninsula and Sabah and Sarawak. It could fulfil the promise of Merdeka – of a fair and free Malaysia for all.
Now wouldn’t that be something to celebrate?
* Christine Hu reads The Malaysian Insider.

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