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Wednesday, July 14, 2010

True lies and false realities


“There are two choices: a police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled or a society where the law is responsive to human needs,” William Orville Douglas, the longest-serving US Supreme Court Associate Justice, once advised his government, fully aware of the widespread practice in the government of suppressing embarrassing information. He continued: “If society is to be responsive to human needs, a vast restructuring of our laws is essential. You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.”

In Malaysian politics, the truth is often treated as hate speech or characterised as a threat to national stability and unity.

The public is neither surprised nor reassured by the recent announcement that the government is setting up a high-powered committee, allegedly to stop the spread of false news. They see it as another turning of the screw against freedom of expression, another totalitarian control that a threatened regime must employ in its desperation to hang on to power in the face of an increasingly popular opposition.

It displays a failure of the will to correct the nation’s political dysfunction and to dismantle the sleazy culture of cronyism and patronage in governance against rapidly changing socio-cultural realities.

Let us hear again what two of history’s greatest statesmen had to say on the subject.

Mahatma Gandhi: “Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity.

“Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiatives as it undoes the teaching of self-help. I look upon an increase in the power of the state with the greatest fear because... it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the heart of all progress.

“A government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prison. And when you know the truth, the truth makes you a soldier.”

Thomas Jefferson: “The most effectual engines (for pacifying a nation) are the public papers... A despotic government always (keeps) a kind of standing army of news writers who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, (invent) and put into papers whatever might serve the ministers.

“This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.”

Is the Malaysian public really so stupid as to be easily deceived by lies and falsehoods from either side of the political divide?

Voters are wiser

When a government sees a critical and investigative press as a threat to national stability instead of a boon to progress, we have a sure and tragic sign that such a government is heading towards despotism.

“This situation gives political leaders the expectation that they will not be criticised, and the result is that the press restrains itself for fear of offending, without even finding out what is offensive,” says Bruce Ross-Larson in “Malaysia 2001: A Preliminary Inquiry, a book published in 1978”.

He adds: “This reticence means that government leaders, instead of having to explain themselves on delicate issues, can simply say that they are aware of these issues and will act at their own pace when the time is appropriate, not at a pace dictated by public opinion.

“The people are told they can register their opinions at election time in a truly democratic way. And while they wait, they publicly say one thing but privately believe another.”

On the other hand, the opposition may provide a voice for minority interests but is felt to be a troublesome nuisance. Dissenters operating outside political parties provide yet another voice but are often threatened with lawsuits or bullied by enforcement agencies controlled by the powerful ruling regime.

This is a most unsavoury by-products of the curtailment of free expression because it demonstrates that the ruling power is losing touch with the people they are supposed to lead.

The thinking public more often than not perceive the suppression of free expression as a blatant move to cover up abuses of political power and a particularly insidious form of corruption.

Of late, it has become increasingly obvious that official action against corruption is a victimisation tactic against selected individuals.

“Justice in Malaysia is political, at least insofar as it affects politicians,” says Ross-Larsen.

There is now the ridiculous suggestion that the present regime study the modes and approaches of a former prime minister in handling “lies and falsehood”, implying that perhaps the old methods should be re-invented and re-implemented.

Voters are wiser now and are no longer convinced that restraints on expressions are justified by the official argument that criticising an incompetent and corruptible government can threaten national stability and unity.

The ghost story that dissent would incite violence is no longer credible. Neither can voters accept the insult that they are incapable of understanding democratic principles and the values of good governance.

The old generation of Malayans are dying off and a new generation of Malaysians are now convinced that dissent with responsibility is an index of political health and not a disease.

Harping on “preventing lies and falsehood” without giving equal emphasis to the public’s right to access to information reflects a delinquent mindset unfit for leadership.

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance,” James Madison said in stressing the public’s right to information held by the government. “And a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

“A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”

Intelligent voters

Today, many Malaysian voters are more intelligent, more knowledgeable, more educated and more critical than many politicians wielding the sword of power.

These voters should ask themselves these questions:

How great are the threats of censorship today?

In a time of multi-million ringgit lawsuits, has the libel law become a tool to protect certain individuals and a chilling threat to robust debate?

Does the government, as the greatest repository and source of information, seek to enlarge or restrict its dissemination?

Is the banning of publications run by opposition parties justified?

Do you trust the government as a powerful gatekeeper of truths? Can it credibly define what constitute lies and truths?

If you answered “no” to all the questions, the bottom-line question becomes: Shouldn’t we as voters deliver a strong message through the ballot box at the next general election?

Should those politicians who advocate totalitarian methods in governance continue to be voted in to shepherd the nation’s future destiny to a possible fascist state?

Comments by Stanley Koh, who is the former head of MCA research unit.. Courtesy of FMT

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