From 'jestice' to justice

Talk about poetic justice. In stealing the 'dacing' or scale of justice to try and symbolically deny its systematically making a mockery of the law, the now-defunct BN regime turns out to have been dicing with destiny.

Because if born-again Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is serious in his avowed intention to restore the long-ignored rule of law to Malaysia, the jest is not on justice anymore, but on the jokers.

And not just on the big-time jokers like former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak and his former cabinet of allegedly corrupt and otherwise criminal clowns, but also on their virtually countless accomplices, cronies, accessories and appointees from the top all the way down.

So many suspects, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine where Mahathir, promised prime minister-to-be Anwar Ibrahim and their fellow Pakatan Harapan legislators are going to find enough honest police, reputable judges and untarnished lawyers to bring them all to trial, let alone reform the laws these crooks are guilty of using and abusing to keep themselves in power for so long.

In the process, of course, keeping themselves in clover through what it would be highly appropriate to call the rule of whore.

The rule of whore and flaw

This being the neat system whereby BN ministers, members, partisans, propagandists and supporters were routinely rewarded with positions that enabled them to profit from corrupt pay-offs and 'commissions' in return for their turning blind eyes to the breaking of the very laws they had falsely sworn to uphold.

And to enable themselves to get away with the rule of whore, they also established the rule of flaw. The employment of flawed or outright unconstitutional legislative travesties like the Sedition Act 1948, the Printing, Presses and Publications Act 1984, the Universities and Colleges Act 1971, and finally the so-called Anti-Fake News Act 2018, for silencing critics and punishing opponents.

Then, for special circumstances in which these illegalities and injustices proved insufficient for their purposes, as in the persecution of Anwar Ibrahim and the protection of the masterminds behind the murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu, they had a routine for the of rigging trials or in other words the rule of outlaw.

The rule of in-law

Which brings us to the rule of in-law, through which self-declared future prime minister Khairy Jamaluddin contrived to elevate himself to the upper echelons of Umno/BN and thus presumably to his share of the benefits of the aforementioned rules of whore, flaw and outlaw.

I single out Khairy for particular mention here, not, as some might imagine, due to any particular dislike on my part, at least compared with the degree of negative sentiment I feel for some of his even less loveable Umno/BN colleagues like Najib, former deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi or former federal territories minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, but for the small spark of admiration I have for the guy.

For two reasons, the first of which is that he’s the only Umno/BN bigwig who’s rightly called the survivors of the shattered former ruling regime to rally together and form the credible opposition that every government, including a Pakatan Harapan one, needs in order to be held to account.

And the second and more important reason is that Khairy alone, as far as I’m aware, has raised the possibility of reforming Umno into a multiracial and multireligious party.

The rule of law

Admittedly I’m vividly aware that a great many Malaysians are inclined to write off both of these proposals as a pathetically obvious exercise in Khairy-style opportunism.

But as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter where good ideas come from. And just as Malaysia needs a strong and able opposition to properly function as a democracy, as a constitutionally secular democracy it also sorely needs to be rid of political parties that by their very nature poisonously divide the nation along racial and/or religious lines.

Or, to put this another way, Malaysia doesn’t need the rule of religio-racial or outright racist lore that has served the people so badly in the days of yore, but the rule of fair, equal and equitable law.

In light of which I’m by no means suggesting that Khairy, however progressive his political proposals, should escape legal scrutiny and possible redress for his part in past BN misdeeds.

In fact he should be investigated and, if found to have a case to answer, charged for any Umno/BN corruptions or other crimes he has had a part in.

Even if he’s tried and found guilty, he’ll be much younger after his punishment, and thus have a far longer political future to look forward to, than Anwar Ibrahim is following his 11 years of patently unjust imprisonment.

And unlike Anwar, he’ll have the satisfaction of having fallen foul of not the erstwhile Umno/BN system of joke jestice based on the rule of whore, flaw or outlaw, but of true, politically-independent and professionally-impartial justice founded firmly on the rule of law.  

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DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include Mad about Malaysia, Even Madder about Malaysia, Missing Malaysia, 1Malaysia.con and Malaysia Mania. -Mkini