Ignoring popular will, Barisan returns to old ground with preventive laws

Najib delivering his historical speech on the repeal of the ISA and other preventive detention laws in Kuala Lumpur on September 15, 2011. - The Malaysian Insider pic, October 4, 2013.What is it about the Malaysian government that makes it so dependent on detention without trial? Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, eager to boost his credentials as a reformist, made a promise on the eve of Malaysia Day in 2011 to get rid of preventive laws, which are basically an oxymoron: how can a law that cannot be challenged in court be called a law?

Then, for a brief moment in Malaysia’s history, the thing the sceptics never thought could happen, indeed happened.

The country abandoned its hoary dependency, doing away with the dreaded Internal Security Act and even the infamous Emergency Order (EO) that the police relied on to detain criminals they had no confidence to confidently prosecute in court.

For all the claims by cynics that this was just a shimmy shuffle by the Prime Minister to win over the liberal vote, it happened. Malaysia entered a period where its citizens could not be detained without the authorities having to prove their case to the courts.

But after the general election of May 5 where the majority vote went against the government, the very thing that the cynics warned about, occurred not so many hours ago: Malaysia restored detention without trial under the Prevention of Crime Act early on Thursday morning.

This, despite the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition losing its popular mandate for the first time in history, on May 5. Yes, it made the government but only through gerrymandering. Should not this inform its decisions from poll day 2013 onwards?

Should not this government have a sense that it might not bulldoze its laws through parliament anymore without serious consequences?

There is an opposition in the same chamber that won the mandate and it is nothing more than a powerful technicality that it is not in government, that it has inferior numbers to the BN in parliament alone.

Yet, here is BN again treating the results of May 5 as nothing more than a political strategy gone wrong.

The ruling coalition appears not to have acknowledged that the rakyat set a direction for the country on May 5.

And so Datuk Seri Najib Razak has made a U-turn with impressive nimbleness, taking the short view that his party hardliners are the ones whose views he must respect – even though he has already secured the presidency of Umno, the most dominant and the only successful portion of the ruling coalition.

His tacit approval to seeing the controversial bill pushed through was evident when he uncharacteristically made an appearance in Parliament, albeit looking tired late Wednesday evening, and was seen leaving just after midnight, when it was evident that the bill would be passed.

The passage of the law has earned the country international condemnation already, just hours later, with global NGO Human Rights Watch leading the charge that the legislation is a huge step backward.

The amendments to the PCA will deny Malaysians the fundamental right guaranteed to all under the Federal Constitution.

"The so-called safeguards introduced into the PCA, which are the Prevention of Crime Board and the right of judicial reviews against any order imposed by the board are meaningless," said Bar Council president Christopher Leong.

"The board is designed to be wholly dependent on the report issued by the inquiry officer. It has no authority to re-examine the accuracy and veracity of the inquiry officer's findings."

If the board cannot inquire or verify the authenticity of the inquiry officer's findings, then the decision to increase the membership of the Prevention of Crime Board from three to five is a cosmetic decision.

There are also valid concerns among opposition parties that the law is vague, especially on what constitutes an unlawful society, giving rise to fears that political parties might be targeted.

Bayan Baru PKR MP Sim Tze Tzin admitted that they knew the bill would go through because BN has more representatives in the lower house with 133 seats against Pakatan Rakyat's 88.

"But we wanted to fight till the end because this is what we believe in. While we support getting tough on crime, this is not the way to go and it is our duty as MPs to advise the government on this," he stressed.

The proposed amendments by the Pakatan Rakyat MPs were also, not surprisingly, voted out.

"Let the rakyat decide, we gave it our best," Sim added.

Political analyst Professor Dr Jayum Jawan said the government must now prove to the rakyat that it would use the Act responsibly to combat crime and not for its political agenda.

“The opposition has all the reasons to fear that the Act would be used against them, but now the government has to prove that they are sincere in passing the bill to combat crime,” he said.

“I don’t think the Bill is a copy of the Internal Security Act per se as there are limits to the power of the minister.”

Jayum also said it did not matter how the Bill was passed even though it seemed to have been done in a rush as the ruling party had the numbers to push the Bill through.

The lack of sincerity by the ruling government on allowing proper debate on the amendments was glaringly obvious when only two days were allocated for the PCA.

Even the minor amendments made to the Legal Profession Act (LPA) when Parliament convened last week, were allowed a longer debate period of three days.

"This just shows the government deliberately dragged the debate on the LPA to give us minimum time to debate on the PCA, which is a far more important legislation," said PKR vice-president and Padang Serai MP N. Surendran.

Then there is the hypocrisy of the MCA, which openly declared its stand against detention without trial but then voted with the government on Wednesday.

There is also the supposed corridor meetings where a leader of Pakatan Rakyat had met with a senior member of the ruling government and had agreed that some changes were needed to the amendments proposed.

In the end, with the exception of expanding the three-man board to oversee detention of criminals to five members, no concrete changes were made to ease concerns over the trampling of civil liberties.

So a battle was won by the ruling coalition using its superior numbers in Parliament, pandering to its sclerotic instincts, returning to familiar turf. But to what end, when it goes against the popular will?