Was Malaysia a police state in Oct 1987?

Definitions, like ideas, have consequences. Muddled definitions, like murky ideas, would in time eventuate in grotesque realities.

Accurate definitions and clear ideas are vital for the health of a polity. If you think you can slip-slide around these things because they won't substantively matter, think again.

In the current debate in Indonesia over a decree banning radical organisations – defined as those contravening the state ideology of Pancasila – there have been calls for the “dissolving” of religions that contradict the national ideology's first plank: belief in God.

Indonesia is a secular country that recognises six religions, the adherents of which the state guarantees freedom of worship. The six are Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Catholicism and Protestantism.

A lawyer of Islamist persuasion and polemical intent has called for the “dissolving” of non-Muslim religions because they recognise more than one God, or do not have a concept of God.

In France earlier this year, progressivist candidate for the presidency Emmanuel Macron termed his country's colonial past a “crime against humanity.”

Now as president, Macron has enacted tough anti-terrorism laws that have a direct historical link to French colonialism: the antecedents of Macron's legislation authorising state of emergency powers go back to 1955 when the French tried to stifle the Algerian rebellion at the height of that country's war of independence.

Rhetorically, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia and France's Macron are both discovering you cannot have your cake and eat it, too.

Similarly, Dr Mahathir Mohamad cannot now maintain that Operasi Lalang, which saw the detention without trial of 106 social and political activists 30 years ago when he was both prime minister and home minister, was conducted at the behest of the state security apparatus, and not by command of its civil authority.

The former assertion is sustainable only if, at the time when the ISA arrests occurred, the country was a police state.

Preemption of the civil authority by the state security apparatus can only occur in a police state, not otherwise.

Malaysia was not a police state in Oct 1987 when Ops Lalang occurred.

Parliament was functioning, in which case the inspector general of police was only an advisor, not the principal determiner, of the state of national security.

Civil command of the police and military is a foundational plank of a constitutional society. There can be no override of the former by the latter, not without a coup d'etat or the declaration of an emergency.

An American president was alleged to have put over his desk the notice: “The buck stops here.”

It was a brilliantly succinct way of stating that there can be no ambiguity when it comes to who decides and who takes responsibility at the end of the day.

The notice suggests the final decision in all other matters of national import in a constitutional polity rests with one at the top of the pyramid.

Discussion may be prolonged and consultations multiplied, but in the end, it is the one at the head of the chain of command that must accept responsibility.

It is the obverse of the situation with respect to a firing squad. It is said that all are furnished with rifles of which one has a blank cartridge. Thus, no member of the squad is certain that his was fatal shot.

Ambiguity here is useful in the apportioning of responsibility. After all, it is the termination of a life; no one wants to be sure of having delivered the coup de grace.

Similar equivocation is not permissible in a constitutional polity to prime executors handling matters of national import.

The one at the apex decides and takes responsibility. There can be no dispersion of responsibility.

The buck indeed stops with him. And properly so.

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.- Mkini