Thoughts from London

NOV 24 — As mentioned in my previous column that attracted some attention on the Internet (http://www.theinsiderarchived.com/opinion/article/lets-perfect-the-two-party-system-first/), I am in the UK for a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference. The CPA is a Commonwealth institution that brings together supranational, national and provincial legislators. 

Through conferences like this, the CPA offers a platform for elected representatives to share and learn from one another. I’ve learned quite a lot here and hopefully it will help me serve the people of Seri Setia better when I get back.

The CPA is perhaps the most substantive institution in the Commonwealth of Nations today. Many feel that this association of former British colonies is now meaningless. 

Indeed, Britain, despite the reservations of the Eurosceptics, cannot ignore the reality that the European Union is a more immediate and powerful bloc that it needs to play an active role in. Similarly, Australia and New Zealand are finding ways to get closer to Asia and its huge, growing market. 

Looming over all of this is the rise of China to economic and geopolitical power as the United States waxes and potentially wanes. Malaysia must come to terms with these new realities and it’s not clear if Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s government has the vision to do so.

Still, there’s one legacy from the Commonwealth that Malaysians should take heed of: Commonwealth citizens still have the right to vote and stand in elections in Britain. As a matter of fact, the chief executive of the Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS), Wan Saiful Wan Jan once contested in the British local council elections in 2007 for the Conservative party. 

It is ironic, therefore, that while Malaysian citizens can participate in British elections by virtue of their Commonwealth citizenship, they are unable to vote in Malaysian general elections from the UK, or indeed any foreign country. Last year, after visiting the US and the UK, I raised the same point about our democratic deficit (http://www.theinsiderarchived.com/opinion/article/Overcoming-our-democratic-deficit/). 

On the one hand, our soldiers and police are still given postal votes. This is despite the fact that the Communist Emergency (which started the practice) has been over for almost 50 years and most of our security forces now reside in towns and cities like other citizens rather than in camps like back then. This leaves room for various abuses to take place, and the Barisan Nasional government has been adamant in denying Malaysians abroad the right to vote. 

Indeed, the way our government treats its citizens overseas makes me wonder if their rhetoric about luring our expatriated talent back home is just a big joke.

As I wrote last week, one of the UK’s Umno Clubs hosted me for a forum discussion this month. Last year however, another Umno Club in the US invited me to speak as well but the invitation was vetoed by their “higher-ups.” 

As Umno Youth Leader Khairy Jamaluddin has admitted, it smacks of hypocrisy when Umno/BN stops students in Malaysian universities from being involved with opposition parties through the University and University Colleges Act but allows (and in some cases, coerces) them to join Puteri/Putera Umno or Umno Clubs.

In fact, Malaysian students overseas who are under scholarship have received warnings or even been sent back home if they are deemed “anti-establishment.” 

I can speak with some experience having received one myself after organising programmes for Nurul Izzah Anwar in London and Dublin a month after I arrived to study in London in 2002. 

I remember an argument I had with the Malaysian High Commissioner to the UK at the time when I was on the committee of the UK Executive Council for Malaysian Students (UKEC), the umbrella body for Malaysian societies in the UK. He had demanded that the UK’s Umno Clubs be represented on the UKEC’s decision-making body. 

I reminded him that the UKEC Constitution barred the affiliation of political organisations. He responded by claiming that Umno Clubs are social, not political clubs. I replied that regardless of their function, the fact that they carried the Umno name meant they were inseparable from the political party that funded and organised them. 

Contrast the High Commissioner’s eager advocacy for Umno with what happened in the Hulu Selangor by-election this year. Back then, four UKM political science students – Hilman Idham, Woon King Chai, Azlin Shafina Adza and Muhammad Ismail Aminuddin – were stopped by a posse of university bureaucrats formed to enforce the UUCA. 

Yes, your tax ringgit paid for that. 

The students, who had Pakatan leaflets on them, were charged under the UUCA. Their lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the Act has been thrown out by the courts. UKM is still to decide on their fate, but King Chai, was dropped from the dean’s list despite his excellent grades. 

It is time we stop treating our students – whether they are at home or elsewhere – like children, but accord them their full rights as Malaysian citizens.

I have no problem if any of them chose to join one of Umno’s youth auxiliaries. In fact, I would be the first to object should a future Pakatan government try and stop them from doing so. 

Young Malaysians should be given the freedom to choose to join or not join political parties and movements. Perhaps that’s the root of our problems: Our government doesn’t respect people’s right to choose. 

The latest announcement by Deputy Foreign Minister Kohilan Pillay that Malaysians overseas are “monitored” to safeguard the “good name of the country and its leaders” illustrates the backward thinking that still permeates not just a large part of Umno but Barisan Nasional as a whole. 

Maybe the government should monitor those Cabinet ministers whose corruption scandals and gaffes make international headlines; they probably do more to tarnish the country’s image than anybody else! Humour aside, the announcement is the surest sign that Malaysia has become a police state under Umno-BN. 

The biggest irony is that while our citizens in the UK can enjoy its democracy, they have been effectively disenfranchised by virtue of being under scholarship or simply because they’re abroad. You really have to wonder what the government is so afraid of. 

After all, our founding fathers – including those from PUTERA-AMCJA and Umno – cut their political teeth in London. One of them, a certain Tun Abdul Razak bin Hussein, was a member of the Labour Party. 

It’s a sad sight to see that the government his son who now leads it is bent on stifling the rights of its citizens. 

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.