I know it sounds like hyperbole to suggest Barisan is this nasty. And I don’t mean to say you’re a bad person if you like or support Barisan. I know a fair number of fantastic people in Barisan. But I also know for a fact that Barisan doesn’t give a rat’s ass about our democracy or our rights.
The most fundamental right — even more fundamental than the right to vote — is the right to fair and equal treatment under the law. That is why the Magna Carta is such an important document — it is the first codified instance of the rule of law. Nobody, not even the royalty or the Prime Minister, is above the law. Everyone is entitled to be treated as the law prescribes — nothing more, and nothing less.
It is fundamentally dictatorial and antithetical to democracy for people to be above the law. If someone were to murder or steal, it does not matter whether he is a prince or a pauper — he is wrong. It undermines everything about a democratic and constitutional state for the government to be above the laws imposed on the people it governs.
And yet, that is exactly what happened in Perak. Barisan could have waited for the Pakatan Rakyat speaker to convene the state assembly, pass a motion of no confidence in the government, and get on with business. It wouldn’t be particularly fair to the people of Perak, who voted for a Pakatan government, but at least it would be in accordance with the law.
Barisan didn’t give two hoots about the law. It unilaterally decided that the Sultan could dismiss the mentri besar, and used this to impose its authority over the state. The fact is that the Perak state assembly still has not passed a vote of no confidence in the Pakatan state government, leaving the question of who governs the state in limbo.
All this could be avoided if Barisan stuck to the law. But Barisan is so used to being unquestionably the one in power that it thinks it is above the law. You have a smoking gun like the V.K. Lingam video, and still the government has the gumption to say “There’s not enough proof” to prosecute those the video implicates. Barisan can grill Teoh Beng Hock so hard about RM2,400 worth of alleged corruption that he falls to his death, but it can’t even get to the bottom of the multi-billion ringgit Port Klang Free Zone disaster. Barisan is so drunk with power that it knowingly nominates a man which its very own Umno decided was too corrupt to hold office to represent it in Negri Sembilan. Barisan just does not care about the law.
We can sit all day and argue about the constitutionality of crossovers, but Barisan can’t even get the simple process of changing the government in Perak right — and worse, it doesn’t care. Instead of being sensitive to their position as an unelected and less-than-legitimate government, Barisan in Perak swaggers as if it won power in a landslide vote. It runs so roughshod over the majority who voted for Pakatan that it can have the speaker violently stripped of his robes, the elected Pakatan state representatives roughed up, and the tree which symbolises the will of the majority of Perakians uprooted. Barisan is so arrogant that it cannot even try to win the hearts of the people it wants to govern.
For all of Pakatan’s foibles, there is absolutely no way I can reward the arrogance and injustice which Barisan represents and upholds. Barisan may well be laying the groundwork for the takeover of my state government next. If it does, I very much look forward to us Selangor folk giving arrogant Barisan the boot for a second time in the next general election, for until Barisan changes its ways, all I can say is: good riddance to bad, bad rubbish!
SUMBER http://themalaysianinsider.com/
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