COMMENT I was amused when I read the Borneo Post report on Nov 14 quoting the Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud challenging independent agencies and NGOs to form political parties to fight elections, rather than playing politics behind “disguises”’

Citing an example, he said, “Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam), which is supposed to fight for human rights, has raised a lot of issues on land, which later jumped into orangutan talk.”

Unfortunately for Taib, the Sarawak Suhakam Commissioner Dr Mohd Hirman Ritom Abdullah came out and clarified that Suhakam had been given a mandate by Parliament to promote and protect human rights in Malaysia.

Then on Nov 17, the Star carried a further clarification by Professor Emeritus Dr Khoo Kay Khim, who is also a Suhakam commissioner, that the body is neither an NGO nor a political party, but a statutory body set up under the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia Act 1999, to look into issues dealing with human rights in the country.

He also explained that Malaysia was a member of the United Nations, whose Paris Principle required human rights commission to be set up to monitor the situation in the country.

Taib's political values revealed

I will not say that Suhakam is a pretty toothless tiger, and their findings and recommendations are not binding on the offending parties. It is better to have a Suhakam than not having one at all. Democracy is all about institution building.

I will also not say that Taib is too old for his job. He is a man of many responsibility, and a slip of the mind and tongue is quite human for everybody.

But his call for NGOs and independent agencies to register themselves as political parties before they are qualified to criticise the government is revealing of his worldview and his political values.

The registration of a new political party is tightly controlled, and probably would require the personal approval of the prime minister. In the case of Sarawak, the PM would probably consult the Sarawak CM in accordance with their BN spirit.

Commenting on his blog The Broken Shield, Joseph Tawie has already pointed out that the application for the registration of a new party, Malaysian Dayak Congress (MDC), has been turned down on security grounds as if the new party would bring chaos to the country.

But Taib’s call is revealing in more ways than one. He betrays his unspoken assumption that criticism of the government and politics are the exclusive preserve of the mainstream political parties. In post-colonialism theories, his view regards all the rakyat as Subaltern, junior members of the post-colonial state who are mere objects of administration instead of subjects of self-determination. 

Wikipedia gives the definition of Subaltern thus: “Subaltern is a term that commonly refers to persons who are socially, politically, and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure.” That about describes the great majority of Sarawakians living under the rule of the post-colonial master Taib Mahmud.

In actual fact, in modern democratic theories, citizens are the real stake-holders in the nation’s future, and so they are entitled to be consulted on affairs of state according to the jurisprudential Doctrine of Natural Justice.

Every citizen possesses the inalienable human right to his freedom of speech, and if he chooses to criticise the government, he is merely fulfilling his duty as a citizen, as long as he does it according to the law.

As for NGOs and independent citizen groups, they are formed voluntarily according to the law for a common civic purpose, like protecting the environment and helping the Penans.

In theoretical terms, NGOs and citizens’ groups make up the civil society of the nation; civil society stands outside the government and business world, and they can accumulate the social capital of the people for their common good.

The numerous guilds and associations, educational and religious bodies are all NGOs and part of our Malaysian civil society.

According to the distinguished professor Robert Putnam, civil society contributes to citizens’ participation in public events, builds trust and co-operation towards a common goal, and ensures the stability of the entire nation-state. The more civil society groups there are in any country, the better it is for the democratic future of that country.

Rights to criticise government

In any advanced liberal democracy where the citizens are educated and much more prosperous than Malaysia, politicians there always encourage public participation in their national life as a hallmark of enlightened politics.

In his presidential election, Barack Obama raised hundreds of millions of campaign funds, mostly through the Internet, from large number of donors who each made a small contribution. He did not go to a few tycoons for that same amount of money. That way he will not be beholden to any interest groups.

In that democratic spirit of public participation, individuals and citizens’ groups all have the rights to criticise the government on any issue of the day, including holding peaceful public demonstrations.

Sarawak is not a very democratic state, and citizens’ participation is routinely discouraged. Development decisions are made from the top down. It has all the characteristics of a post-colonial state, a former colony that has achieved independence only to be re-colonised by its own elite.

The impulse of a post-colonial regime is to de-politicise the rakyat, and the claim to limit political criticism to political parties only by Taib Mahmud is a clear indicator of such an arcane mentality.

In short, we may have a general election every five years or so, and so seem to have the form of democracy. But it is a very primitive form of democracy, because Sarawakians lack the substantive democratic institutions that make politics a vibrant democratic way of life in which all citizens from the towns to the villages in the remotest parts of the state actively participate in collective decisions.

It is too dangerous to leave politics entirely to professional politicians and their political parties. There is plenty of room for political participation by the citizenry beyond the small circle of political parties.

Perhaps one day will come when the Sarawak political sky can be pried wide open.

SIM KWANG YANG can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it