Parti Tindakan Demokratik (DAP) kesal dengan pembohongan Ketua Wanita UMNO Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil yang mendakwa kononnya DAP memperalatkan orang Melayu.

Shahrizat mengeluarkan kenyataan yang tidak berasas itu kerana beliau sebenarnya takut melihat sambutan orang Melayu terhadap DAP, terutamanya dengan penubuhan cawangan DAP yang dipimpin oleh orang Melayu yang pertama di Selangor.

Ini adalah bukti di mana UMNO semakin bimbang kehilangan sokongan orang Melayu. Baru wujud satu sahaja cawangan DAP yang majoritinya orang Melayu di Selangor, UMNO sudah pun ketakutan.

Cawangan DAP yang mempunyai majoriti orang Melayu itu telah ditubuhkan di Kampung Lembah Kinrara minggu lalu. Menurut pengasasnya, Haron Abdul Wahab, orang Melayu di kawasan itu memilih DAP kerana yakin dengan prinsip parti yang memperjuangkan nasib semua kaum di negara ini. Mereka sedar DAP membantu rakyat tanpa memilih bulu.

Menurut satu laporan akhbar semalam, Shahrizat telah dipetik sebagai berkata bahawa DAP tidak pernah memperjuangkan hak dan kepentingan orang Melayu tetapi sebaliknya hanya mengutamakan kepentingan kaum lain.

Shahrizat tidak berkata yang benar kerana dia tahu orang Melayu telah menerima DAP dan sedar DAP tidak anti-Islam dan tidak anti-Melayu, malah berjuang mempertahankan dan melindungi hak semua kaum dan agama.

Orang Melayu sudah sedar bahawa kepimpinan Setiausaha Agung DAP Lim Guan Eng sebagai Ketua Menteri Pulau Pinang bukan sahaja menjamin hak-hak orang Melayu dan Islam, malah menggalakkan lagi perkembangan syiar Islam di negeri itu.

Walaupun tidak sampai dua tahun pentadbiran Pakatan Rakyat yang dipimpin oleh Lim Guan Eng di Pulau Pinang, rakyat di negeri itu khususnya orang Melayu telah pun menerima sumbangan ikhlas dari prinsip Cekap, Akauntabel dan Telus (CAT). Antaranya adalah pengiktirafan tinggi kepada pelajar-pelajar Melayu cemerlang, termasuk untuk para penghafal Quran atau Huffaz, dan peruntukan RM1.5 juta setiap tahun kepada sekolah-sekolah agama rakyat.

Malah kita tidak boleh lupa bagaimana Lim Guan Eng menjadi mangsa konspirasi politik sehingga beliau dimasukkan ke penjara semata-mata kerana mempertahankan hak dan maruah seorang gadis Melayu yang menjadi mangsa pencabulan.
Malah di mana sahaja DAP bergiat aktif, orang Melayu dan umat Islam tidak pernah diketepikan, malah sama-sama dibantu dengan kaum-kaum lain yang mengalami kesusahan. Semua usaha ini tidak pernah dihebahkan oleh UMNO dan media arus perdana miliknya yang hanya mahu meneruskan agenda perkauman bagi menjamin kuasa kekal di tangan mereka yang tidak bersih, rasuah dan menyalahgunakan kuasa.

Sepatutnya Shahrizat menghormati hak asasi rakyat Malaysia untuk memilih mana-mana pertubuhan politik dan berhenti dari bermain dengan isu perkauman yang boleh mencetuskan syak wasangka antara rakyat.

Sepatutnya juga, sebagai Menteri Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat, beliau perlu menumpukan kepada protfolionya untuk memastikan golongan yang memerlukan benar-benar mendapat perlindungan.

Sehingga hari ini, Shahrizat telah berdiam diri dengan isu tuduhan kes rogol yang berlaku terhadap gadis Penan di Sarawak, dan isu ancaman rogol oleh samseng-samseng UMNO terhadap Ahli Exco Kerajaan Negeri Selangor Rodziah Ismail sewaktu majlis dialog pemindahan kuil Seksyen19 pada 5 September lalu.

Shahrizat sepatutnya berkhidmat dengan lebih gigih dan jujur untuk membuktikan perlantikannya semula sebagai Menteri adalah tidak sia-sia, setelah beliau sendiri ditolak oleh rakyat dalam pilihan raya umum 2008.

DAP sedia menghulurkan salam persahabatan untuk membantu beliau dalam menangani mana-mana isu yang melibatkan kezaliman dan ketidakadilan terhadap wanita, keluarga dan masyarakat. Yang penting, Shahrizat mesti hentikan sikap mengapi-apikan perkauman kerana ia bukan sahaja zalim tetapi boleh menghancurkan perpaduan antara rakyat pelbagai kaum dan agama.

TUNKU ABDUL AZIZ

I will not enumerate them either as they are too many. Also it would be pointless to waste our time dwelling upon unproven allegations that should have been nipped in the bud before they got out of hand, but for some unexplained reason, Najib had allowed them to fester like tropical sores on his credibility and honour.

I, like many other Malaysians, want very much to keep an open mind. We earnestly hope that he will give serious consideration to confronting, in a court of law, those who have defamed and reviled him.

His studied indifference might be considered by some to be an appropriate response, but he is not helping his own cause. He is pandering to the insatiable appetite of the noisy rumour mongering, chattering classes.

People are not giving Najib the benefit of the doubt that he craves for. His moral legitimacy to govern is being seriously challenged because of his cavalier attitude to these extremely damning allegations.

I am not about to dispute his legitimacy to govern based on the mandate given to the Barisan Nasional by the people as part of the electoral process, but that, without an underpinning of high ethical standards of behaviour, renders a leader morally deficient.

Conventional wisdom has it that in the sticky situation he has found himself, the only recourse is for Najib to take those who have maligned him to court and clear his name, once and for all. People are asking “Why is he fighting shy of seeking justice in a court of law unless he has something to hide?” They have a point there.

For the sake of what is left of the country’s already battered reputation, and his own, he should clear his name sooner rather than later. Najib’s 1 Malaysia requires of him that he put the interest of the nation above his own.

We cannot have a prime minister who is not prepared to answer these serious allegations about his involvement in some seedy criminal activities, or those bordering on the criminal, and yet who expects us to embrace his yet hazy and unclear 1 Malaysia and to shower him with our trust and affection.

I know all these allegations may have no basis in fact and, therefore, all the more reason for Najib to let the criminal justice system be the arbiter of truth. Perceptions may not have any basis in fact, but they are real.

Najib wants so desperately to be loved, and to be well thought of. I see nothing wrong with that. It is just a silly bit of misplaced, self-serving egoism, a very human weakness most of us suffer from, but it is a harmless desire. However, there is everything wrong, if as rumours have it, public funds are being used to pay international and local spin doctors to bolster up his position.

Mahathir, when he was prime minister, so we are told, used public funds to have a meeting with President Bush arranged to boost his flagging international reputation. We expected this of Mahathir, a man of many contradictions with few scruples, but I should like to think that Najib is made of stronger and finer moral fibre, but then I could be wrong.

I am ecstatic, more than any one can imagine, by Najib’s strong rhetoric against corruption. I use the word “rhetoric” advisedly because while we have heard many populist pronouncements rolling off his smooth silvery tongue on a variety of issues, we are still waiting to see the colour of his money. Will he deliver as promised?

For someone who has been on the receiving end of countless allegations of perceived unethical public conduct relating to purchases of military assets during his watch as defence minister, he is right to want to distance himself from any further insinuation of impropriety.

Defence contracts are notoriously susceptible to corrupt practices the world over and because of this, people simply will not believe that a defence minister can be clean and pure as the driven snow, or be like Caesar’s wife, completely above suspicion especially when the procurement process is shrouded in secrecy and mystery, as ours is and has been for years.

For this, if not for any other reason, if I may be so bold as to advise Najib, he should order a complete review of the defence ministry’s procurement rules and procedures at once and bring them in line with best international public procurement practice.

The purpose of any procurement systems review is to ensure the highest degree of transparency. Without transparency, there is no accountability. Najib has a lot on his plate, and as they say, he has his work cut out for him, lucky him.

Minutes before writing this article, I had just finished reading, for the second time after a lapse of some years, F.W. De Klerk’s “The Last Trek – A New Beginning.” He was, of course the President of South Africa who dismantled apartheid and gave the people of that troubled nation a new democratic constitution which saw the once proscribed African National Congress in the seat of power after winning the general elections in 1994.

I mention all this because in spite of the fact that the Republic of South Africa had been under a state of emergency and under siege, De Klerk, in 1989, a few months before his inauguration as President, made a conscious political decision to legalise protest demonstrations that had been made illegal until then, much to the consternation of his security advisers. They thought it was madness on his part given the circumstances prevailing at the time. Why did he do what he did? Let him tell us in his own words:

“We were faced with the fact that it would be impossible to avoid the gathering of thousands of people committed to the march. The choice, therefore, was between breaking up an illegal march with all the attendant risks of violence and negative publicity, or of allowing the march to continue, subject to the conditions that could help to avoid violence and ensure good order. These were important considerations, but none of them was conclusive. The most important factor, which tipped the scale, was my conviction that the prohibition of powerful protests and demonstrations could not continue. Such an approach would be irreconcilable with the democratic transformation process that I was determined to launch and the principles of a state based on the rule of law, which I wanted to establish.”(Italics mine.)

In terms of the security and public order situation then obtaining in South Africa, and the situation in Malaysia today, where peaceful demonstrations are illegal, the two situations do not bear the remotest resemblance.

The justification trotted out with regular monotony by the government is so outrageously dishonest as to insult our intelligence. A government that sees a need to continue to impose an undemocratic law has no place in a parliamentary democracy. For F.W De Klerk, the man who worked himself out of a job, it was nothing more than “restoring what was regarded throughout the world as a basic democratic right.” (Emphasis mine)

Perhaps De Klerk’s most inspiring statement in defence of democratic principles is “…..no vision of the future can justify any government to ignore the basic human rights of the human beings involved. No cause is so great that we should allow it to dilute our sense of justice and humanity.” (Emphasis mine)

On that note, as our legal friends would say, I rest my case. Now over to our self-proclaimed reformist prime minister.

Published on August 6, 2009 | The Malaysian Insider

GEORGE TOWN (July 21, 2009) : DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng has proposed that the government set up an independent inquiry committee to investigate the death of political secretary Teoh Beng Hock and that the committee be headed by Tunku Abdul Aziz, a senator.

“Tunku Abdul Aziz was the founder of Transparency International-Malaysia and a special adviser to the secretary-general of the United Nations in 2006, so he is the most credible and reliable person to head the committee to ensure that justice is served,” he said.

Lim urged the cabinet to form the committee immediately and ensure that it is independent, reliable and credible so that the inquiry will reveal the truth.

“There are many questions to be answered and only an independent inquiry will be able to find the truth behind this and bring the culprits to justice so that cases like this will not happen again,” he said at a press conference in his office.

On an unrelated matter, Lim, who is also the chief minister, said the federal government’s announcement that it is reviving the RM1.2 billion Mengkuang Dam expansion project shows the federal government knows that working together with the state government is for the good of the people.

He expressed his gratitude to the federal government for reinstating that project, in addition to other projects such as the Penang second bridge and the Penang Hill funicular train upgrading project, and hoped that there will be more of such infrastructure projects for Penang in future.

Saya mengucapkan terima kasih kerana diberikan peluang untuk membahaskan Rang Undang-undang Suruhanjaya Hak Asasi Manusia ini.

Sebelum saya memulakan ucapan saya, saya ingin mengambil perhatian Dewan yang Mulia ini bahawa di dalam Pertubuhan Bangsa-bangsa Bersatu, terdapat banyak konvensyen yang dibincangkan, dibahaskan dan dibuka untuk diratifikasi.

Malaysia ialah salah satu anggota kepada PBB. Malangnya, daripada banyak konvensyen-konvensyen yang dibentangkan, Malaysia hanya meratifikasi dua sahaja iaitu Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women dan Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Namun bagi Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, kita mempunyai beberapa pengecualian.

Bagi Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, kita sudah menandatangani konvensyen ini tetapi tidak diratifikasi.

Kerajaan kita masih lagi belum meratifikasi International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

Di dalam sebuah Negara yang terdiri daripada berbilang kaum, kita haruslah mempunyai satu dasar bagi melihat kepada isu yang berkaitan dengan diskriminasi kaum. Kita masih tidak meratifikasi International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Tuan Yang Dipertua,

Selepas membaca dan memperinci rang undang-undang ini, terdapat beberapa persoalan yang ingin saya bahaskan dan mohon penjelasan dari pihak kementerian.

Seksyen 4(3)

Di bawah seksyen ini, saya ingin mencadangkan supaya SUHAKAM memberi kuasa untuk melawat tempat-temat tahanan tanpa notis dan tidak boleh dihalang oleh mana-mana pihak berkuasa di tempat tahanan tersebut.

Seksyen 5(1)

Buat masa sekarang, ahli-ahli pesuruhjaya menjalankan tanggungjawab mereka separuh masa. Mereka tidak berada di pejabat setiap masa. Dengan itu, sebarang memorandum atau kes-kes terdesak yang melibatkan pelanggaran hak asasi manusia tidak dapat diserahkan seberapa segera. Masalah lain, dengan tempoh dalam mendapat pesuruhjaya untuk menneliti memorandum, ada kemungkinan bukti-bukti yang ada dihapuskan.

Oleh itu, saya mencadangkan agar semua ahli-ahli pesuruhjaya bertugas secara sepenuh masa.

Seksyen 5(2)

Izinkan saya bacakan bahagian ini dalam Bahasa Inggeris:

“Appointment process – After the amendments to Act 597 in March 2009, “The members of the Commission shall be appointed by the King on the recommendation of the Prime Minister who shall, before tendering his advice, consult the committee referred to in section 11A.”

Seperti yang kita sedia maklum, perlantikan jawatan yang amat ini terletak di tangan Perdana Menteri. Ini akan mengundang beberapa spekulasi:

Oleh itu, saya ingin mencadangkan supaya perkara ini digantikan kepada:

Dengan izin,

“Members of the Commission shall be appointed by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, on the recommendation of the Parliament from the list of candidates recommended by the committee referred to in section 11A.”

Seksyen 11A

Fasal ini merujuk kepada jawatan kuasa yang membincangkan mengenai isu-isu yang berhubung dengan hak asasi manusia.

Saya ingin mencadangkan agar jawatan kuasa yang akan mencadangkan calon-calon kepada Parlimen terdiri daripada yang berikut:

(a) Perdana Menteri sebagai Pengerusi;
(b) Menteri yang mengetuai hak-hak asasi manusia;
(c) Pengerusi Suruhanjaya;
(d) Ketua Pembangkang di dalam Dewan Perwakilan di Parlimen; dan
(e) Tiga anggota lain, yang dilantik oleh Parliamen yang mempunyai pengetahuan khusus, pengalaman, kemahiran dan professionalisme yang berkaitan dengan hak-hak asasi manusia, undang-undang, perkhidmatan awam atau sosial.

Di dalam seksyen ini, saya ingin mencadangkan kepada pihak kerajaan agar mewujudkan konsultansi transparent yang luas. Konsultansi ini mestilah memberi penyertaan kepada NGO, badan-badan antarabangsa dan individual dari kalangan awam di dalam proses menncalonkan calon-calon sebagai pesuruhjaya.

Seksyen 12A

Di bawah fasal yang baru sebagai tambahan kepada seksyen 12, seseorang yang gagal hadir dalam penyiasatan Suruhanjaya ini tanpa sebarang alasan melalui notis bertulis, mereka perlu dikenakan denda.

Seksyen 21(1)

Di dalam fasal ini, saya ingin mencadangkan kepada kerajaan supaya Suruhanjaya menghantar laporan tahunan atas aktiviti-aktiviti yang dijalankan kepada parlimen pada penggal pertama mesyuarat.

Bagi pihak parlimen juga, laporan-laporan ini mestilah dibuka kepada Dewan Yang Mulia untuk dibahaskan.

Tuan Yang Dipertua,

Akhir sekali, saya menganggap bahawa pindaan ini merupakan langkah yang amat untuk membawa kembali SUHAKAM kepada status ‘A’ berdasarkan akreditasi International Coordinating Committee on National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (ICC), dengan izin pada tahun 2002 atas kegagalan mematuhi Prinsip Paris.

Sekian ucapan saya.

Ucapan Perbahasan di Dewan Negara pada Khamis, 9 Julai 2009