Justice for Jeyakumar!

By Martin Jalleh

Bersih 2.0 laid bare the fact that Umno is politically bankrupt. It brought out the same old bag of tricks, treats and threats. It looked like a party in a sordid state of denial and beyond redemption.

Alas, the BN went berserk over Bersih! The coalition continues to be the bane of democracy in Bolehland as it resorts to political moves most base in stifling and stopping Bersih!

The Prime Minister now tries desperately hard to redeem his battered image – which he has largely brought upon himself! Time and again he blundered – and very badly too.

 

Najib puts on a brave front whilst playing his blame game. He has been blindly led by his advisors and now finds himself in a bind, with a bruised ego and sounding very much like a broken record!

This time a humble woman lawyer of substance and a non-politician outshone him. Each time he attacked her, he reduced himself to a small boy begging for attention and looking for a fight.

The Home Minister did what he is most at home with – he bellowed with rage, and blared out the most bizarre and unimaginable balderdash. But no one bothers anymore with his bark and blather!

Of course the men in blue who looked as though they made up a branch of the Government (or a component of the BN), bowed, bent and did the bidding of their political (pay)master.

A bunch of bullies, their brutality was captured on bountiful clips on the Internet. Yet they unashamedly bulled about their innocence, and the PM and Home Minister added to the bunkum!

Whilst Malaysians refused to buckle, the bosses of the servile mainstream press continued to suck up to their political masters, giving stories a spin and slant that served the government.

The beleaguered BN continued to bluff itself– all the time! The rakyat refused to buy what it (and its newspapers) were selling!

The Bersih 2.0 march is over but its spirit lives on in many Malaysians – in spite of it being branded “illegal”. The Government can ban all it wants, but the rakyat will not be browbeaten!

The BN’s image has hit rock-bottom. It should begin cleansing its stained credibility and integrity by releasing all who are still “illegally” detained (as a result of their involvement with Bersih)!

Till to date, there is no solid and substantiated basis for the continued detention in particular of Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj and five of his colleagues of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM).

The Government has reduced itself to a political buffoon by resurrecting the“communist” and “foreign” bogeyman in the arrest and re-arrest of Dr Jeyakumar and the rest.

For a Government that brags so much about transformation and change, deploying Cold War tactics on political rivals in these days only reveals how far behind the times it really is!

Expecting the public to believe that Jeyakumar is trying to revive communist ideology is as ridiculous as saying that Deputy PM Muhyiddin Yassin is intelligent!

Those who know Jeyakumar personally readily vouch for his integrity, his passion for the poor and his principled, patient and peaceful approach. The MP is truly a rare breed politician!

The judiciary has just betrayed its often loud claim of being independent when it delayed today the hearing date of habeas corpus application of Jeyakumar and the five others by a month.

A June 2010 court circular states that such urgent hearing dates must be fixed within a week after filing. The blunt and brutal truth — the judiciary remains beholden to the government.

The longer Jeyakumar and his colleagues remain behind bars, the longer the Government of Malaysia will look bad in the eyes of the world. It has no one to blame but itself.

The Government has to clean up its act. Malaysia sits on the UN Human Rights Council with a laundry list of transgressions. It cannot afford to turn a blind eye to this daylight mockery!

Alas, the Government got more than it bargained for when trying to banish Bersih into oblivion. Najib leads the nation forward into abysmal political backwaters.

(13 July 2011)