Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin is the highest government leader to fly into a rage at the United States Vice President Joe Biden’s tweets expressing concerns about the Sedition Act and other laws being used to stifle the opposition, as well as expressing hope that Anwar Ibrahim’s final appeal against his Sodomy II conviction would give Malaysia a chance to put things right and promote confidence in its democracy and judiciary.
Why didn’t Muhyiddin tell the United States President Barack Obama to “shut up and mind his own business” when Obama praised Malaysia at the United Nations General Assembly in September and yet bristle with rage over Biden’s tweet?
Muhyiddin should have told the United States President that Malaysia does not need his praises!
In any event, is this the position of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet?
In fact, the Umno/Barisan Nasional Cabinet Ministers and government were in seventh heaven at Obama’s praise at the UN General Assembly in September, with the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak immediately claiming at a black-tie dinner attended by Malaysian students in New York the next day that Malaysia topped the list of countries praised by the United States President for developing entrepreneurship and heading towards an advanced economy.
Najib practically purred when he referred to Obama’s praise, saying:
“He singled out Malaysia in his speech. There were other (countries cited as) examples (in the speech) too but if you look at those examples, they were not as great as the example of Malaysia, because more or less, it recognised that we are heading towards an advanced economy.”
Is the Foreign Minister, Datuk Anifah going to send a diplomatic note to all foreign governments and their embassies, high commissions and consulates to remind them with the threat of rupture of diplomatic relations that Malaysia can only be praised but not criticized?
This is how stupid Malaysia looks in the eyes of the world from the over-reactions by government leaders, from the Deputy Prime Minister downwards and including a former Prime Minister who claims that his advice is not being heeded by the sitting Prime Minister, to Biden’s tweets.
Malaysia’s government leaders seems to have suddenly forgotten that they live in a borderless world where information travels at the speed of light and no country or government – not even North Korea – can live in a cloistered surroundings unbothered by international events and opinions.
Why do we want to get elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council or as a member of the the United Nations Human Rights Council if we maintain strictly the principle of non-interference in the affairs of other countries?
Malaysia will be taking a stand on the major international issues on democracy, human rights and international relations whether in the UN Security Council or UN Human Rights Council, which we have no right to do if we take the pristine position that other countries have no right to criticize our position on important issues by equating it as interference in domestic affairs of other countries.
UMNOI/BN leaders are entitled to respond to criticisms from foreign governments by pointing these government’s own weakness and faults, but we are doing ourselves no favours by going overboard in the way some “hot heads” and even “mule heads” have done in the past two days over our major faults and failings whether about democracy, the judiciary or Anwar’s Sodomy II case in Biden’s tweets.
I find Joe Biden’s tweets quite apt, although Malaysians should not have to wait for adverse international criticisms from outsiders before waking up to our national and institutional flaws and policies with regard to democracy, human rights, the rule of law and the judiciary.
If the criticisms from outsiders are valid and legitimate, let us wake up and correct them instead of going off tangent; but where they are misinformed or misguided, by all means expose them.
I am really astounded by Muhyiddin’s announcement when officiating the Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party’s fourth triennial delegates’ conference in Bintulu yesterday that the government had “conducted a thorough analysis on how the act (Sedition Act) was implemented over the past 57 years before deciding to retain it”.
How come the other non-UMNO Cabinet Ministers know nothing about this “thorough analysis” of the implementation of the Sedition Act for the past 57 years, as all the MCA, Gerakan and MIC Ministers and leaders have professed total ignorance about the reneging of the Prime Minister’s 2012 pledge to repeal the Sedition Act as announced at the UMNO General Assembly.
Can Muhyiddin enlighten Malaysians as to who had conducted such “thorough analysis” of the implementation of the Sedition Act over the past 57 years so much so that no one knew about it, or was it just “a rabbit plucked from the hat” by the Deputy Prime Minister, who was just blabbering and acting like a magician than as Deputy Prime Minister of the country?
That MCA, Gerakan and MIC are totally irrelevant in the Barisan Nasional scheme of things (which was why there was an UMNO delegate who brazenly suggested that UMNO should appoint MCA, MIC and Gerakan representatives to the BN Supreme Council) is no surprise, but what is most dismaying is that Sarawak and Sabah BN parties have not been consulted and their consent obtained to “fortify” the Sedition Act to include calls for secession of Sarawak and Sabah from Malaysia!
The Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail’s ;promise three month ago of a review of the sedition charges proferred against intellectual and activists like law lecturer Dr. Aziz Sharom, has disappeared into the “Black Hole” of Najib premiership.
Now, Muhyiddin talks about a “thorough analysis” of the implementation of the Sedition Act in the past 57 years. Will this also disappear into the UMNO/BN “Black Hole” when questions are raised about who and when such “thorough analysis” of the Sedition Act had been conducted?
If someone criticises me, I try to consider and weigh what is said rather than who is saying it: I can learn from everyone – from the professor to the ordinary roti-chanai seller. Criticism cannot become unworthy merely because it is made by a foreigner.