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The Star – A fine balancing act

May 2, 2012 in Articles, Media, Spotlight

*Photo from lindsayolson.com

Reflecting on the law
By SHAD SALEEM FARUQI

Posted on May 2, 2012
The Security Offences Act of 2012 is indeed an important milestone pointing in a new direction of a more balanced, humane and compassionate government.MOST laws involve a conscious attempt to straddle the divide between opposing views and to reconcile conflicting interests in society.

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Auswaertiges-Amt : Political Islam and Democracy

January 18, 2012 in Articles, Spotlight

January 18, 2012 | By Guido Westerwelle
In an opinion article, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle addresses the role of Islamic political parties in the changes underway in North Africa and the Arab world.

In an article published in the 13 January issue of theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle addresses the role of Islamic political parties in the changes underway in North Africa and the Arab world.

The Arab Spring faces three dangers. The first of these is restoration – that is, a resurgence of the forces of the old autocratic regimes. Secondly, economic failure could stoke social tensions and spark new unrest. Thirdly, democratic change could be undermined by radical, fundamentalist Islamist movements.

We need to support processes of transition in North Africa and the Arab world – politically and economically. Through investment, educational partnerships and more open markets, we can do a great deal to improve people’s economic prospects and give them more opportunities in life.

Politically, we should push to anchor democratic institutions and processes in these societies and to increase participation and plurality. In doing so, how are we to approach political groups whose political agenda is based on the values and morals of Islam? In places where elections have been or will be held, the majority of voters favour parties with Islamic leanings. How are we to greet the presence of Islam in politics?

It is important for us to take a sober and unbiased view. Political Islam is not the same thing as radical Islamism. An Islamic orientation does not in itself mean that a group has retrograde, anti modern, anti democratic or anti freedom views.

We need to learn to look carefully and to differentiate. Of course, there are also some fundamentalist, truly “Islamist” groups which have entered the political fray, and we have no prospect of successful dialogue with these groups. But what we have tended to see so far in Tunisia and Morocco, for example, are victories for more moderate Islamic parties.

We especially need to seek dialogue with these moderate forces about the relationships between state and society, politics and religion. After all, parties inspired by Islamic values and national traditions currently stand the best chance for long-term development into parties with a broad electoral base in the region. We must respect the wish of parties in North African countries to shape their politics with Islamic values, just as it is self evident in Europe that many parties feel a commitment to Christian values and base their political beliefs on them.

The decisive issue for us has to be the attitude of Islamic political parties towards democracy. Are these Islamic democratic parties, in the sense in which the European political spectrum naturally includes Christian democratic parties? I am confident that an Islamic orientation can be linked with democratic convictions, that Islam can be compatible with democracy.

The transition countries of North Africa can offer concrete evidence of this. Many representatives of moderate Islamic groups in North Africa are already looking to developments in Turkey, where the JDP – despite all the criticisms that could be made of it – offers an example of a party bound to both Islamic roots and democratic principles which is currently the country’s leading political force.

We need to take a closer look at the platforms of the Islamic parties, and above all we need to measure them by their actions. The key thing is a commitment to democracy and the rule of law, to a pluralistic society and religious tolerance as well as to the preservation of both domestic and external peace. These are the six criteria that we are applying, the six commitments we are calling for. Whoever adheres to them can count on our support.

In Tunisia, the Ennahda Party won a majority in the recent Constituent Assembly elections. Representatives of Ennahda describe the party as seeking to reconcile tradition and Islamic identity with the challenges of modern societies; they also, however, invoke democracy and plurality as the political framework for their actions. After the elections, Ennahda entered into a coalition with secular parties. These are encouraging signs along the path towards a political landscape with a prominent place for Islamic democratic parties. We should do our part to encourage positive developments by offering dialogue and support for a sustainable transformation to a plural and democratic society.

One thing is clear: the break with the autocratic past cannot be completed overnight. It demands patience and stamina on both sides of the Mediterranean. The Arab Spring has set in motion fundamental political changes and profound societal shifts. The toppling of autocrats and dictators in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt has completed the initial phase of revolutionary change. But the far longer phase of political, societal and economic reconstruction has only just begun.

There is an opportunity for moderate Islamic forces to permanently establish themselves in the form of Islamic democratic parties. It is very much in our interest for Islamic democratic parties to become established as a role model. That is why we should do everything we can to support this approach.

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The Sun – Time for West to apologise for Egypt

December 16, 2011 in Articles, Spotlight

*Image from amroali.com

December 16, 2011 | By Eric S. Margolis

CAIRO: Tahrir Square, epicentre of the earthquake that ousted Egypt’s western-backed dictator, Husni Mubarak, is quiet – for the moment.

There are banner-wavers, speakers and youngsters milling about. But the by now world-famous square has a forlorn, leftover look, with more street people than revolutionaries. Violence crackles like static electricity.

Heavily armed riot and security police and their armoured vehicles are massed nearby. In the ancient Khan al-Khalili Bazaar, I saw van loads of government thugs waiting to attack demonstrators. I was almost arrested when I started taking photos.

Demonstrators at Tahrir showed me cans of expended tear gas that caused some deaths and many casualties. Whether they were the usual anti-riot CS gas or the six times stronger, carcinogenic CR that can kill or blind, I could not tell. But the canisters were marked “Made in the USA” and everyone knew it.

While Hillary Clinton was gushing about democracy in Egypt, shipments of US-made anti-riot gear, including truncheons, gas and rubber bullets, are being airlifted in from the US. Clinton’s US State Department appears to be timidly backing Egypt’s revolution, but the real power in US foreign policy, the Pentagon, is standing firmly behind Egypt’s 500,000-man armed forces.

I just observed Egypt go to the polls in a series of complex parliamentary elections. The vote was remarkably clean and fair, a triumph for all Egyptians.

Two more regional polls are yet to be held, but the outcome is clear. The Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamic ally, Wasat, won over 40% of the vote. The Salafist al-Nur Party, which seeks a state run under Islamic law, won 24%. The secular Egyptian Bloc won only 13.4%. All the preppy, upscale youth armed with cell phones and Blackberries first seen in Tahrir that became the darlings of the western media vanished. Revolutions are made by political and economic issues, not social media.

Egyptians clearly want democracy and parliamentary government, as do people across the Arab world. But Egypt’s mighty military-security establishment and its western backers do not: they are fighting a bitter action to slow down real democracy and to safeguard their privileges and power. Egypt’s military gets nearly $3 billion (RM9.7 billion) in US funds and arms each year, plus millions more in “black” money from CIA and the Pentagon – in addition to millions in economic aid. The US supplies all of the military’s key weapons systems and retains control of the spare parts keeping them operating.

The most important US intelligence and security agencies maintain large stations in Cairo to protect the regime. Half of Egypt’s food imports are financed by the US. Many of Egypt’s key generals “trained” at US military colleges and defence courses where they were vetted by CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency. As with Turkey’s large armed forces – at least until nine years ago – Egypt’s military was joined at the hip to the US defence establishment and arms industry. In exchange, Egypt agreed to become a tacit ally of Israel.

Given Egypt’s role as a virtual US protectorate, the flood of hypocrisy now issuing from Washington, London, Paris and Ottawa over their alleged support of Egyptian democracy is striking. For the past thirty years, these powers have ardently backed Egypt’s notably ruthless, brutal dictatorship whose security forces used torture, rape and murder to terrorise its citizens.

While Egyptians want democracy, the military wants political figureheads and the right to intervene in politics to protect its interests aka “national security” – the same demands used for decades by the right-wing Turkish military to block democracy. Egypt’s generals insist there be no investigations of human rights abuses. Washington is trying to sustain the Egypt-Israel alliance that all Egyptians detest.

The military, its US backers, Israel and some misinformed western media warn that the Muslim Brotherhood will turn Egypt into another Iran. This is nonsense. The Brotherhood is conservatives, timid and focused on social issues. In Egypt’s political context, it is a moderate party. Egyptians want jobs, housing, food, education and a rescue for the deeply ailing economy, not worldwidejihad.

If western powers fail to seize this historic opportunity and work with the Brotherhood’s moderates, they will end up with the scimitar-wavers. The west can begin by apologising for so long supporting Mubarak’s brutal dictatorship.

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist, writing mainly about the Middle East and South Asia. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

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The Independent – Is India’s problem too much democracy or a Soviet-style prime minister?

December 7, 2011 in Articles, Spotlight, Tun Dr. Mahathir

*Image from hairbrushguzzle.blogspot.com

December 6, 2011 | By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog

Does India have too much democracy and would it be better off with less? The question is inevitably raised whenever comparisons are made with China, where a lack totalitarian rule has enabled growth and economic development that has been dramatically faster and more efficient than India’s since the two countries began to liberalise controls 20 years or so ago.

Alongside that, does India have a strong enough political leadership, and does the current Sonia Gandhi – Manmohan Singh (together above) split between party affairs and government work? The answer of course is “no” to the last two points, whereas the democracy point is debatable.

The past few days have been a good time to revisit such topics because of the petty politics and democratic chaos and official mismanagement surrounding the Indian government’s attempts to open up its supermarkets to foreign direct investment (FDI) - which I wrote about last week. That has coincided with a visit to Delhi by one of Asia’s most effective critics of too much democracy, Mahathir Bin Mohamad, Malaysia’s former prime minister.

Mahathir, now 86, ran Malaysia for 22 years from 1981 till 2003, accumulating power at the expense of both individual freedoms and an independent judiciary and media. But he nevertheless maintained the semblance of democracy, winning five general elections, and he won acclaim for building his country into a strong and successful economy, and for bucking some of the demands and advice thrown at developing countries by the West.

“Sometimes democracy can paralyse decision-making because people oppose for the sake of opposition,” Mahathir told a Hindustan Times conference in Delhi last Friday, hitting the spot at a time when the government’s fractious coalition partners, especially Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, have been playing political games that threaten the FDI plan.

“Democracy is the best form of government mankind has ever invented but it is important for the world to understand its limitations. India could be China if it were not for too much domestic politics and abuse of freedoms to protest and argue at will,” he said.

That is undoubtedly correct. India’s combination of noisy fractious democracy, plus its coalition governments and mostly pliable media, spells disaster for reforms that challenge vested interests, whether those interests are the rural poor rightly trying to protect their livelihoods or rich businessmen trying to protect their often illicit sources of wealth. Add widespread corruption to that mix and the result is often negative.

Mahathir’s truncated democracy was much more effective – as is China’s undemocratic authoritarian system. But India lacks something else that Malaysia also had, namely strong political leadership to manage the problems arising from the pushes and pulls of democracy

This was raised at the Hindustan Times conference by L.K.Advani, 84-year old leader of India’s main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Scoring a neat political point, he suggested that Manmohan Singh was a weak prime minister. He was, said Advani, “not able to exercise all the authority of a prime minister” because of his “acceptance of a communist model of governance, namely where it is the party chief who is more important than the prime minister”.

He mischievously likened that to the way he had been told to give precedence to the Soviet Union’s Communist Party chief Nikita Khrushchev rather than premier Nikolai Bulganin when the two leaders visited India in 1955. “I was surprised to hear this,” he said.

Neither Gandhi nor Singh are natural leaders. The former likes to lead from behind while the latter believes it is neither his job nor wise to lead from the front. Singh has broken out just once – on India’s nuclear deal with the US three years ago, where he led from the front with Gandhi’s support.

So given that there is no chance of India abandoning democracy, nor of accepting a Mahathir version, it is to Advani’s remarks that one has to turn for a solution to the current muddle. The Gandhi-Singh duo is not working. India’s coalition government desperately needs a leader and until it has one, the worst effects of democracy will continue to prevent the country being run effectively.

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The Star – Freedom carries responsibility

December 5, 2011 in Articles, Spotlight

In the pursuit of our rights and in our vision of the good life, we must maintain a sense of balance, moderation and equilibrium.

DECEMBER 10 marks the 63rd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 (UDHR).

The first Article of the Declaration contains the stirring proclamation that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”.

Many important moral ideals can be derived from this simple but eloquent statement.

Universality: All human beings are entitled to some core human rights. These rights transcend time, territory, race, religion, colour, caste, creed, gender or nationality. Human rights represent universal standards for evaluating national laws and institutions.

Born free: Human rights are inherent. They belong to us by virtue of our birth as a human being. They do not depend on the existence of a state or a constitution. They enjoy authority superior to and independent of government.

Fundamental rights are individual as well as collective in their nature. They belong to human beings as individuals as well as to nations and human groups as collective entities.

Human rights are essential conditions for a free and democratic society. They are principles of liberty and justice without which a fair and enlightened system of government would be impossible.

Equality: Though inequalities are a fact of life, the law must hitch itself to stars. It must peg its provisions to ideals distilled from philosophy and morality.

The law must ban religious, racial, tribal and gender discrimination and call for equality before the law and equal protection of the law.

Indeed, over the last few centuries, the struggle for equality has reached many important milestones.

Religious persecution has been outlawed. Racial discrimination has collapsed in South Africa and the United States. Many strides have been made in gender equality.

However, other goals still beckon. Poverty is pervasive and remains the biggest threat to human dignity.

In the area of employment and work, hierarchies exist and glaring income disparities are widespread. Globalisation is creating vast disparities between the rich North and the impoverished South. Colonialism, built on a racist assumption of the superiority of some people over others, rears its ugly head again.

Rights and dignities: The UDHR talks of “dignity” and “rights”. Both are important but it is necessary to distinguish between the two.

A right is a legitimate authority to be, to do or to have. Most rights are necessary and supportable. But the exercise or abuse of some rights may be incompatible with the preservation of human dignity.

For instance, if a person by his/her own volition chooses to lead the life of a beggar and to sleep on the pavements or to become a sex worker, that may be his/her right. But it diminishes the worth and dignity of the human personality. For this reason many philosophers emphasise that dignity is more important than rights.

The notion of dignity implies that an individual owes a duty to himself not to compromise his self-esteem and destroy his worth.

Right to dignity also requires that the state must take vigorous affirmative action to preserve human dignity by eradicating poverty, starvation and illiteracy.

The state must be actively invol-ved in efforts to stamp out all legal, social, economic and cultural conditions (like caste system, female circumcision) that destroy human dignity.

Thus, slaves, sex workers, circus dwarfs, and surrogate mothers can be restrained by the law from sacrificing their dignity even if they have a personal right to compromise their rights.

Reason and conscience: In the pursuit of our rights and our vision of a good life, we must maintain a sense of balance, moderation and equilibrium. We must avoid the temptation to conform to non-conformity.

We must know when to say “no” to drugs, cigarettes, free sex and advertisements which tempt us to shop till we drop in an excessively consumerist society.

Rights must be exercised with responsibility. Responsibility is the inevitable consequence of freedom.

We must accept the limitations of our freedom. Freedom is not an end in itself. Freedom per se has no value. It is what freedom is for. It is the use to which it is put and the sense of responsibility with which it is exercised.

If liberty is exercised without concern for the consequences to oneself and to society, then the line between liberty and anarchy is crossed. P eople are not always right about the exercise of their rights.

Rights must go hand in hand with duties. Free speech, for example, carries with it a duty to listen.

Our personal rights carry with them duties to oneself, to one’s family, to one’s community, to one’s country and to the larger world we inhabit.

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefits received.

Unfortunately, too often duty is seen as the thing we expect from others.

Brotherhood: We should treat all other human beings as our brothers. We should give a little bit of ourselves, our time, talent and resources to others. We have a moral duty to help those less fortunate than us.

We should do to others what we wish to be done to us. In all areas of discord, we should put ourselves in the shoes of others, identify with their pain and problems and try to see issues through their eyes.

To be truly objective, we should be prepared to be subjective from another person’s point of view.

We should look for the best in others. We should avoid stereotypes and shun extremism. Extremism reflects awareness of only one narrow perspective.

The first function of freedom should be to free somebody else. We should protect and cherish not only our rights but the rights of others.

Regrettably this is not what happens around the world.

Decent human beings must stand up and be counted and struggle to throw off the chains that bind their fellow beings.

When that happens, when a just cause reaches its floodtide, whatever stands in the way falls before its overwhelming force.

There is in this world no such force as the force of a human being determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.

This is the lesson of history and the implicit message of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Shad Saleem Faruqi is Emeritus Professor of Law at UiTM & Visiting Professor at USM.

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