Comments for Putik Lada: Of lawyers and politics at http://www.malaysianbar.org.my , comment 0 to 1 out of 1 comments http://www.malaysianbar.org.my Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:02:35 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.malaysianbar.org.my/national_young_lawyers/putik_lada_of_lawyers_and_politics.html#pc_7871 My dear Edmund I take on board what you have written. The Bar is apolitical in the sense that it is not into party politics but it must continue to be the catalyst for change by adding its voice to what has gone wrong. It is for the government of the day to value such an input and such a feedback for whatever it is worth. To label our efforts as anti-Government is a bit over the top since we have no political axe to grind, in the sense of partisan politics. Because of such criticisms and not despite it, we must continue to play our yeoman's role in and for our nation. We must remain not just undeterred, but inspired by such an unfair labelling exercise. One of the finest hours of the Malaysian Bar occurred before I was even a member. It was the anti-OSA (Official Secrets Act) campaign. If I am right, the Malaysian Bar went against the OSA as it was conceived. The OSA was felt to be far too wide. That the campaign failed is not the point. The point is that the sarong of secrecy was cast so wide that it willy nilly nurtured a culture of corruption. Similarly, to me, the Malaysian Bar's ongoing campaign for a free media is still important because of the many instances of graft that a free media would have easily trawled up from the vast ocean of corruption. In our fifty years of Independence, Malaysia has not produced a Bob Woodward or a Carl Bernstein (hope I got the names right, as alas I am writing from a failing memory). I suspect we do have our Watergate. But never mind, because it took the Americans nearly 140 years as an independent country to produced these investigative reporters. Stephen Tan Ban Cheng - Stephen Tan Ban Cheng Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:12:27 +0100