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 Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, although this is the 50th year of our
independence, which ought to be a time of celebration, in my view we are
approaching this milestone with very mixed feelings. The sense which I get is
that we are a nation that is not completely at ease with itself. That
notwithstanding our successes, we acknowledge many concerns about the future of
the country.
It has already been stated that the Merdeka Statement is a
forward-looking statement. As a corporate lawyer who has drafted company
prospectuses, there is a risk with forward-looking statements. Past performance
is no guarantee of future performance.
I would like to lead us in reflecting on the Merdeka Statement, and to guide us
through this reflection I would like to make 3 points.
Firstly, we need to emancipate the past. On 26th July 2007 the newspaper
“theSun” ran a two-page feature on the events of 13 May 1969. The following day,
27th July 2007, this letter to the editor entitled “Learning the truth about May
13” appeared:
“Thank you for your feature on the 1969 riots. This was the first informative
article about the event that I have read in my 24 years of life. Never before
have I encountered such a revealing account of that episode. I didn’t get it in
primary school, neither in secondary school, nor in university either. And all
this while I have studied locally. I think somebody somewhere thought that by
not exposing young Malaysians to this chapter of the nation’s past, we would be
better off. But they should realise that history has a tendency to repeat
itself. Thank you for printing the truth. Now we all know what really happened
and can learn to avoid it.
Azlan Roni
via e-mail”
When I read this, it triggered a memory of a quotation I had once come across.
Some of you may have seen the popular version of it, which is “those who ignore
history are doomed to repeat it”. The more accurate quotation is, “those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. It was written by George
Santayana, a Spanish philosopher in 1905.
There is a play on the word “baggage” that I have come up with. The word
“baggage” contains the word “bag” and “age”. As we “age”, i.e. get older, we
find ourselves dragging more “bags”. So we end up with a lot of baggage. What we
need to do is to break free from this baggage. It is like that song that is
sometimes used in an advertisement for Shell petrol, “I want to break free…”.
But we cannot just cut it away and forget about it. Some people say why dwell in
the past, let us look to the future. I think such people forget that there is
another saying that goes, “if we do not know where we have come from, how would
we know where we are going?”
I am therefore particular proud of the recommendation in the Merdeka Statement
for the setting up of a Truth and Reconciliation Committee. There is a need to
come to terms with what has happened in our nation’s past. Not just about the
events of May 13 1969. In a few months, on 27th October 2007, it will be the
20th anniversary of Operation Lalang. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of
the 1988 judicial crisis, and the Bar Council will be organising events to
recognise that anniversary. Yesterday, 1 August 2007, we recognised the 47th
anniversary of the coming into force of the Internal Security Act of 1960.
Events such as these and the use of such kinds of legislation have caused much
hurt and pain. I belong to a generation which had been hurt by the unfair
implementation of the New Economic Policy. In many ways we are all “walking
wounded”, and there is a need for us to collectively heal. To come to terms with
the past, in order that we can move on. We should not be afraid, petrified of
the past. Or maybe I should say we should not be “Petra-fied” about the past.
And we also need to forgive. To quote Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the former
Archbishop of Cape Town in South Africa, who chaired South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, “Without forgiveness, there’s no future.”
Secondly, we need to educate the present. It has already been pointed out by
earlier speakers that policy implementation has not been good, that sometimes
those who are at the front line of service to the public are not aware of the
existence of laws, or the rights of or remedies for those with whom they are
dealing. So there is a need for us to teach. But not just to teach, but also to
put it into practice. In the Merdeka Statement there are references to 10
international treaties or conventions. We have signed up to 2, the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Convention
on the Rights of the Child. Yet we have taken reservations and so not fully
implemented them. From a human rights perspective, and speaking as Deputy
Chairperson of the Malaysian Bar’s Human Rights Committee, we need to infuse an
appreciation for human rights in our laws and regulations. For example, earlier
this year the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Bill was debated in the Dewan Rakyat.
During the debate, the Minister in charge of Law in the Prime Minister’s
Department stated that caning was not included as one of the punishments in the
Bill as it was contrary to international human rights norms. We want to
congratulate the Minister for making this acknowledgement. But if he accepts
that caning is contrary to international human rights norms, then surely the
next thing he ought to do is to carry out an immediate review of all legislation
which provide for caning as punishment with a view to amending such laws and
removing such provisions.
Thirdly, we need to elucidate the future. We need to identify what kind of
country we would like to become. As we grow in prosperity, we need to think of
how we can be a better neighbour in our region, for example. We have depended on
the labour of workers from neighbouring countries for our prosperity, yet once
we have got what we wanted out of them we want to quickly send them away. We
have adopted a “beggar thy neighbour” attitude rather than a “prosper thy
neighbour” perspective. As we grow in prosperity, we need to share that with
others. Not too long ago our forefathers were immigrants, seeking a place to
live and work. Let us not be xenophobic. The Merdeka Statement is a statement of
what we would like to see this country doing, the kind of policies that it
should be pursuing, the kind of nation we ought to be becoming.
The Merdeka Statement may be said to be optimistic; maybe. It could be said to
be idealistic; yes. But is it realistic? Definitely. 50 years ago when our
founding fathers worked for independence, their efforts could also have been
said to be idealistic. Yet they managed to bring it about. The Merdeka Statement
has been drafted in that same spirit of idealism mixed with realism. We all have
a role to play in continuing to work towards and contributing to the concept of
nationhood. Let us not do nothing. As Edmund Burke, the 18th century Irish
philosopher and politician, once said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of
evil is that good men do nothing”. At the end of the day, our worst enemy will
be indifference.
Thank you very much.
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