Tag Archives: freedom

Electoral fraud in Russia, claims the election winner

If I were really snarky, I’d headline this post with a title like “In Soviet Russia, election frauds you!” Electoral frauds in Russia aren’t particularly shocking news, especially in Russia, but how often do you see it being claimed by the winner rather than the loser? Yet this is exactly what happened when a first time candidate for Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia, Anton Chumachenko, claimed that his victory was due to electoral fraud and that his opponent should have won instead.

Of course, the really tragic part is that the party seems to be doing everything it can to downplay the announcement and stall investigations. From the article in The Washington Post:

Chumachenko has provided evidence to the court and urged it to transfer his mandate to Vishnevsky. A ruling is pending. Meanwhile, prosecutors have sought to examine the original ballots. Election officials say they were damaged when a water pipe burst, an explanation that has been used before in Russia to stall investigations into election irregularities.

“We have very smart pipes,” Chumachenko said with a grin. “They know exactly where to leak.”

I post this because I think it jives well with my point about democracies. They’re the best form of government there is, but simply holding elections, even if they were free and fair which this one obviously was not, is not enough to qualify a country to be called a democracy. Yet repressive governments are fearful enough that they go to great lengths to show that they are democratic. Which is why we should all be ever ready to condemn them when they are not.

Rethinking democracy

One thing that often irks me is when seemingly reasonable and well-educated people who hold liberal values actually choose to decry democracy. Their argument is that ordinary people are too uneducated, too narrow minded, and generally too stupid to be trusted with the power to ultimately determine the course of government. A good example of this kind of thinking can be found in this post on Fool’s Mountain, found via Jed Yoong:

In the big picture: what should be the purpose of governments? Should government be limited to providing a set of processes and institutions that normatively allocate power within a society or should government take a lead role of establishing a vision of a common good and leading the charge to execute that vision of the common good?

My tendency (and many Chinese on this board) is to believe the second. “So what if you are democratic,” we ‘d say. What is the proof that it guarantees better governance or social stability?

Many of us have reservation about the democratic process because “good” democracy seems to depend on a lot of stars aligning. The media has to be fair and objective to generate good public debates. The people have to be educated enough, well fed enough, and to care enough about the political process to participate in the political process. The people need to also have a healthy sense of social awareness and public duty to exercise their political power judiciously for the good of their country – not just for themselves.

Obviously this is a straw man argument. No proponent of democracy claims that it “guarantees” better governance or social stability. As the blog author himself notes, the very same argument can even more easily be applied towards authoritarian forms of government. Surely by now there should be no need to quote Churchill’s dictum that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

Still one line criticism of democracy does have some merit, but it applies not to the principle of democracy itself but in how governments choose to implement a system of governance and then call it a democracy. As this book review in The Economist reminds us, simply holding elections doesn’t automatically make your government a democratic one. Elections are a necessary but not a sufficient condition towards the establishment of a healthy democracy. For starters, the elections need to be genuinely free and fair, with all political parties having equal rights to make their appeals and arguments to voters as they see fit. Furthermore, the power of any elected government needs to be constrained by a robust system of  checks and balances.

Finally, I agree with the view that until a country has successfully undergone a peaceful and orderly transition of power from one political party to another at least once to prove that all of mechanisms of government are functioning, that country cannot truly be called a democracy. Unfortunately, this rules out most Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia. One of the ironies of the region is that of all the countries in this part of the world, it is Indonesia, known as one of the longest lived dictatorships in the world under Suharto, that is now considered the healthiest and most exemplary democracy.

PAS claims “half-naked” female students at Universiti Malaya party. Does not deliver.

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Like any hot-blooded male, I thought that news reports that female students at Universiti Malaya had attended an event on campus “half-naked” would lead to some racy photos. So I was disappointed when the photos that eventually turned up depicted nothing that you wouldn’t be able to see on any ordinary day in Kuala Lumpur. The accusations were made by an MP for PAS, a Islamic political party, who objected to the students wearing such clothes for a Ladies’ Night event at the university. As any sane person can see, the wonder is that something so insignificant would create such a controversy at all. You can read a detailed chronology of the accusations and public relations mess this has caused in the Malay language here. It’s pretty sad that the deputy minister had to even concede that such attire should not be allowed in the university lecture halls.

As a poster on LYN, where I picked up this news from, commented, this is rather insulting to the female students who attended the event. If anything, they’re the ones who deserve an apology from that PAS MP. As a Malaysian, I’m convinced that PAS is a far better alternative than the ruling National Front but cheap shots like this for the conservative crowd are making the party lose points among moderates. There certainly are PAS politicians who sound intelligent, reasonable and can act as an advocate for Islamic values without coming across as a barbarian. Take this opinion piece by Khalid Samad, PAS MP for Shah Alam for example. He writes:

I remember Datuk Seri Tuan Guru Abdul Hadi Awang’s lecture where he told us of a case in the time of the Prophet. A man came and admitted to the Prophet that he had committed adultery and requested that he be punished. The Holy Prophet remained silent and turned away from him. The man came in front of the Prophet and repeated his admission and request. The Holy Prophet responded in the same manner, turning away from him. The man came in front of the Prophet again and repeated the admission and request for the third time. The Prophet then asked the companions who were there witnessing this incident to take the man away and punish him as he requested.

Later the companions returned and reported to the Prophet that the man, prior to being punished, had a change of heart and ran away. They chased him and meted out the punishment. The Holy Prophet looked at his companions and asked: “Why did you chase him? You should have let him go”.

From the short story it is clear that there is no zealousness in the meting out of punishment. The Prophet only consented when the man showed great remorse for having sinned and wished himself to be cleansed. However, if that was no longer the case, the need was no longer there. Note also how the man was not questioned who his partner was. No thumbscrews. No witch hunt.

Actually it is this kind of zealousness which the non-Muslims fear from Pas and this is where we must emulate the spirit of the Islam more accurately. We should not become zealous moralists who wish to enforce their moral code on others. As I always say, preach, reason and argue with them in the best of ways. Never give them the impression that we wish to impose something on them irrespective of how noble the intentions. That was the way of the Prophet and that too must be our way.

If only all PAS politicians would heed those words.

Maker of “Fitna” film denied entry into UK

Remember the post I made a while back about the short film Fitna made by Dutch MP Geert Wilders? In that post, I condemned that film for its amateurish over-simplification of the facts around Islam and pointed out that it’s just as easy to find nasty stuff written for a more barbaric time from the Christian Bible. This time around though, I find myself having to defend him because I do think that this is a free speech issue and hateful as his message is, he has a right to express his views.

As far as I can tell, the British government basically offers two basic justifications for denying Wilders entry into the UK:

  1. Free speech does not extend to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre and Wilders’ message amounts to that.
  2. Allowing Wilders to enter the UK and express his views would threaten the public security of the country.

To the first justification, I retort that Wilders’ message in no way resembles shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. One of the defining characteristics of the crowded theatre scenario is that it compels people to take immediate action. There is no such immediacy here and all parties will have plenty of time to reflect upon Wilders’ message before making any decisions or taking any action. Furthermore, freedom of speech is curtailed in the crowded theatre scenario only if the speaker is falsely shouting “fire”. If the theatre actually is on fire, the speaker does have the right to shout “fire”. This means that the authorities must actually prove that Wilders is making a statement that is factually incorrect to deny him freedom of speech.

The second justification basically amounts to caving in to potential terrorist threats. The line of thought seems to be that if the UK allows Wilders in to spread his message, it would make the UK a higher priority target for terrorist attacks than it already is. That’s a pretty sad position for a democracy to take. The responsibility for any attacks made by terrorists lies only on the terrorists. As abhorrent as Wilders’ message is, as far as I know, he has never advocated any violent action against Muslims. All that he has done is to try to change the laws of the Netherlands to better respond to what he sees as a threat to his country.

I happen to disagree with his assessment but from my point of view, he has done nothing that would justify depriving him of his rights. The correct response to someone like Wilders is not to prevent him from speaking. It is to ignore what he says. By making a big fuss of Wilders’ attempts to speak in the UK, the British government has simply played into his hand and given him what he really wanted all along: more publicity than he deserves.

Economic growth is good

This post is an expansion of comments that I’ve made in response to posts made in De Minimis. In a way, it seems odd that I would need to make this post at all. After all, everyone instinctively feels that becoming wealthier is a good thing, right? So what possible arguments might one advance to claim the opposite? There are many levels to the critique made in De Minimis, and in his defense, he appears to acknowledge that this is a train of thought that is still in the making. Still, as I understand it, the argument against economic growth falls largely into the following two groups:

  1. Economic growth is bad for the environment and depletes the Earth’s finite resources in an unsustainable manner.
  2. Striving for material wealth may not necessarily bring about the desired happiness and the stress and conflict this cause may actually turn out not to be worth the struggle.

Continue reading Economic growth is good

Protectionism is bad, period.

One blog that I’ve recently added to my regular reading list is De Minimis. I have no idea who the blog author is, but on general business and economic matters, I happily concede that he (I assume that the author is a “he”) is far more learned and well read that I am. He even appears to be a Star Trek fan, what a nice coincidence!

I’m pretty unhapppy about a post he made however. It’s an interview with PBB group chairman Datuk Oh Siew Nam about what measures Malaysia should take in the face of the current economic downturn. What upsets me is that in addition to the expected suggestion of a generously funded and carefully targeted stimulus plan, there are also two proposals that are explicitly protectionist in nature, and De Minimis appears to agree with both of them.

Continue reading Protectionism is bad, period.

Why newspapers aren’t neutral (and shouldn’t pretend to be)

A long time ago, while I was working as a stringer for The New Straits Times during my summer holidays, I got into a heated discussion with a couple of my colleagues on whether or not the press should be objective and neutral. My position was, and continues to be, that newspapers always have a position and it should be explicit. Their position was that journalists should be objective and unbiased, reporting only facts and refraining from passing judgment.

This article published in The Economist makes a good case for why news outlets even in a free market are biased. It explains that what people really want aren’t objective, neutral newspapers, even if that is what they say that they want, but instead ones that reflect their own dispositions. According to the study cited by the article, analysis of the media in the U.S. indicates that even different ownership has next to no effect on the overall bias on the press. What does matter is what the targeted market wants.

As the article notes, ultimately the truth lies somewhere in between all these different points of view, and anyone seriously interested in the news should get it from a variety of sources. But allowing those different points of view to be represented is far better than trying to stick to some muddy standard of objectivity that fails to sufficiently inform the reader for fear of passing judgment, whether good or bad.