Despite massive and legitimate criticisms against the new anti terrorism bill (POTA) and calls to defer it, the BN government decided to bulldoze it in Parliament on Monday.
The Malaysian Human Rights Commission has today said that the bill is not in line with international human rights standards and the country’s position in top world bodies.
But it is clear that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib who came into office six years ago as a self styled reformer has now decided to make a complete u turn in total disregard of his previous pledge to make Malaysia the best democracy in the world.
The government’s sudden tabling of the amendments to the 1948 Sedition to make it more draconian while the law’s constitutionality is being challenged in court further shows that Najib ‘s preparedness to pander to the regressives’ demands just to stay in power.
Najib has also certainly forgotten what he once said, that the era the government knows best is over as POTA and the Sedition Act amendments without prior public consultation.
His U-turn on promised reforms and his frequent elegant silence on important issues have in fact proven the early skeptics right – that he is not capable of change.
Time has certainly proven that he is not a reformer and all his talk about moderation and need for political reconciliation ring hollow.
On November 29 last year, Umno Deputy President Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had warned the Umno General Assembly that BN could lose Putrajaya in the next general election by only a 2 % drop in votes.
“Two percent is not much. I do not know if in the following general assemblies, I will even be able to address our president as prime minister any longer, what more myself as deputy prime minister,” Muhyiddin said in his winding-up speech at the assembly.
Lest Najib think that his U-turn and pandering to the regressive forces within and outside Umno will ensure his survival as the nation’s Prime Minister, he should be reminded how the former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Badawi‘s failure to deliver promised reforms had resulted in BN’s unprecedented electoral disaster in the 2008 general election and Badawi’s subsequent resignation as Prime Minister.
With introduction of more repressive laws, Najib is ignoring Muhyiddin’s warning and public sentiment at his own peril.
Teresa Kok