Sajakkini

Elizabeth Wong : 13th Floor

Someone way out in Putrajaya must be having a bad case of epiphanies - the latest being a ‘National Integrity Plan’ designed to “imbue our Malaysian society with a strong sense of right and wrong”.

While the swords of moral philosophy remain unsheathed in the meta- and normative war of ethics, our government now sees fit to set in stone the ‘boleh-land’ definition of what is right and wrong. A Herculean effort considering the government has done so without the help from our poorly funded, gagged and darkened halls of academia and a distinguished philosophy department to boot (I digress).

ELIZABETH WONG has been involved in human rights since her student days in Sydney. She is currently the secretary-general of the National Human Rights Society (Hakam), a member of the Suaram secretariat and was a human rights fellow of Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs (2002-03). ‘13th Floor‘ will attempt to look into the paradoxes and intricacies of democracy and politics. In her spare time, she revives her search for Dante (the lost cat). She is still leaving the option of playing guitar in a loud band open.

Somehow, it is hard to cast out from our minds the image of Armani-clad gnomes tucked away in the ministerial palace, churning out cute phrases like “Tell me the truth”; “Work with me”; and now “Ethics and integrity”.

Fine. We may collectively groan at yet another hare-brained idea from the powers-that-be involving pots of taxpayers’ money, policy, research, data-basing and archival work to come out with a godown full of recommendations.

But it is a tad insulting to suggest that the general Malaysian populace is devoid of integrity and ethics, considering at most any one of us would do is buy a DVD to watch a movie peacefully without the Film Censorship Board in our living rooms.

Lest we forget, the masses voted to see some real action on corruption, not for another institute or plan.

The last time we checked, it was the cream of society, ‘captains’ of industries, politicians, ministers, state-appointed security personnel, senior officials and municipal council members who could not discern between right and wrong, whether it be manufacturing component parts for a nuclear bit, disturbing the dead to make them vote, assaulting suspects in custody or allocating shares to one’s son-in-law.

So wouldn’t it be wise to narrow the scope of the Plan to those who really need a lesson in integrity (see again the list above), rather than torment the rakyat who have in fact been at the forefront of anti-corruption work, and who are the whistle-blowers?

Before we get too infused with the campaign du jour, surely there must be some basic prerequisites to an ‘ethical’ society. Freedom of expression and freedom of information for a start. Rule of law and independent public institutions such as the police, Election Commission, the Anti-Corruption Agency and the judiciary. A racism-free society that treats its own people, migrant workers and asylum-seekers with some common decency and respect.

Surely ‘integrity’ also means making sure that we, the public, get a free press alongside live telecasts of parliamentary sessions and not just of the Malaysian Football League.

Perennial question

If there’s one thing that the Plan should have, it is an immediate implementable item (not surprisingly excluded). This would be skills for lawmakers to discern where one has gone wrong, to learn how to say ‘sorry’ (surely it’s one of the easiest duo-syllabic words ….so-reee), and to know when to prevent a terrible mistake from ever surfacing again.

The case in point is of course the problem-riddled National Service programme. For the past few months, we have subjected tens of thousands of our best and brightest youths to near-starvation, mass hysteria, bullying and acts of terror such as sexual and physical assault all in the name of national integration. Then again, didn’t someone say it was for disciplining the young, instilling patriotism or was it national defence?

Five hundred million ringgit from our public coffers have gone down the drain, not to mention the perennial question - which politician’s company/crony won the lucrative food, accommodation and uniforms contract – remains on every parent’s mind.

Any minister or politician worth their salt would have realised this is a very bad plan, gone very, very wrong. Instead, true to the Malaysian politician’s spirit of accountability, the government not only mulls segregated camps, but wants more of our money to keep the programme running.

So here is the deal and that duo-syllabic word takes very little print space and air-time: ‘So-reee’. There.

Suspend the current operations and scrap the ridiculous programme. Send the kids home. Channel that RM500 million to revive the teaching of philosophy in all its branches and sub-disciplines, from logic and epistemology to aesthetics and ethics, before we get anywhere near the big ‘Plan’ itself.

Get students (and teachers) to read the works of philosophers of ethics from the West and East, and not neo-Confucianist apologists for modern-day Asian despotism. Enroll only lawmakers into an ‘ethics for novices’ programme.

And we need not even have to wait until the end of the five years given to the Malaysian Integrity Institute to finish its research and archiving to do this - unless of course this is an epiphanic excuse to extend one’s mandate.

Malaysiakini: Sorry seems to be the hardest word