Khairy says yes. Najib says maybe. Rais says no.
My eyes are blurring from watching the buck getting passed around.
Does that mean if I go to Rais' house and online using his wifi, and defame somebody, he will go to jail as well? And does that mean Unifi, Maxis and etc. should be sued under Section 114A of the Evidence Act every minute/second as without these providers, we wouldn't be able to go online.BN is much much worse than communist... Many innocent will be jailed. They can do anything to keep in power. BN only care for their dirty politics & money... making false news on Bersih, upcoming movie on incident May13, what else?? Splitting us the malaysians in the only way to keep you in power, isn't?? We know that. My fellow Malaysian friends no matter you are Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan, Iban, let show them who is the boss on the coming election. No more corrupted and cruel gomen. Enough is enough.Is this one of the promises BN has fulfilled? Now you know who BN is keeping their promises to... to themselves!My eyes are blurring from watching the buck getting passed around.
The Issue here is INJUSTICE to the Cause and Effect of the amendment to Section 114A of the Evidence Act.
Debated in parliament my foot.... They only speed up the process for the amendment to be passed in the parliament like the previous new assembly act ... No chance for opposition to debate fairly ~ This is how they call Rakyat didahulukan huh..? Bird brain politicians ~his BN Govt. is made up of sick individuals who have nothing useful to do except pass the buck/problems/whatever to be born by others except themselves - unless it is MONEY to be gained. This very Act shows the true colours of the BN - they are totally useless, corrupted with MONEY and POWER. NOBODY in Bolehland accepts this ACT! Yes, Section 114A is to stay, whereas you Rais has overstayed. Mind you when later the act is use on them, they'll realise how stupid they were. Short term vs long term. Near view vs long view.He is very defiant amidst the public outcry. I don't if this latest development would help BN's cause or not. To me, if you don't listen to the people and those of your kind and remain adamant, it would make the fence-sitters' task of choosing whom to vote much easier now.
this issue should be thrown back to the bn members like khairyj and saifuddin who are now expressing 2nd thots about 114A. why did they vote for the amendment when they had misgivings about it? isn't it highly hypocritical to happily vote for it and couple of months later express doubts? sayd a lot for the bn system of consensus.
Can someone share the Hansard or the actual deliberations and debates that went on in both houses so that the rakyat can see for themselves how such a ridiculous state of affairs has been engineered right under the noses of so many reps of the rakyat. We need to tweak the system to avoid this in future too..
It will not matter to many who will come & vote this GE13. Even if these votes are refrain from writing anything "seditious", they are able to vote with their eyes wide open. They will vote for leaders who will listen and do not Zzzzz on the job. History will judge the politicians who think they are above the law.
"Seventy-three per cent of Brazilians believe Mensalãodefendants should go to prison, even though only 11 per cent of those questioned expect punishment."
Political corruption is widely recognised as one of humanity’s great ills. But people tend to pay less attention to impunity, freedom from punishment for the powerful. Impunity is both the cause and symptom of bad government, eroding confidence in the justice system and public authority, leading to civic cynicism, anomie, and contempt for the rule of law
MALAYSIA’S FIRST OLYMPICS GOLD MEDAL FOR CORRUPTION,
readmorehttp://lawmattersjournalmalaysia.blogspot.com/2012/08/malaysias-first-e-olympics-gold-medal.html
Brazil, a nation marked by a legacy of impunity, has a historic opportunity to put itself on an upward political trajectory. The Supreme Court has just entered its third week of hearings on the biggest corruption trial in the country's recent history: the Mensalão, literally translated as the "big monthly payment". The case in question centres around 38 defendants, including former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Chief of Staff, José Dirceu, who is alleged to have laundered and then disbursed millions in public and private money to secure votes for legislation in the National Congress from 2003 to 2005Grave political crimes were committed, and the upcoming judgment will mark a point of inflection in the development of the country's political culture. A positive outcome would begin to harmonise the justice system with President Dilma Rousseff's efforts to purge and modernise Brazil's Executive Branch.
related articlehttp://suarakeadilanmalaysia.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/tan-sri-abdul-taib-mahmud-and-prime-minister-datuk-seri-najib-razak-mutual-respect-and-understanding-between-two-looters/
During the first two years of her term, Rousseff has put into effect a powerful new freedom of information law, created a governmental data portal, and has begun to modernise the country's world-renowned Transparency Portals, in which governmental entities are obligated to post expenses within a 24-hour period. Rousseff has also purged her cabinet, booting six ministers on allegations of corruption since she took office. Perhaps most symbolic of the changes underway, Rousseff volunteered Brazil to serve as co-chair of the Open Government Partnership, and presided over the establishment of a Truth Commission to deal with abuses perpetrated during the 1964-85 dictatorship.
These new initiatives represent significant progress, but what is most needed are deep reforms to institutions that allow malfeasant public officials to operate with impunity.
Brazil's new democracy evolved in the shadow of a powerful military dictatorship that exercised significant control over the transition from authoritarianism. This is why - even in spite of the new Truth Commission - an amnesty law from 1979 still protects torturers and their respective military commanders.
PKR-linked NGO Jingga 13 today questioned the reason why the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC) has remained mum on the results of its investigation into the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) scandal.
Jingga 13 lead coordinator Fariz Musa said the anti-graft commission should not be silent on the matter as countless reports have been lodged with the MACC by Jingga 13 and PKR. Yet no action has been taken to date.
“Jingga 13 is urging the MACC to explain the results of their investigations and to take action against those involved without prejudice,” Fariz told reporters after handing a memorandum to MACC here.
An MACC official accepted the memorandum on behalf of MACC’s Investigations Director Datuk Mustafar Ali.
When asked if the MACC had updated him, Fariz said he was informed that the commission could not take action due to a lack of clear standard procedures on soft loans
.related article http://suarakeadilanmalaysia.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/why-so-silentattorney-general-to-voters-nothing-to-see-just-move-along-and-b-n/
The evolution of shame
'Raja has conquered Tihar jail' reportedly read some slogans on T-shirts worn by his celebrating supporters on his return to Chennai after spending 15 months in jail. To see his return from detention on charges of massive corruption as the return of a conquering hero requires a special kind of ability, one that does not seem in short supply today. Increasingly, corruption charges do not seem to carry a social taint, and even criminals convicted of more heinous crimes, people like SPS Rathore (of the Ruchika case notoriety) or Manu Sharma carry themselves with a swagger when seen in public.
Shame, that social device that acted as a self-restraining agent, aligning our internal compass with external expectation, pushing us towards behaviour that was considering socially legitimate and rapping us on the knuckles, often quite decisively, when we stepped out of line, seems to be an increasing absence in many sections of society today. Today, it is easier for people to be punished than to be disgraced; it would seem that the letter of the law has overwhelmed the spirit of the social convention. The gradual fading of a shared moral code, an implicit belief in the way things should be, has led to a fundamental transfer of responsibility- from depending on the collective wisdom of a social group to the personal conscience of the individual.
But in a rapidly changing landscape, the individual finds it difficult to locate this conscience, having been set adrift in a world without maps that guide behaviour. If in an earlier age, one always knew, to the point of repressive certainty, what the expected behaviour in any situation was, today it is up to the individual to play the new games of the day , while simultaneously writing its rules, without having to worry too much about 'what people will say'. The only outer boundaries are those imposed by the law, and these take on a technical rather than a moral hue. The law is seen as something that is malleable, an entity with which one can haggle, provided one has the means. If earlier social norms took on a regulatory responsibility today it is increasingly being seen as the job of the legal system to do so. When was the last time, for instance when we heard of any social pressure being brought to bear on a corrupt official or of a prospective match being cancelled because one party was deemed corrupt?
There is another side to this growing absence of shame too. As a device the idea of 'knowing one's place' and 'acting within limits' was one that was used with great effect to maintain hierarchies and thwart discontinuous change. Gender, caste and class differences were enforced not only by external institutions, but by the victims of these inequalities themselves. The acceptance of inequality as legitimate was enabled by the idea of shame or 'lajja' or 'ankh ki sharam'; these being homeostatic devices used by society to keep itself in check, in line with its dominant impulses. The gradual loosening of this implicit social contract is giving rise to a new breed of 'shameless' aspirers, people from different marginalities coming to the fore without being burdened by memory or expectations. As a reaction to this change, we see an attempt to foist shame from the outside, as formations like the khap panchayats and other forms of social policing use force in a desperate attempt to draw boundaries and stem the flow of change.
In line with the times, shame, as a device is taking on a new form; it is now located in the body, and in a larger sense, the self. In keeping with the centrality of the individual, and with the growing primacy of the market in our lives, we learn to think of ourselves as congenitally incomplete and imperfect and strive to correct this by filling ourselves up with acts of consumption. The self is pictured as a perpetual project, needing improvement from within and constant validation from without. Shame resides in the spaces between the wrong car and the right and a blemished skin of the wrong colour and the white glow that radiates from flawless youthfulness. Tradition is now a honeyed voice from the television, that tells us what is desirable and makes us act accordingly.
When individuals take charge of their own destinies, it is inevitable that codes of behaviour rooted in socially determined collectives will need to give way. The question is, what replaces the old laws, the old mechanisms that allowed society to govern itself without needing constant intervention? Tradition served as the magnetic pole which mysteriously aligned our action with some ideals through many devices, one of which was the self-imposed idea of shame. In the absence of such embedded self-knowledge, and self-regulatory devices, every action of the individual is full of moral import, something that is impossibly exhausting as an endeavour. The secular institutions of the state, have neither the power nor the nuance that is required when dealing with issues of moral order. The newer institutions of media and the market do impose sophisticated codes but these are designed to benefit themselves; there is no great allegiance to society as a whole.
Shame, that social device that acted as a self-restraining agent, aligning our internal compass with external expectation, pushing us towards behaviour that was considering socially legitimate and rapping us on the knuckles, often quite decisively, when we stepped out of line, seems to be an increasing absence in many sections of society today. Today, it is easier for people to be punished than to be disgraced; it would seem that the letter of the law has overwhelmed the spirit of the social convention. The gradual fading of a shared moral code, an implicit belief in the way things should be, has led to a fundamental transfer of responsibility- from depending on the collective wisdom of a social group to the personal conscience of the individual.
But in a rapidly changing landscape, the individual finds it difficult to locate this conscience, having been set adrift in a world without maps that guide behaviour. If in an earlier age, one always knew, to the point of repressive certainty, what the expected behaviour in any situation was, today it is up to the individual to play the new games of the day , while simultaneously writing its rules, without having to worry too much about 'what people will say'. The only outer boundaries are those imposed by the law, and these take on a technical rather than a moral hue. The law is seen as something that is malleable, an entity with which one can haggle, provided one has the means. If earlier social norms took on a regulatory responsibility today it is increasingly being seen as the job of the legal system to do so. When was the last time, for instance when we heard of any social pressure being brought to bear on a corrupt official or of a prospective match being cancelled because one party was deemed corrupt?
There is another side to this growing absence of shame too. As a device the idea of 'knowing one's place' and 'acting within limits' was one that was used with great effect to maintain hierarchies and thwart discontinuous change. Gender, caste and class differences were enforced not only by external institutions, but by the victims of these inequalities themselves. The acceptance of inequality as legitimate was enabled by the idea of shame or 'lajja' or 'ankh ki sharam'; these being homeostatic devices used by society to keep itself in check, in line with its dominant impulses. The gradual loosening of this implicit social contract is giving rise to a new breed of 'shameless' aspirers, people from different marginalities coming to the fore without being burdened by memory or expectations. As a reaction to this change, we see an attempt to foist shame from the outside, as formations like the khap panchayats and other forms of social policing use force in a desperate attempt to draw boundaries and stem the flow of change.
In line with the times, shame, as a device is taking on a new form; it is now located in the body, and in a larger sense, the self. In keeping with the centrality of the individual, and with the growing primacy of the market in our lives, we learn to think of ourselves as congenitally incomplete and imperfect and strive to correct this by filling ourselves up with acts of consumption. The self is pictured as a perpetual project, needing improvement from within and constant validation from without. Shame resides in the spaces between the wrong car and the right and a blemished skin of the wrong colour and the white glow that radiates from flawless youthfulness. Tradition is now a honeyed voice from the television, that tells us what is desirable and makes us act accordingly.
When individuals take charge of their own destinies, it is inevitable that codes of behaviour rooted in socially determined collectives will need to give way. The question is, what replaces the old laws, the old mechanisms that allowed society to govern itself without needing constant intervention? Tradition served as the magnetic pole which mysteriously aligned our action with some ideals through many devices, one of which was the self-imposed idea of shame. In the absence of such embedded self-knowledge, and self-regulatory devices, every action of the individual is full of moral import, something that is impossibly exhausting as an endeavour. The secular institutions of the state, have neither the power nor the nuance that is required when dealing with issues of moral order. The newer institutions of media and the market do impose sophisticated codes but these are designed to benefit themselves; there is no great allegiance to society as a whole.
Effectively, the vantage point called society is going unmanned; no one is looking out for its interests as a collective. There is an emerging vacuum as society finds itself unable to govern itself and finds no other institution that can fill in for it. It is as if society is losing a sense of its own self and does not know what values to uphold and what to proscribe. This does translate into more freedom for the individual, but in the absence of a larger moral code in which the individual is embedded, this freedom can end up as nothing more than an indiscriminate celebration of one's narrow personal interests.
The result is a national embarrassment: widespread impunity. The presence of prosperous, corrupt politicians across the Brazilian political landscape communicates to citizens that corruption pays dividends. Take former President Fernando Collor, for instance. Even though he resigned shortly before being impeached for grand corruption in 1992, Collor now holds the powerful Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and National Defense. Criminal charges against the ex-president have led to naught.
A more extreme example is the two-time mayor of São Paulo, supporter of the military regime, and candidate to the presidency, Paulo Maluf. Now 80 years old, Maluf is wanted by Interpol for international money laundering, and the Federal Prosecutor in Brazil has confirmed that the politician has nearly half a billion dollars stowed away in Swiss bank accounts. Finally condemned in 2005 for crimes committed in the mid 1980s, Maluf spent one month in jail before the Supreme Court of Justice let him out on grounds of "poor health". Two years later, the portly politician was elected to the national Congress as a Representative of São Paulo, a position which he continues to hold. Most recently, former President Lula da Silva forged a formal alliance with Maluf in order to bolster the government's partisan alliance for the mayoralty of São Paulo.
While widely condemned by the Brazilian public, impunity is nonetheless expected. A survey by the Folha de São Paulo's DataFolha this week shows that 73 per cent of Brazilians believe Mensalão defendants should go to prison, even though only 11 per cent of those questioned expect punishment. Legal experts agree that avengers who long for the vicarious satisfaction of stiff prison sentences are likely to be disappointed.
President Lula da Silva, who stands directly in the trial's line of fire, appointed six of the 11 Supreme Court Justices hearing the case. Lula has not remained idle while letting justice runs its course. At time of writing he had paid visits to five justices in 2012, including the judge delegated to be the official reviewer, Justice Ricardo Lewandowski. Not surprisingly, Lewandowski expressed his desire to see the case abrogated on technical grounds right at the beginning of the trial.
Clearly, it is not just the 38 accused of the Mensalão who stand trial, but Brazil's justice system, and a young nation's commitment to procedural democracy and accountability.
| Brazil prepares for 2016 Olympic Games |
Brazil's new democracy evolved in the shadow of a powerful military dictatorship that exercised significant control over the transition from authoritarianism. This is why - even in spite of the new Truth Commission - an amnesty law from 1979 still protects torturers and their respective military commanders. Impunity extends even to those who tortured Brazil's current president, who stripped a young Dilma Rousseff naked, applied electric currents to her body, and haemorrhaged her uterus.
Traditions of impunity carried over to Brazil's vibrant electoral democracy. High-level corruption in politics is rarely prosecuted, mainly because top officials are rarely subject to final court decisions. As Brazilian specialist Professor Matthew Taylor of American University has found, more than 700 officials enjoy exclusive procedural benefits, referred to as foro privilegiado or "special standing". Instead of first being tried in lower courts, officials with special standing must be judged in one of Brazil's top two courts, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) or the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ). These courts typically judge final appeals and cases of jurisdictional or constitutional import, and are ill-equipped as criminal courts. Moreover, special standing implies lengthy procedural privileges for defendants. A case in point is the Mensalão trial, which includes 600 depositions, more than 60,000 pages of testimony, and has taken more than 2,600 days to prosecute.
The Folha de São Paulo calculates that of Brazil's 10 most important political corruption scandals over the past 20 years, approximately 6 per cent of nearly 850 defendants ended up with a conviction, and only one per cent of defendants received final convictions after exhausting the appeals process. As Taylor points out, most officials charged with corruption run out the clock: they use procedural manoeuvring until their trials reach the statute of limitations. Indeed, numerous minor charges levied against the Mensalão's 38 defendants have already expired.
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