Bar Council's democratic pretensions

TRIPPING THEMSELVES: Bar censors earlier report of anti-police taunts

Hang on! What happened to this part of the Bar's 30-page interim report that stated: "...rally participants jeered police officers as trash but the police officers ignored the taunts. Around 12pm to 1pm, participants at the intersection of Jalan Tun Perak, Jalan TAR and Jalan Raja, booed and jeered at police officers but there was no retaliation by the police. Some police officers took pictures of the crowd surrounding them."

Azmi Anshar, New Straits Times

THE hindsight to be learnt from the farcical circus called Bersih 3.0 is manifold but one daunting aspect is this: the right to peaceful assembly is now sacrosanct (try saying that pre-2009) but the right to location to stage the peaceful assembly is still a privilege to be earned and subject to security concerns.

Previously, a police permit had to be acquired to assemble in huge numbers. Now, it is a given that permission will be granted, thanks to the beneficence of recently-enacted Peaceful Assembly Act.

But what is not an accomplished fact is right to location: Dataran Merdeka was, for historical and cultural reasons, out of bounds, Stadium Merdeka was offered but quickly rebuffed, only because a minority protest like Bersih realised they cannot fill up the stadium, thus exposing their wildly exaggerated claims of a six-figure attendance.

The civil disagreement against Bersih's inevitable mob violence, the one frankly postulated by Tunku Aziz Tunku Ibrahim, the "towering" Malaysian hyped when he joined the DAP post-2008 general election, was precise and prescient two days before the rally.

But the elderly DAP vice-chairman was predictably and viciously demonised by the democratically-challenged elements of the "Democratic" Action Party, his senatorship's three-year extension rudely scuttled and his good standing -- in the eyes of these DAP supplicants -- shredded.

Bersih co-chairman Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan was also handed a sobering lesson that right to location is a privilege to be earned. In the epilogue of April 28's mob violence, traders fretting over financial losses demonstrated outside the Bersih co-chairman's leafy Bukit Damansara home, giving away burgers while conducting an abject lesson on how street demonstrations can go ugly.

Instead of graciously accepting the tit-for-tat as the democrat that she is, Ambiga whined that her privacy was invaded and her political supporters grumbled that the burger-selling skit was unlawful. Exactamundo!

What, you can't get a delicious irony when you see one, especially one slapped before your face? Ambiga learnt that she and her ilk gagged silly when a dose of their own medicine is shoved down their throats. You can't even eat your own dog food.

And what about the Malaysian Bar's EGM on Friday? The stunt where 939 of 1,270 members (some reports claimed chambering students mingled and might have voted) approved a resolution that basically disparaged the police for doing their job?

Again, the so-called learned lawyers tripped on themselves, ignoring, or rather, censoring a crucial part of their 30-page interim report released last week on mob-against-police violence.

In that EGM, the 939 Bar members voted a resolution that fulminated on police's application of water cannon and tear gas to control a savage-induced mob, claiming that the cops did not allow the mob sufficient time to disperse in an orderly fashion.

Hang on! What happened to this part of the Bar's 30-page interim report that stated: "...rally participants jeered police officers as trash but the police officers ignored the taunts. Around 12pm to 1pm, participants at the intersection of Jalan Tun Perak, Jalan TAR and Jalan Raja, booed and jeered at police officers but there was no retaliation by the police. Some police officers took pictures of the crowd surrounding them."

This part was cynically and boorishly omitted. In its place is this: "The police were initially restrained. However, this changed at approximately 3:00 pm, when there was a breach of the perimeter barriers set up at the junction of Jalan Tun Perak and Jalan Raja."

Wait a minute. The Bar actually admitted that there was a perimeter breach but conveniently declined to elaborate on the dynamics of the breach. Why? Because it would render dubious their hoary foaming denunciation of the police. Here's the provision they could have inserted in the resolution: "On the strength of video evidence that pointed to yellow-clad Parti Keadilan Rakyat leaders -- shepherded by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim -- who were seen breaching the security barrier and engaging in an in-your-face, no-holds-barred confrontation with police."

We are resigned to the fact that the Bar Council is a parody of itself, the organisation hustling hysterical proclamations of outrage but ignoring circumspect and governance (jeers and machinations abound when conscientious Bar members tried to voice a protest in the EGM).

Rather than engage in mob violence, the Bar engages in mob coercion, railroading the resolution and committing the very peccancy it usually unloads on lawmakers in the Dewan Rakyat.

The Bar Council as a neutral watchdog is a silly pretext. They pre-meditated themselves as Bersih's co-conspirators and gladly act as amplifiers for opposition infamy.

Nobody's saying the Bar can't launch an all-out attack on the government -- that incendiary resolution reflects Malaysia's burgeoning democracy -- but don't pretend to be the Atlas of democracy.

Proclaim yourself as revolutionaries determined to demean the government using legal variables, loopholes and manoeuvres consonant to the opposition’s desperate cause.

Then you’ll get more people wanting to become lawyers wanting to aggrandise themselves as politicians.

Now comes the overarching hindsight, a recurring pattern emerges in all this Bersih-Bar Council-opposition parties’ horseplay: it all points to one man’s fantastical obsession to fulfil his destiny to become prime minister.

But who cares if law-breaking, defiance of governance, tacit approval of violence and general bedlam is the way to go. Anwar won’t.