MAY 14 — There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong.
It’s the simple principle that underpins the functions of any judicial system. And those we entrust to apply this principle and pass final judgment on others execute a duty that is heavy and almost divine in nature.
Through the ages, it’s the reason why society demands that men and women who are elevated to this office embody certain qualities with a high standard of behaviour, in a sense making them almost perfect; men and women who have the highest moral code of conduct, imbued with integrity, honesty, intelligence and not just a wide knowledge of the law and experience in life but also who know respect, courtesy and the ability to emphatise with the vicissitudes of life that cause many to end up standing before them in their courtrooms.
It’s a simple principle, and one he no doubt would’ve faced and applied each day he sat on the bench as a judge. One would like to believe that former Court of Appeal judge Justice Mohd Abdullah Noor was appointed to his high office because he embodied all those qualities and that he always had the means and knowledge to determine and conclude when confronted with an issue, which side was right and which side was wrong.
We assume that before making a judgment, any judge would have to be satisfied that all he or she has had the opportunity to appraise all the relevant information.
So, it is stupefying when this former judge stood before his audience at a recent public forum and lashed out against a certain segment of the Malaysian population with threats of imminent repercussion for lawfully exercising their constitutional right to vote for a coalition of political parties that we can only now assume he personally didn’t support. This he did in the face of clear empirical evidence that rejection of the ruling coalition was from the majority of the electorate and not, as he believed, just Malaysians of Chinese descent.
In his opinion, their voting for candidates and parties other than those from the BN to form government was an act of betrayal against the ruling coalition tantamount to disrespecting one particular race, which justified the exacting of revenge by that race on them.
This to him, was right. Nevermind that those who didn’t vote for the ruling coalition were lawfully exercising their rights as citizens.
Confronted with the fallout from the elections, this former judge chose to throw his weight behind racists and backed a divisive agenda that does nothing at all to heal our country. Instead of being a rational voice of reason, he added his voice to a racist chorus calling a segment of our fellow citizens, “penumpang”.
Distorting even further Article 153 of our Federal Constitution, he proposed that all businesses in Malaysia should have 67 per cent of their equity ready for the Malays to take up at any time, effectively copying the destructive indigenisation policy of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. He then went further and proposed a narrow classification of the Malaysian populace as either just Malays or Non-Malays, thereby socially regressing to apartheid-era South Africa, - a time in history that earned that nation much shame and scorn internationally.
To him, all this was right too. Nevermind that all of his suggestions went directly against the very words and spirit of the Constitution, a sacred instrument he had taken an oath to preserve and protect as a judge. Nevermind that racism is morally wrong, wrong, wrong whichever way you look at it.
One would like to believe that a man with so many years on the Bench would be more capable of exercising a measure of dignified restraint. A judge should be the first to counsel that “an eye for an eye” never ever leads to a fair outcome. But far from it, he revealed himself to embody all the qualities Malaysians had hoped a man in his position didn’t have.
By his words, he has shown himself to be totally indifferent to the plight of the majority of Malaysians in wanting a different government they believed to be better. He exposed his own personal prejudices and had no hesitation in using the bully pulpit to victimize a segment of the Malaysian population based purely on their race, reducing them to a racial stereotype – one that lusts for economic and political control – much the same way that National Socialists in Germany vilified and regarded the Jews as a threat to their national survival.
Whenever a man finds it right to publicly express such views, he invites society to examine his moral compass. That in turn leads to a re-examination of his life’s work and legacy as a judge.
Sadly, the path of such an examination almost always leads to our own front doors. Our judgment of Datuk Mohd Noor becomes an indictment of ourselves as a society. In many ways, he is our own creation. Our own inaction made it possible for such views to be aired not just by him but also by many others, over and over and without any fear of reprehension.
In the end, it’s us. How did we stray so far from our own collective moral compass that we allowed silence to prevail for so long in the face of growing racial extremism?
There are two sides to every issue – one side is right and the other is wrong.
When we prefer to stay silent and choose neither, then we have no one but ourselves to blame when the wrong side triumphs.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
It’s the simple principle that underpins the functions of any judicial system. And those we entrust to apply this principle and pass final judgment on others execute a duty that is heavy and almost divine in nature.
Through the ages, it’s the reason why society demands that men and women who are elevated to this office embody certain qualities with a high standard of behaviour, in a sense making them almost perfect; men and women who have the highest moral code of conduct, imbued with integrity, honesty, intelligence and not just a wide knowledge of the law and experience in life but also who know respect, courtesy and the ability to emphatise with the vicissitudes of life that cause many to end up standing before them in their courtrooms.
It’s a simple principle, and one he no doubt would’ve faced and applied each day he sat on the bench as a judge. One would like to believe that former Court of Appeal judge Justice Mohd Abdullah Noor was appointed to his high office because he embodied all those qualities and that he always had the means and knowledge to determine and conclude when confronted with an issue, which side was right and which side was wrong.
We assume that before making a judgment, any judge would have to be satisfied that all he or she has had the opportunity to appraise all the relevant information.
So, it is stupefying when this former judge stood before his audience at a recent public forum and lashed out against a certain segment of the Malaysian population with threats of imminent repercussion for lawfully exercising their constitutional right to vote for a coalition of political parties that we can only now assume he personally didn’t support. This he did in the face of clear empirical evidence that rejection of the ruling coalition was from the majority of the electorate and not, as he believed, just Malaysians of Chinese descent.
In his opinion, their voting for candidates and parties other than those from the BN to form government was an act of betrayal against the ruling coalition tantamount to disrespecting one particular race, which justified the exacting of revenge by that race on them.
This to him, was right. Nevermind that those who didn’t vote for the ruling coalition were lawfully exercising their rights as citizens.
Confronted with the fallout from the elections, this former judge chose to throw his weight behind racists and backed a divisive agenda that does nothing at all to heal our country. Instead of being a rational voice of reason, he added his voice to a racist chorus calling a segment of our fellow citizens, “penumpang”.
Distorting even further Article 153 of our Federal Constitution, he proposed that all businesses in Malaysia should have 67 per cent of their equity ready for the Malays to take up at any time, effectively copying the destructive indigenisation policy of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. He then went further and proposed a narrow classification of the Malaysian populace as either just Malays or Non-Malays, thereby socially regressing to apartheid-era South Africa, - a time in history that earned that nation much shame and scorn internationally.
To him, all this was right too. Nevermind that all of his suggestions went directly against the very words and spirit of the Constitution, a sacred instrument he had taken an oath to preserve and protect as a judge. Nevermind that racism is morally wrong, wrong, wrong whichever way you look at it.
One would like to believe that a man with so many years on the Bench would be more capable of exercising a measure of dignified restraint. A judge should be the first to counsel that “an eye for an eye” never ever leads to a fair outcome. But far from it, he revealed himself to embody all the qualities Malaysians had hoped a man in his position didn’t have.
By his words, he has shown himself to be totally indifferent to the plight of the majority of Malaysians in wanting a different government they believed to be better. He exposed his own personal prejudices and had no hesitation in using the bully pulpit to victimize a segment of the Malaysian population based purely on their race, reducing them to a racial stereotype – one that lusts for economic and political control – much the same way that National Socialists in Germany vilified and regarded the Jews as a threat to their national survival.
Whenever a man finds it right to publicly express such views, he invites society to examine his moral compass. That in turn leads to a re-examination of his life’s work and legacy as a judge.
Sadly, the path of such an examination almost always leads to our own front doors. Our judgment of Datuk Mohd Noor becomes an indictment of ourselves as a society. In many ways, he is our own creation. Our own inaction made it possible for such views to be aired not just by him but also by many others, over and over and without any fear of reprehension.
In the end, it’s us. How did we stray so far from our own collective moral compass that we allowed silence to prevail for so long in the face of growing racial extremism?
There are two sides to every issue – one side is right and the other is wrong.
When we prefer to stay silent and choose neither, then we have no one but ourselves to blame when the wrong side triumphs.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
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