When Power Corrupts Absolutely

If one had been privy to the abuses of those in power and waited for the day
they would go rather than forment a rebellion, one would be horrified to
learn that their successors would merely carry on with those abuses. The
abuse of power seems to be a tradition inherent in those who held on to
power for too long; the corrupting influences of power a certainty for those
possessing it.

The ruling party we all know too well has held on to power for almost half a
century now; beginnning as an idea to cast off the yoke of colonialism, and
then to uplift the malay race and the country for all its citizens. Ideas
find form in movements and with success they became institutions. Through
the intervening decades, those ideas have dissipated if not disappeared
altogether and the movement has invariably lost its way. What we are left
with now is an empty shell of an institution, holding all the reins of
power, full of hollow rhetoric, devoid of purpose except solely to sustain
itself in power.

If one is revolted by the sexual excesses of those who have been elected
time and time again to the very top echelons of the present leadership; they
are nothing new. Be it khalwat, statutory rape or wanton debauchery, how do
they compare with the plight of non-citizens at the dawn of independence
threatened with denial of citizenship who had to give up their daughters as
sacrificial lambs to satisfy the lusts of those in positions to grant them
that very citizenship? Under their angry breath they had grudgingly cursed
these men of power, but stilled their protest then nonetheless.

When denied power, the institution organises pogroms to terrorise the
population. Exactly 31 years ago to the day this very day in May my wife
heard the rumblings of a commotion where she lived off Jalan Hale in Kampung Baru. She witnessed with her very own eyes large burly malay men wearing black shirts and trousers and red bandanas swing machetes and neatly decapitate a motorcyclist riding along the road. Innocent blood splattered, the motorbike lurched, the body fell and the head rolled to rest some feet away.

Two days later she returned with her family from the sanctuary of the nearby Campbell police station only to witness the looting and burning of their neighbours' houses by men from army trucks and the shooting and killing of the very neighbours who were alerted to come put out the fire. The neighbours were only trying to put out the fire, but they were shot in cold blood by the very looters and the official version was that the people had defied the curfew! The police had already said that if the army came, they, the police, could not protect them.

The slaughter of the innocents is accepted as a neccesary evil by those who
see only the paramount importance of maintaining power. Go deep into the
dark inner psyche of the ruling party and you see its primeval need for
dominance by whatever uncivilised brutality as deemed required. Albert
Schweitzer observed that nature knows no reverence for life. For the
subconscious savage mind in the jungle, the decapitation of the enemy
signified control and possession; dominance. In the Dayak longhouses of Sarawak decapitated heads are preserved and displayed in ceremonies to prove this point. In the thirty years since 1969, the ruling party has sought out the head of every significant rebellion and exercised decapitation; incaceration and destruction of every single instance of disagreement and dissent. Each time a rebellion threatens, reminders of head hunting are readily repeated to effect retreat.

We have seen how brutal the ruling party can be in recent times when tested
in the front line; always in the end going for decapitation to ensure its
dominance. The shocked population is petrified beyond rational thought and
action, numbed into a ready acceptance of whatever explanation the ruling
party dishes out for its decidedly uncivilised behaviour: a 'communist
insurgency" or "islamic extremism" or 'foreign interevention" or simply to
stop "racial riots". The "decapitated head" is displayed everytime new
legislation is passed; and especially whenever elections are held.

When a ruler is not accountable anymore, and has found a way to hold on to
power indefinitely, should we be surprised at the stupidity of special
branch officers who confiscate bibles in malay and the arrogance and cruelty
of police in their shameful treatment of illegal immigrants. Should we be
surprised also when police in carrying out their duties show no respect for
life and property ? As Charlton Heston's character said to the corrupt
police chief character played by Orson Welles: " The work of the police is
only easy in a police state."

Among the instruments of state, the police are perhaps most prone to abuse.
The police exist to maintain law and order in society and to battle those
who challenge it; to serve and to protect. As an institution, they are
flawed by the very men who wear the uniform. With respect to the very many
good men in the force, they are silenced by the hierachy of their
institution, as they bear witness to the corruption that stems from the very
top. If the example of the very top is to behave like common gangsters and
extortionists, in psyche and in reflex they are no different from the scum
of society that they do battle with everyday. Only that they wear their
royal insignias and take their orders or money from the powers that be;
people in institutions bent on preserving their power.

We now wonder whether at the time of the nation's birth there was a promise
that we would be a democratic nation founded on principles of fair play and
justice and that there would be checks and balances against the abuse of
power in the country ? Was there not a promise that ours would be a
participatory society; that we can all be leaders and still keep our heads ?

But the ruling party which closes its general assembly today, the thirteenth
day of May, has become very adept at removing heads: the heads of partners
in their coalition who grow too strong; the heads of those in the press who
dare write the truth; the heads of those in the judiciary who dare make fair
and impartial judgements and the heads of movements and organisations that dare challenge them. For all intents and purposes all dissent, even within
its own ranks, is squashed by "removing the head".

For all the talk, speeches and rantings, little or nothing has changed in
the ruling party. The same corruption and abuse of power permeates with the
usual promises to window-clean and whitewash them out of sight of the common people. Their love of wealth and power is underscored by the swollen cash assets and property of the men they have just elected to high office. The ruling party comes across as a kind of party where corruption pays. The
original idea of fairness and equality has been demeaned and destroyed by
these who are nothing but addicted to power.

Defeat in an election, the only cure for the hallucinatory effects of this
type of addiction is not an avenue for the moment. The ruling party has seen
to that. A rebellion, in one form or another, seems the only inevitable
course left. A rebellion however, as everyone knows, is only justified when
it is victorious. Otherwise its leader risks losing his head.


Paksanno