The parliament ought to be one of the most important symbols of national sovereignty. It represents the rule of the people, by the people, for the people. It is also the highest political forum of the land, where the fate of the nation can be debated by revered elected representatives of the people. That is what the parliament ought to be, in theory at least.

The doctrine of the separation of power evolved through the history of Westminster style of parliamentary democracy, and is more or less recognised as sacrosanct in developed democracies of the world, even by those politicians who have dictatorial tendencies, as in the United States, Pakistan and Malaysia.

This doctrine stipulates that the legislative, the administrative, and the judicial branches of government must be independent of one another, so that they will check and balance one another. The history of the evolution of democracy all over the world has been driven by this one basic principle: power will breed more greed for power, and all human individuals entrusted with power in public office in various branches of the government must be mistrusted and checked.

Within this context, the independence of the parliament has been protected by the constitution, by the in-house Standing Orders, and by parliamentary conventions. One of the most important parliamentary conventions is that the parliament ground is also sacrosanct, and the entire compound around the Parliament House is outside the jurisdiction of the administrative and judicial branches of the government.

In the Parliament, the MPs are kings, with the prime minister being the first among equals. All servants of the administrative branch of the government, including the police, are in Parliament at the pleasure of the Parliament itself.

That was what I said, in 1987, to the then speaker of the Dewan Rakyat, the late Tun Mohd Zahir Ismail, in the privacy of his office in Parliament House, in the company of Chow Kuan Yiew, then the political secretary to the opposition leader.

The now notorious Operation Lallang had just begun, and fears for a racial riot and the massive ISA arrests had gripped the city of Kuala Lumpur. Many MPs were already detained under the ISA, including the opposition leader and the opposition whip, together with countless social activists who had then made a great deal of noise before then.

I had just taken over as acting opposition whip, when Chow told me he witnessed the arrest of the Gerakan MP for Teluk Intan, the late Ong Ting Kim, inside the gate of the Parliament compound.

Already, the lobby and the corridor inside Parliament House had been crawling with plainclothes police officers. Even usually neutral Parliament senior staff complained to me in private about the invasive police tentacles extending where they do not belong. That is when I sought an audience with the House speaker, taking Chow as a witness to Ong’s arrest within Parliament ground.

To the credit of the speaker, he listened with grim concern, and promised me he would stop it. I saw him strolling through the corridors, and the next day, there was no police presence in the Parliament building, and nobody else was arrested within the fencing of the parliament compound.

It might as well be torn down

A few days ago, quite a few of the Bersih people were arrested in the Parliament ground again.

Of course, there are security measures in place to keep out trouble makers and potential terrorists. Visitors need a pass which can be readily given if they have been invited by any MP as his guest.

When the House is in session, many do visit the Parliament house on such invitation, curious citizens, party workers, civic groups, constituents, and even school children. Some citizens also go to the Parliament house, in the hope of catching a minister or deputy minister in person in the lobby, where they will plead a special case within his jurisdiction. That is how the term “lobbying” has come about.

The few Bersih people who went to the Parliament that day were doing exactly that, to present a memorandum on the constitutional amendment, with a focus on electoral reform. They were lobbying their MPs for an important purpose, and such activity cannot be construed as being engaged in an “illegal” gathering.

If lobbying in the Parliament house on invitation by any MP can be construed as a crime, and the lobbyist can be arrested by the police within parliament ground, then the Parliament House might as well be torn down.

The deputy minister of internal security has declared that the Parliament should not be a sanctuary for criminal elements. He is right, partly. A criminal such as a serial killer or a terrorist should not be given sanctuary in the Parliament house. But then, which MP in his right mind would invite a murderer or a terrorist to the august House?

The trouble is that the deputy minister tends to equate political and social activism as a crime. He is obviously and hugely under-qualified for his important job in a working democracy, but then what else is new in Malaysia? (I really have to restrain myself from name-calling at this point.)

You should not hurl abuse at all the policemen either. There are all kinds of policemen. Some of them vote for the opposition during elections. Some well-educated senior officers may find this part of their job in helping to repress dissent very unpalatable in their hearts. But they have to obey orders from above, right or wrong.

When he was released, my friend Wong Chin Fatt of Wami (Writers Alliance for Media Independence) revealed that a senior officer actually apologised for having arrested him. The trouble with this country is that the police cannot be impartial and professional in their work, because top politicians have decided that morally legitimate expressions of political dissent is “illegal”, and therefore, “criminal”.

Terror exists only in the media

As I write, 5 Hindraf lawyers have just been arrested under the ISA.

Again, this should not surprise any Malaysian who has some understanding of the twisted working of Malaysian brand of democracy. In fact, one should expect more ISA arrests, judging from the hysterical demonisation in the mainstream media against the exercising of basic rights by concerned citizens through peaceful means.

There is a waft of white terror in the air in KL, a little similar to the situation immediately before Operation Lallang in October, 1987. Much of this artificial terror now is cooked up by the politicians and the mainstream media. All you need now is for Umno Youth to call a mass rally of Malays to defend their race, and perhaps a crackpot rogue soldier to shoot off a few rounds of his rifle in the Chow Kit Road area, as had happened in 1987.

In actual fact, the terror exists only in the media. It is absent on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, and the thousands of housing estates around the Klang Valley. People go about their business as usual, and there is no visible rush to the supermarkets to stock up food at home. I do not see any panic sparked off by the three massive rallies in recent months, though there is a general resentment against the traffic jam caused by unnecessary police road blocks. Generally, Malaysians are as apathetic as ever.

The white terror has been brewed to justify the use of the ISA. Of all the legislations that need to be reviewed, none can match the ISA in repressing legitimate dissent and stripping away the basic rights of Malaysian citizens.

Arrest and detention without trail on mere suspicion alone makes Malaysia a police state in essence. It can be justified only in times of extreme emergency. As our leaders keep declaring to the outside world, especially the envoy from the European Union, Malaysia is not in an emergency. If so, then the use of the ISA is not justified at all. People who are suspected of causing trouble can be charged under our huge body of laws in an open court.

What the recent “illegal” rallies have threatened is not the stability of the country, but the legitimacy of our institutions, the government, the court, the Election Commission, and above all, the fairy tales narrated by the ruling parties.

In a virtual one-party state, Umno, the de facto dominant party would naturally identify itself with the Malaysian state. Any threat to Umno is considered a threat to the security of Malaysia. This may be natural wishful thinking for Umno, but it is not necessarily true. The state of Malaysia is much larger than the sum of its parts.

The paranoiac behaviour of our national leaders just goes to show how insecure they are about their grip on power. Have they lost their sense of reality, or lost touch with the Malaysian society at large? Is the huge force employed in recent days, and in the days ahead perhaps, a sign of the nameless fear that haunts every powerful politician?

Is that why they try to shoot a mosquito with a guided missile?