COMMENT The recent Economist Intelligence Unit index ranks Malaysia 65th out of 167 countries, placing it among the 'flawed democracies', perhaps an euphemism for 'floored democracies.'

 

As far as I have known, Malaysia, a country liberated from the British colonial yoke - before then, Malaya - has never been democratic in the pedantic sense of the word.

 

In reality the only thing democratic about Malaysia is its written Constitution that has been mangled over the years by amendments, and it is a blessing that the government that had a free hand in re-writing it for many decades now no longer has that power by controlling more than two-thirds of the country's parliamentary seats.

 

When has Malaysia been a land of the free in the absolute and true meaning of a democracy?

 

By EIU definition, a 'flawed democracy' sees free and fair elections and basic freedoms. But where are the free and fair elections? Elections, yes, but free and fair?

 

When was the last time Malaysians saw an opposition advertisement or an opposition politician appear on the country's tax-funded media to state its case on any public interest topic? How are elections fair when the electoral boundaries are not?

 

Where is the basic right of its citizens to believe in what they want, to exercise freedom of conscience, to be who they are, to say what they think and so on, without the threat of prosecution and persecution like a Damocles sword hanging over their heads?

 

Democracy has been and still is a flawed and misleading word in a country like Malaysia because it is non-existent by the word's proper definition. Certainly not as it is known in the northern European countries and Australia and New Zealand, especially New Zealand where many of us went to university there and learned that it was a fundamental right for anyone to make political comments without fear of persecution.

 

In New Zealand, which is ranked among the top 5 countries in the EIU 2014 rankings, many of us experienced what a democracy is. We could mouth off on any subject (within the limits of the laws of defamation) and fear no political retribution from anyone save the usual rebuttals in the normal political process.

 

Poignantly, Kiwi politicians may not agree with criticisms but will defend your right to criticise them because they honour and cherish their democratic traditions. To compare Malaysia's democracy to that of New Zealand's is like comparing chalk and cheese.

 

There is no comparison and while our student days are long gone, I find it incredible that Malaysian students (especially state-sponsored) are still placed in straitjackets at home and abroad and local universities are controlled by draconian rules that destroy democracy.

 

In those heady student power days in the 1970s, we read of the government's harassment of intrepid student leader Hishamuddin Rais and today we still read of the government picking on him when in a true democracy this patriotic and outstanding Malaysian would be a national hero not unlike Jose Rizal, the Filipino nationalist the Spaniards murdered in an execution after a mock trial.

 

A place of hypocrisy and hype

 

Even after Merdeka, we grew up in a 'guided democracy' where many subjects were taboo and considered 'sensitive' and the legacy of the British administrators was to create a culture of siege which to a degree was justifiable because of the communist threat then.

 

But it gave subsequent governments inordinate power to control and mould the cultural mindset of the people who are still hamstrung by self-censorship, hypocrisy and timidity. It is utter hypocrisy to deride British colonialism but to retain the vestiges of imperialism in their draconian laws such as the sedition law, and worse, to exploit it incomparably more than the British administrators.

 

The 'guided democracy' has produced a nation of intellectual misfits that are either too timid to say what they think or think with such flawed logic as to defy human intelligence and make us wonder if all that brain drain in the past 40 decades since May 13, 1969, has not resulted in the lowering of our national intelligence quotient (IQ).

 

Any government that controls public debate and freedom of conscience and expression is flawed, not the democracy. And if a democracy is flawed, why call it a democracy? I can accept a benign dictator but a flawed democracy is a flawed use of the word. At best, you may call a nation with a written democratic constitution but that practises undemocratic governance a coined 'hypocracy' - a place of hypocrisy and hype.

 

Calling a flawed administration, a censorious and repressive state a flawed democracy, is too much of an euphemism and certainly a country like Malaysia with a dictatorial tendency belongs in that class of its own like a ‘liberal’ or ‘selective’ or ‘discretionary dictatorship’.

 

Take your pick. If it sounds awkward, even ridiculous, so does a flawed democracy. We don't describe China as a flawed democracy do we?

 

Words mean nothing unless they result in practical measures bringing change for the better.

Many words of wisdom of this political DNA can be found in Gene Sharp's brief book ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’ that teaches citizens how to foment peaceful political change and save their country from dictatorship.

 

It addresses the all-important need to dismantle all the structures and institutions that dictators rely on to cling to power. But until people feel hunger pangs more often and realise who their country's real common enemy is, change will not come.

 

Still, change will come as the sun rises anew because such is the turning of the wheel of human affairs and when Malaysia will see the rise of its own Jokowi may not be far-fetched as who had expected the outing of the G25?

 

A democracy is a free nation without discretionary controls exercised by the executive and devoid of laws that can be abused for self-vested political ends by the government of the day. A country is either democratic or not. There is no such thing as a part-time democracy.

 

A country that is not democratic in the absolute and true sense of the word is a dictatorship. A dictatorship enables its citizens to enjoy certain freedoms at the discretion of its administration. It uses the laws selectively and the police are at its beck and call to enforce its political will.

 

A flawed democracy? No such thing. If a democracy is not free of all it is not a democracy at all.

STEVE OH is the author of the novel Tiger King of the Golden Jungle and composer of the musical of the same title. He believes in good governance and morally upright leadership.