Death, afterlife and taxes

Malaysia is obsessed with big things. We want the largest, tallest, highest and lowest.

From some things, that everyone vies for like the status of the tallest building or the longest bridge, to some things no one else really does, like the largest murtabak or the biggest koleh of teh tarik, to something downright bizzare like the largest Malaysian flag made with bottle caps.

I mean, I’ve not seen many other people want to make anything with bottle caps, except maybe redeem a gift, let alone want to make a Malaysian flag out of it. And we want them fast.

We are obsessed with impressing- impressing the world, impressing our neighbours, our voters, sometimes ending up looking like the joke of the world in the process. We want to implement things like a new world currency to rival the US$ and the €. After the Multimedia Super Corridor, we now have corridors in every coast. We want to run before we can walk.

Why are we in such a hurry?

An example of how we like to dream big in a hurry is none other than the national topic of the week – the implementation of hudud in Kelantan. Much like the way anything is implemented in Malaysia, not much planning appear to have been put into it, guidelines have not really been set, and much less information has actually trickled down to the people with regards to it.

Also much like the way anything is implemented in Malaysia, public consultation doesn’t appear to have been done prior to the sudden approval of the law.

Changing the legal system isn’t like changing a government slogan or building a balai raya. The ink has barely dried on the just-passed Kelantan hudud enactment. Its implementation is still a big question mark –Terengganu had passed a similar bill before, but the police refuse to enforce it. As it has yet to be implemented, its efficacy and effectiveness in combating crime is largely untested.

Apart from the assurances of the leadership of the Kelantan government and some central figures from PAS, we really don’t know if it will work. The choice of the DUN to use Nigeria as an example of how the system has been implemented successfully doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Yet the PAS president is expected to table his private member's bill to push for nationwide hudud soon.

Why are we in such a rush?

There are many stakeholders to this rather radical change in the law. Law, both public and private law, by its very nature was designed to govern relationships.

Relationships between the state and its citizens, between citizens and other citizens, between business entities.These interactions are often complex and intertwined, especially in a multicultural country like Malaysia. If hudud is for Muslims only, and by inference of this, the civil system is for non-Muslims, how can a Muslim-non-Muslim dispute be settled?

A basic building block of law is equality before it. As it is, the dual civil-Shariah system provides for two sets of family and inheritance and limited criminal disparities.

To overhaul the Criminal Procedure Code and the Penal Code, and to say that it’s possible that two people that committed the same crime will be subjected to two different standards of burdens of proof, two different procedures, two different laws of deducing evidence and two different sentences would of course be difficult for most common law legal practitioners to accept. 

After all, there has been a lot of talk about hudud in the past, mostly by politicians.

The general consensus up until recently has been, “we aren’t ready”. Yet the enactment has been readily passed and the writing is on the wall. Well, in Kelantan at least. And many attempts of criticising this have been met with rather hostile responses and threats, of either arrest by the police or personal violence by some online commentators.

Both of which are increasingly and alarmingly common, and neither of which we should be condoning. A BFM reporter who made a satirical video on the topic was threatened with rape and murder. The IGP issued a statement to the effect of non-experts aren’t supposed to comment on the issue.

When did we get this belligerent?

But really, to put things in perspective, I believe that while hudud is important and should be discussed, the hudud issue should not really be the forefront of the national debate right now. While some may be affected by hudud and some may not, it will take awhile before anything concrete crystalises into trite and practiced law.

But another law takes effect in exactly one week’s time, and it’s rather scary that we aren’t really talking about it. The GST law will affect all Malaysians, regardless of their religious persuasions and whether or not they believe hudud is a divine demand.

Yet somehow we have talked about everything else apart from GST.

Citizens are raging over satire videos they may or may not have seen, over steering lock wielding bridal shop assistants, over cane carrying teachers, over dogs and cats, and over people who park in disabled car park spots, all of which are, in a way, valid and justified episodic angsts.

And while things like hudud while eventually affect us, having to pay extra for nearly everything you buy would affect you soon.

When did we mix up our priorities?

Interestingly, taxes were the reason the Parliament was first formed in England. In 1236, the nobility, and later, the citizens wanted a say in how they were being taxed and how their taxes were being spent. That was the reason Parliament was born, to give back some of the power to the people.

And now, nearly 800 years later, we still don’t seem to have gotten back that power. Or maybe we don’t realise we have it? – March 24, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.