TO DO OR NOT TO DO

I am very concerned nowadays with the style of administration of the current Malaysian government on imposing policies and enforcing them.

A lot of new policies seemed to be imposed without in-depth studies and debate, either as a knee-jerk reaction to a situation or a method to show power. Lets take the decision to ban offensive blog sites about two or three weeks ago as the after effects of Raja Petra's court case as an example. The authority is in the right to impose such ruling in order to control the ever increasing blog sites in the net which posted seditious posts and damaging rumours because they can cause instability in the country. The owners of the blogs are bound by cyber-laws which even exists in the United States.

However, i feel the decision yesterday to reverse the decision left me wandering what is happening in the enforcement part of it. Did the government reverse the decision because it cannot withstand pressure from the media and various NGOs, or Raja Petra's threat that he going to make a circuis out of this, or the decision to block the blog was made at certain level and not discussed with the big Boss? If it is the former, then the current government lacks political strength to impose an already existed law and keep changing their minds under duress. If it is the later, then it is worrisome as it shows lack of control and coordination with various ministries which will not improve the BN's image after March 2008 election. The government should stop try to placate everybody and become a populist government.

The same goes for the Cabinet decision's yesterday not to impose Windfall Tax on IPPs and instead they only pay a one-off payment. This happened after much objections from the IPPs eversince the policy was announced. Again, it shows lack of strentgh under pressure.

The government of the day cannot be back-tracking everytime certain groups object to the policies or laws that do not favor their interests, as this will result in lack of respect and adherance to the government and the laws of the land. If our own citizens do not even respect the authority and the government, how do we expect other countries and their citizens to do so? The laws and policies should be well thought of, debated and studied of its effects on the people and its relevancy with the times before approved and gazetted. Maybe, before they are approved and gazetted, the draft should be published for the citizens to give their opinions. At the end, the majority rules.

I feel there are a lot of current laws which were gazetted long time ago need to be reviewed to keep them relevant with the current times. The onus is on the government to make it happen.