Tun Hanif Omar (+ articles)

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 02:40 PM

The fence that eats the rice

POINT OF VIEW
By TUN HANIF OMAR

The police force and the Anti-Corruption Agency

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 02:42 PM

Crime and corruption

Point of View
With TUN HANIF OMAR

Public protest and media publicity have had a beneficial effect on getting the police to acknowledge and act on the need to beef up their presence in crucial areas.

THIS past fortnight following my last column, I had more people than usual

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 02:47 PM

Facts don't lie

Point of View
With TUN HANIF OMAR

We must not allow ancient animosities and fears to prejudice our march towards common sense and a common nationhood.

DATUK Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, the Perlis Mufti, continues to be a refreshing exponent of an effort to return to an interpretation of Islam that is freer of certain 損rotective

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 02:50 PM

Don抰 turn a deaf ear to grouses

Point of View: By TUN HANIF OMAR.

DID you read the lament of 揗alaysian Arab

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 02:52 PM

Merdeka and Malaysia Day

We are celebrating our 50th Merdeka Day a mere 21 weeks away, but there are still doubts about when Malaysia actually gained independence from the British.

POINT OF VIEW: BY TUN HANIF OMAR

OUR 50th Merdeka Day is just 21 weeks away. On this blessed day in 1957, the Federation of Malaya became independent of Britain. Malayan soil was, for the first time since 1511, completely independent!

On this great day of Aug 31 in 1963, against the imploration of our first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman for patience, Sabah and Sarawak respectively and unilaterally declared their independence of Britain but in 揳dherence to Malaysia

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 02:55 PM

200 years on and it is getting tougher

Point of View
With TUN HANIF OMAR

The Polis DiRaja Malaysia's origin is tied to legality and the rule of law, making PDRM 200 years old today, several years older than the London Bobbies.

RAIN or shine, hopefully the latter, my plans are set this Sunday morning. There抯 nothing unavoidable on my plate to prevent me from joining the throng at the Dataran to see my old, beloved PDRM (Polis DiRaja Malaysia) put on a show, doubtless of pomp and ceremony, to celebrate its 200th anniversary; more importantly, to rededicate itself to serve the public selflessly under its new reforming leadership.

The 200th anniversary! That抯 quite something. I will surely have to fight off the tears of pride and nostalgia as I see the men in blue (khaki, during my time) marching to the lilting tune of Bersedia Berkhidmat (Ready To Serve).

Fond memories: I will surely have to fight off the tears of pride and nostalgia as I see the men in blue marching to the tune of Bersedia Berkhidmat.

That spectacle, married to that thematic PDRM tune to which my seven squad-mates and I used to march on the hot, macadamised Police Depot parade ground in 1959, has always tugged at my heart-strings.

As a young marcher then, I had felt like a strong and well-trained member of a disciplined force, full of idealism, totally dedicated to King and Country and ever ready to fight the communist terrorists who had caused the Malayan Emergency, triad fighters and criminals who abounded in those days.

Yet the stories from our cikgu kawad (drill instructor) of the thousands of casualties the police had by then suffered in the violent struggle against the CPM, which had won for PDRM its Royal Colours only the previous year on July 31,1958, had made me feel quite vulnerable.

Thus the feeling to me of marching to Bersedia Berkhidmat was always one of marching to glory and to possible death.

When I was parading, we were 11 years into the Malayan Emergency, a year and nine months into Merdeka, 14 months more to the end of the Emergency on Aug 31,1960 and four years and three months to the formation of Malaysia on Sept 16, 1963.

So, at that point in time the singular pride of PPDRM (Pasukan Polis DiRaja Malaya) was its premier role in fighting the Emergency, accounting for the most number of enemy casualties and sacrificing more of her youthful fighters on the field of combat than the combined Malayan, British and Commonwealth forces: 1,367 killed and 1,604 wounded.

Remember and glorify Bukit Kepong as the Americans remember and glorify The Alamo: the gallant stand of 18 policemen against 200 communist terrorists!

Every year on July 31, PDRM would mark the day with a precision drill by hundreds of men to over a thousand. We took pride in the turnout and the precise synchronous movements, martinet-like, of the armed men and women on parade. British generals had told us that we were a match for their best Guards regiments; that our drill-master, the late Yusof Panjang, was as good as their best sergeants-major, and we would not accept anything less.

However, I realised in 1975, a year after I became IGP in the midst of a resurgent communist insurgency both in the Malay Peninsula and in Sarawak, that Sabah had not played a role in the Malayan Emergency although members of the Sarawak Rangers had served bravely as leading scouts and trackers attached to British and Commonwealth forces.

I therefore asked Datuk Zakiah Laidin, Police PRO at the time, to come up with the date of formation of the earliest modern police force in Malaysia.

She soon came up with something better: the date to which a modern local police force was tied to the rule of law

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 03:01 PM

Panta Rei

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 03:07 PM

Appreciate the wealth of our diversity

Point of View
By TUN HANIF OMAR

SOMETIMES I wonder why Mondays to Fridays always seemed to last a year when I was in school but a year today is so fleeting. The year 2006 is now giving way to 2007 when the events of early January 2006 are still so clear in memory!

When I saw DYMM Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin ibni Almarhum Tuanku Syed Jamalullail bidding farewell to the nation as the Yang Dipertuan Agong on Dec 12, I could hardly believe that his five-year tenure was over. Why, it seems only yesterday that he came into office from Perlis, and his royal wife was confiding to my wife her fear that she was going to have a lonely existence in KL! How wrong she was: she was a most popular and caring Queen.

In the world of communications satellites, we talk of the compression technology that we have harnessed for our transponders. Could it be that for busy men, time is also compressed, making our life feel shorter than it actually is? But, whatever it is, it pays to take stock of this once in a while, reflect and see whether we have spent our life meaningfully so far before it is too late.

What抯 a meaningful existence? I guess it differs from people to people. For some, it is perhaps to make enough money to enjoy the luxuries, comfort and power it can bring. I see nothing wrong in this if the power is also the power to help the less fortunate and give them a chance in life. A poor man is hardly able to help in this respect. A true Muslim, in any case, is enjoined to eschew luxuries if his money could be more gainfully used in the eyes of God by charitable work. Sadly though, not all the rich are rich in heart.

My father had always drummed into me that what we have is God抯 gift to be used for God抯 purposes. Some of these purposes are obvious but others are difficult to discern.


SEEKING THRILLS: Why do we have the Mat Rempits, the road-ragers and the drug addicts in the numbers that we have? Their souls must be empty.

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 03:12 PM

Shocking tragedy in our midst

Point of View
By TUN HANIF OMAR

ALTANTUYA! By any measure a beautiful name conjuring a picture of the beautiful women around the great khans

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 03:14 PM

A worthy fight for our future

Point of View
By TUN HANIF OMAR

SOME people say that some people are completely obsessed. I am, to an extent, quite obsessed myself

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 03:43 PM

History, the way it should be taught

Point of View: By TUN HANIF OMAR

IT is often said that those who ignore history may keep on making the same mistakes. I am a believer in that and I see mistakes being repeated again and again by people and leaders of all hues. The bigger the leaders, the more consequential their decisions and the greater the pain we bear for their mistakes. That抯 why I feel consoled when I see proponents of history from time to time appearing in the media extolling the virtue of history as a compulsory school subject.

Many students in school hate their history classes: that抯 a fact but this is because their teachers are not able to convince them how relevant and important are aspects of the subject to their lives. They are also not able to teach them with an interesting approach.

But it抯 not always the teachers

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 03:55 PM

A dose of wisdom will go a long way

POINT OF VIEW
With TUN HANIF OMAR

COME Aug 31 next year, we will all be joining in the celebration of our beloved country抯 50th Merdeka anniversary. Half a century of independence funded massive programmes to eradicate illiteracy (remember the adult education classes that sprang up everywhere?), poverty (think Felda, the largest land development and resettlement scheme of its kind in the world!) and infant mortality (all the rural and small town health clinics and hospitals, which the rural areas never saw in 150 years of colonialism).

Think of the thousands and thousands of schools taking almost all our children through secondary education when most of their forbears were only given six years of primary education. Look at the number of universities, public and private, that we now have when we had none on Merdeka Day in 1957.

Think largely of Tun Abdul Razak when you think of all these. He was the nation抯 CEO from Merdeka Day until his death on Jan 14, 1976.

Sungai Besi was the airport the British left us with in Kuala Lumpur in 1957. We probably had no more than two international flights a week taking off from it.

Then Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tun Sambantham built the original Subang airport to a chorus of protests that it was too large and a waste of public funds. Before too long we had to add two or three times to the original structure to cope with the increasing traffic until Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad decided to build the KLIA.

The newest prominent buildings in Kuala Lumpur then were Federal House, the original Federal Hotel and the old Umno House along Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, which was built by public donation at the rate of one ringgit per brick. How we thrilled to say as we passed by that but for our own three or five bricks, Umno House, which we felt like our very own, would not have been completed.

But look at the Twin Towers and the iconic Telekom building, and the myriad of other skyscrapers today.

I can go on and on ad infinitum but suffice for us to marvel at the network of our highways and recall what driving outstation was like before the North-South and East-West highways.

It was only in mid-1969 that I accompanied Tun Abdul Razak to visit the site of the future Pasir Gudang port. Then he went on to build the Kuantan and Bintulu ports. Look at how Port Swettenham, the old name of Port Klang, has become: world-class North Port and South Port. Look at Pelabuhan Tanjong Pelepas.

It is only when we stop awhile to take in these changes that we can realise what we have really been through these past 49 years. Small Malaya has become the larger Malaysia and we are so much richer in numbers (more than five times more), diversity and resources.

We haven抰 had a really serious hiccup since that 1969 event of 37 years ago.

We have profited from that nasty experience and should take it along with us as a 搉ever again

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 04:20 PM

The reasonable Muslims

Point of View
With TUN HANIF OMAR

THE news that affected me most this past fortnight were the protests in the Muslim world that followed the speech made by Pope Benedict XV1 on Sept 12 at Regensburg University, Germany.

I saw excerpts of the speech and couldn't comprehend their full import. I was afraid of Muslim over-reaction to something largely innocuous.

We Muslims have been seen to be volatile and explosive in an unproductive way so much so that during some of those protests over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslim demonstrators were killed by Muslim law-enforcers in Muslim countries.

So, I had to see the full text of the Pope's speech and prayed that, whatever, my Muslim brothers would not react negatively, particularly in Malaysia.

What was the Pope's speech about? Generally it was about the convergence of the Christian faith with Hellenistic reasoning, of God being tied to Reason, that He would not act unreasonably and 搉ot to act reasonably is contrary to the nature of God.

Syd · Post time 21-8-2007 04:23 PM

The appropriate use of power

Point of View
With TUN HANIF OMAR

THERE are so many interesting issues at hand that impact us to some degree. Some I cannot deal with because of my own paucity of knowledge or because there are simply too many of them; others because common sense advises me not to indulge them for the time being, or because of a gag order.

However, the only gag order I recognise is a legally enforceable order, otherwise it has to be dictated by common sense.

A number of friends and acquaintances have solicited my views on the recent Ayer Molek case judicial ruling and on that of Lina Joy. Here is where I am prevented by an enforceable gag order from commenting.

That order has not specifically emanated from any authority figure but stems from the common law rule that it is sub judice to comment in respect of matters that are before the court. And both these cases are before the court by way of appeals. The rule is meant to protect the court from being influenced other than by the law and the arguments presented to it in court. Any breach of this rule will be in contempt of the court.

Both these cases are very interesting and weighty and many can hardly wait for the impending judicial decisions. However, it is the Lina Joy case that is awaited with trepidation. I strongly advise that, however it may come out, we should receive it in an intellectual way, not emotionally, because the court can only rule in accordance with the law extant. That will be the mark of civilised behaviour so much needed in our world today.

Another interesting issue is the 1988 Inquiry into the former Lord President Salleh Abas and the subsidiary inquiry into the five Supreme Court judges. They are said to have been at the heart of or precursor to the questions of Malaysian judicial credibility.

Here I can only say at this stage that back then I saw the possibility of some problem looming between the Executive and the Judiciary, to say it broadly. I took it upon myself to visit Tun Salleh Abas for a chat, then Tun Mahathir to whom I passed on what Tun Salleh had said to me, and then back to Tun Salleh to convey exactly what Tun Mahathir had said in response to Tun Salleh抯 view as conveyed to him by me.

I was so distressed at what subsequently happened to Tun Salleh that I attended a talk by a former Chief Justice of the Philippines at the University of Malaya soon after Tun Salleh抯 dismissal. I knew that Tun Salleh was going to be there and I wanted to register my sympathy with him. In the event, we hugged each other and the photograph appeared in a newspaper the next day.

And this I must tell you: that day when the newspaper carried that photograph, I called on Tun Mahathir who, as concurrent Minister of Home Affairs, was the minister to whom I was responsible. He did not say a word about the photograph or showed any disappointment that I had shown sympathy for the dismissed Lord President.

Today there are calls for the re-opening of the episodes so that 搄ustice could be done