Dato’ Nadzim Johan, Executive Secretary, Malaysia Muslim Consumer Organisation
(pro ISA)
(against ISA)
The obvious choice of pro-ISA guest would have to be someone from the government. But my attempts were stone-walled by press secretaries (who take instructions from their bosses?). “Topic a bit too hot now”. Oh well. So we got someone from Perwaris into the studio. After all, they had been holding demonstrations asking for the ISA to be retained.
The ISA had always been on our list of topics for the show especially after the arrest of Teresa Kok, Tan Hoon Cheng (arrested for her own protection though, as the Home Minister himself explained later. A rather novel use for an old legislation, I must say.) Raja Petra Kamaruddin that night in September.
The obvious choice of pro-ISA guest would have to be someone from the government. But my attempts were stone-walled by press secretaries (who take instructions from their bosses?). “Topic a bit too hot now”. Oh well. So we got someone from Perwaris into the studio. After all, they had been holding demonstrations asking for the ISA to be retained.
There was a dearth of well-reasoned, informed arguments out there on why the ISA ought to be retained. I called up friends who are practicing lawyers, but who (unfortunately in this instance) also happen to be fervently against the ISA, to pick their brains. They are so accustomed to arguing against the ISA that I don’t really learn anything new. Short-cut attempt to research topic nipped in the bud.
24 hours to recording and my original anti-ISA guest cancelled on me. Federal court hearing would trump a tv show anytime. Panic attack! Thankfully, there are very many experienced lawyers out there who know the issues like the back of their hand. Haji Sulaiman Abdullah was kind enough to appear on such short notice (although he made me answer some difficult questions on why I wanted him on the show. A question that had me stumped. I thought, isn’t it obvious? So I explained my reasons and it was a done deal).
Guest situation resolved I sat down to go through my research but couldn’t do much with a horrible cold and a splitting headache. Reams of research were left unread as I popped a bill and headed off to bed at 8pm. Yikes. The next morning, as soon as recording was over, I knew I had been too easy on Haji Sulaiman. A few minutes after the episode aired, I got a couple of text messages telling me I should have been harder on him.
Hi Florence, I thought you were "too easy" on Tuan Haji Sulaiman because he was so convincing! He invoked that golden rule, made us walk in the shoes of detainees, when he said he would not like to live in a country whose government (that is supposed to serve the people, mind you) can arbitrarily pick him off from the street and stuff him in a hidden cell unknown to anyone who cares about him for 60 days without legal access and with no chance of ever being able to defend himself! And his prolonged detention over 2 years, renewable thereafter, is at the discretion of the minister (recent ISA releases however showed that this was pure bull and that the detentions were all politically motivated) with no prospect of judicial review. I just survived 20 minutes of being locked in in a nicer environment (it was my friend's gorgeous marble-walled powder room that unfortunately had a malfunctioned door), but it was enough to make me panic at the thought of what ISA detainees had to go through.
ReplyDeleteIf people think this is something that could never happen to them, that arrest or imprisonment is something that happen only to people who really deserve it, remember the most recent flagrant police abuses - the arrest of the five Legal Aid lawyers who were merely doing their job.