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PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
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The Prime Minister, condescendingly, is sorry. The Jitra district
hospital in Kedah is sorry. The two men responsible is
transferred.
Bolehland health facilities, of course, are as better as any.
The
initial reaction, as published, suggested even the 47-year-old
Malay
mother of four and wife of a labourer could possibly be lying.
It took
a RM100 million suit she filed before the government realised the
crisis
on its hands. That it is Mr Jagdeep Singh Deo, the son of the
redoubtable Mr Karpal Singh, who filed it, raised the ante. So,
a
Cabinet apology overcomes Prime Ministerial condescension. She
had, on
filing the suit, requested the press not to reveal her name for
fear of
neighbourly ostracism. The New Straits Times, in a stirring
commitment
to journalistic ethics and fair play, promptly splashes the
couple's
photograph on its front page today. The people, you understand,
have a
right to know who she is, and the NST would defend that until her
death.
She should have known better than to get a DAP lawyer to sue the
government.
UMNO, aware of this problem, did not react. The UMNO
convention
last week was more important than the trauma of a 47-year-old
mother.
UMNO, on the other hand, was upset the sudden flash floods in
Kuala
Lumpur affected Malay settlements, and promise hellfire and
brimstone.
Why did she not go to her UMNO branch in Jitra for help? The DAP
seeks
justice for her, the party issuing statements asking for
answers. UMNO?
The National Front? Nothing! But she is only a poor Malay
labourer's
wife. Who cares about her, anyway. If she was a Tan Sri's third
wife
or a Chechen or Bosnian refugee, well, all stops would have been
pulled
to resolve it. It is this official callousness -- expressed in
such
ways as opposition MPs ordered out of government plans for
community
enhancement as well -- that causes Bolehland to stumble. These
proforma
apologies comes off official tongues as ducks take to water. But
in a
contested environment like Kedah, this incident threatens to take
on a
political hue.
This this warns yet again all if not well in Bolehland.
Primary
health care is ignored, district hospitals the poor country
cousins of
the expensive modern hospitals built by cronies, siblings and
courtiers
not because the country needs them, but for the money that should
be
siphoned off in construction. Reducing health care to market
forces
puts most Bolehlanders out of the pale. The heart-rending
appeals for
public help for medical treatment overseas is a blot on its
health care
and medical services. Concentrating these facilities in the
capital --
the specialist hospitals the government builds and privatises are
all
within 40 miles of Kuala Lumpur, already overgrown with expensive
private medical care and hospitals -- does not help. Couple this
with
an official arrogant know-it-all demeanour leads to accidents
like
these. More than 200 people died in the past few years of a
disease --
call it what you will: Coxsackie, Nipah virus, JE (the Health
Minister
insists a parent should be overjoyed to know his two-year-old
toddler
died not of Coxsackie but the Nipah virus) -- but the appalling
uninterest and scoring political points reveal a government
devoid of
human sensitivity.
When courts are devalued to ensure a lwayer friendly to the
chief
justice can obtain huge defamation damages on spurious grounds
and
faulty law, and with money, however obtained, defining success, a
legal
suit as this 47-year-old mother filed upsets all calculations.
Her life
is destroyed, and she wants that assuaged with dollops of money.
In
this, she has a better case for than the likes of Tan Sri Vincent
Tan,
Tan Sri Ting Pek Khiing, Mr Mirzan Mahathir, Dato' Seri V.K.
Lingam and
others whose survival depends on their ties with those in power.
They
get the damages to threaten any who dares question them, the
courts
stacked against any who dares challenge them. The Federal Court
has yet
to deliver judgement 29 months after it heard the appeal, a
situation so
scandalous that a High Court judge could, under the rules, be
dismissed.
But the respondent's lawyer goes on holiday with the Chief
Justice to
New Zealand, and the Attorney-General to Italy with the
respondent and
lawyer and their wives to Italy. This 47-year-old mother of four
has no
such connexions. But she cannot now be ignored. The Cabinet
wakes up
to that reality. And it cannot get away with the one ringgit it
offered
a policeman detained under the Internal Security Act on what
later
turned out to be on spurious grounds.
M.G.G. Pillai
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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