Sybreon Ones Nought

I attended a public lecture today, on the UUCA and The Constitution given by Dr Azmi Sharom, Assoc Professor at the Faculty of Law, Universiti Malaya. The gist of his lecture can be summarised as – there are constitutional grounds for having the UUCA but the question is whether those constitutional provisions are limitless or if there are limits to them in order to grant all citizens equal rights.

This question is currently being put to the test in the case of the UKM four who have brought their case to the High Court. The crux of the argument is that a university student has less rights than a dumb jock who does not qualify to get into university. The larger issue is to ensure that our universities churn out future leaders, innovators and thinkers instead of sheeple.

He did not really have much to talk about and there were not very many questions from the audience since the topic is a fairly dry one on constitutional law. However, Azmi Sharom is friggin’ hilarious! He kept the entire auditorium entertained and in stitches for slightly more than an hour. He really knows how to speak to the crowd and pull people in. I even contributed a little to the entire act. It was fun!

I wonder if Azmi conducts his actual classes like this. It would be fun to have a lecturer that can turn a boring topic into the funniest lecture that I have attended in ages.

According to an article in TheStar, “The Kelana Jaya Wanita Umno division has passed a resolution calling for the Penal Code on baby-dumping to be amended to include penalties for men who fathered the children.”

This is just dumb.

It is a lose-lose situation for the father. This law can only be upheld if the position of the father is legally recognised. However, in our legal system today, the father is defined as the man whom the woman is married to. That is why the JPN requests for a marriage certificate when registering a child’s birth for a birth certificate.

I think that we can safely assume that in most of these cases, the baby that is dumped is as a result of an unwed pregnancy. The man is probably not man enough to own up to the act or the woman does not want to marry the man – maybe it was a casual one night stand thing for the both of them.

However, it is a lose-lose situation. If the baby gets dumped, the man gets recognised as the father and gets penalised. If the baby gets nicely delivered, the man is not recognised as the father and loses all parental rights. I don’t even want to imagine the situation of an extra-marital affair where the father is not the father and so on.

It is about time that the law is changed to recognise the father as the biological one.

Our country seems to have recently been wrecked by the death of a student at a local college. The primary cause of death is supposedly the treatment that the student received as part of a ‘ragging’ exercise by the senior students. As a result of which, there was plenty of outrage with government and university officials coming out to officially ban ‘ragging’ exercises at universities ahead of the beginning of the academic year for a lot of students.

My opinion on the matter – bad move. Banning the exercise will never stop it. Ragging is often a rite of passage that everyone goes through at university. If done correctly, it can build valuable bonds between seniors and juniors. However, when taken to the extreme, it can definitely cause physical and psychological harm, possibly leading to death either directly or indirectly associated with the activity.

Banning the time tested activity is just going to drive it underground, making it far more difficult to regulate and control. What should have been done is to ban extreme ragging and release guidelines on the limits of the activity. For example, any form of direct physical contact should be banned and any senior who assaults any junior should be caught and charged to the full extent of the law for causing grievous bodily harm.

Students may think that they were put through hell during their freshers’ week – until it becomes their turn to organise things. I missed quite a lot of sleep during my orientation week, and got quite pretty grumpy because of it. We were also put through a lot of seemingly stupid and dumb activities. We also had to put up with inane requests from our seniors to get things done.

However, when I became a senior, I lost even more sleep when I was involved in organising fresher activities – we had to make sure that the freshers were back to their rooms and wake up early to prep the things organised for the next day. Also, we spent weeks in advance, sacrificing our semester breaks to get things ready for welcoming the freshers. Trying to torture freshers in the nicest way is not easy to do without advance planning.

Also, because I was involved in organising these activities, and making the juniors do all sorts of silly things that they did not want to, I became quite well liked. Until today, I still sometimes run into people randomly at work or while shopping and have them come up to ask me if I was Shawn, their senior at university. While I have to politely tell them that I cannot recall their names, I can still recognise their faces. We end up having an amiable chat after that.

Now, looking back at my university days, I dare to say that I look back at things nostalgically. My history with ragging goes way back to secondary school, where I can still remember doing a hundred push-ups when I pissed off some of my seniors. I can still remember the song Buli, Buli, Buli that we were all forced to sing along doing various disgusting things. The coolest thing that my seniors ever did was to enact a serious ghost story that was so good, that some people pissed their pants.

Ah, those were the days.

I have just read different takes on the events that transpired at the recent PKR retreat – where there was some shuffling of heads in Selangor and the Federal Territories. The article from TheStar claims that the PKR leadership feud has taken a turn for the worse with the Selangor Menteri Besar quitting as party state chief. However, the alternative news seems to have a different take on the matter, claiming that the Menteri Besar suggested that they separate party and state.

Alright. It’s both spin. Regardless of which, the important thing to note is that the MB will now only helm the state, while leaving party matters to Azmin Ali. The FT party matters will be given over to Zaid Ibrahim instead.

Personally, I think that separating party and state is a good thing to do. If the same person is in charge of everything, there will definitely be issues. Personal interest, party interest and state interests may not always be aligned but if one man is in charge, they will always be aligned – without any conflicts of interest since they all serve the same interest only.

To me, this should be a model adopted by all states – separating the political powers from state powers. In fact, I might even suggest that it might be something to consider for our future at the federal level. Our present model of parliament makes the UMNO president our de-facto Prime Minister. However, this need not necessarily be the case and we might want to consider direct elections in the future. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

So, while I think that the problem brewed for too long, I think that the steps taken were the correct ones. In fact, this was something that should have been done from the very beginning – separation of powers. Tan Sri Khalid should not have been in charge of party matters. Leave the running of the state to the technocrats and leave the running of the party to the politicians.

Followed the instructions here for an authentic vintage feel, using Gimp.

Our dearest PM has spelled out that the private sector needs to take a leading role in Malaysia during the 10MP period. His argument is that the people cannot rely on the government forever and that we need to grow up and take charge of our own futures. I argued a slightly different reason – that we cannot rely on our government, period.

So, one of the thought that occurred to me was solving this issue of education. Most people would agree that our education system is in shambles. I told some of my friends that all we needed was some rich tycoon to take things in his hand and start a bunch of free private schools, with good teachers, excellent infrastructure and a great syllabus.

Turns out that such a thing is definitely possible. I just read the ET article on the Sathya Barthi schools in India. Turns out that this Indian tycoon has done something very similar – set up a bunch of private schools to bring education to the poor children of India. And the schools are beginning to turn out results.

Unfortunately for us, while we do have many billionaire in Malaysia, they do not care enough about education to take up this challenge. Either that or they have not yet thought of doing such a thing. It does not need to be done by a single tycoon, a few of them can come together to do it. It’s not too difficult. It’s just basically a private school with a philanthropic twist.

I just read the latest entry on Marina’s blog and it was about gender equality – basically saying that: “The only thing that can level the playing field at work is a level playing field at home. And that requires a major shift in public policy and corporate culture.”

Yes, it will require legislative changes such as increasing paternity leave from the present 3 days to something more decent like 60 days (and increase the maternity leave to 90 days please). In this day and age, things like leave should not be an issue since it is possible to allow the father (and mother) to work from home for the first few months. All they need it just a laptop with a wireless internet connection. So, corporate cultures need to change starting with the boardroom.

Personally, I would go one step further and say that it would require a major shift in cultural practices and expectations as well.

Familial pressures are another thing that need to change. Wives cannot expect their husbands to provide, neither can parents expect their sons to. Men who want to be good fathers may need to sacrifice their careers and put their families first. In such a situation, it may be difficult for them to both be the bread-winner and bread-maker for the family.

However, things are not so rosy in much of Asia. In China, men are becoming increasingly frustrated as Chinese women demand a house and car as a prerequisite to marriage. This is resulting in a whole generation of frustrated men who are unable to afford such luxuries during their youth.

The trouble with our cultural norms in Malaysia means that in order for us to have gender equality, both sides must participate. Women must be willing to be bread-winners and bread-makers of the family if they expect their husbands to do the same. They must also be willing to consider a role reversal, where the husband becomes the bread-maker and the wife the bread-winner. I don’t see this happening much, even in situations where the wives earn several times more than the husbands.

So, it is not just policy and corporate culture that needs changing, our values and social culture needs to be changed as well. Unfortunately, I do not see this happening in Malaysia within my lifetime.

Sigh.