The sins of the father and all that crap

"If indeed, the government is in anyway implicated in the physical and mental distress of Raja Azman, simply for the sake of getting back at RPK, then it deserves nothing less then the curse of the whole nation upon it."

RPK and his son
by Suflan Shamsuddin | The Malaysian Insider

FEB 11 — Yesterday, Malaysia Today published an article stating that RPK’s lawyers met his son, Raja Azman (left) at Sungai Buloh Hospital. They confirmed that his son, who is currently in remand, had slashed his wrist and swallowed a razor blade. Raja Azman broke down and cried saying that he could no longer stand the physical and mental torture that he was subjected to in jail, and that he wanted ‘out’. And the only way out to him is to end his life.

RPK’s fugitive status arose out of him not making himself available to attend trials relating to charges for criminal defamation and sedition, and the prosecution’s appeal against his ISA release. Having languished in detention twice under wildly draconian and discretionary laws, in both cases subjected to police custody in solitary confinement in locations unknown and in cells no larger than the size of my toilet, never seeing the light of day for days on end, and never knowing where he is, would you not share his sense of impending rough justice, and be tempted to do the same thing, were you to have been in his shoes?

His real major ‘crime’ was to suggest in a Statutory Declaration published in the Internet that there were others involved in the murder of Altantuuya. But in his writings, RPK claims that it was not him that leaked this SD. In fact, his lawyers had handed over the SD to the prosecution team in person and in strict confidence with the hope of convincing them to expand their investigations. However the SD had been leaked by a blogger who disliked RPK, as a result of which RPK was charged for criminal defamation.

Had the leak not happened, RPK would have had considerably less ‘heat’ on his back. He might have found the situation sufficiently manageable and taken his chances in court on the remaining legal matters. He might have remained in KL a free man, having roti canai and teh tarik with his friends, probably bitching about the government, but with his life and that of his family intact.

Instead he has imposed self-exile upon himself and most of his family, and taken himself out of the public sphere in order to continue his cause to speak out against matters for which he continues to feel strongly. And the rhetoric from those who want him brought down has grown stronger and bolder.

RPK by Art Harun

No matter how you look at it, RPK’s actions are not that of a heinous and evil nature that befits the tag of being a vicious criminal. After all, at the end of the day, no matter whether one agrees with him, or condones the expressive language he uses, or questions his motives, countless of millions of Malaysians all share a common desire with him. And that is to see meaningful change to greater transparency, accountability, and tolerance in the country.

We all want integrity in government and the recognition that the government is there to serve the Rakyat and not the other way round. And so no matter what discretion and authority the government might avail to make him out to be a criminal, there are millions of Malaysians who will not care. Instead, they would have lit a virtual candle in a quiet part of their soul for him, as a tribute to this man who they believe has put everything on the line, for the sake of doing that which they cannot do, in order that they benefit from a better Malaysia.

For certain, the price he has paid for the choices he has taken far exceeds what most people would be willing to pay. And the frightening cloak and dagger, cat and mouse game he plays with the authorities is presumably part of that bargain. And somehow, this game between RPK and the authorities, as to which fox outwits the other, is played with some basic ‘law of the jungle’-sense of fairness. And so the dispassionate onlooker might see ultimate victory and defeat as fair game to either side.

But when a son becomes a pawn or collateral damage in this game, then the dynamics shift. The lack of gamesmanship that this suggests to any onlooker is deplorable and sickening.

If indeed, the government is in anyway implicated in the physical and mental distress of Raja Azman, simply for the sake of getting back at RPK, then it deserves nothing less then the curse of the whole nation upon it. Were this to be the case, the people will damn this government in everyway it can, and those involved, for such a cowardly and shameful act. I am reasonably sure that every moment RPK and his family is tormented by the uncertainty of his son’s fate, millions of Malaysians around the world will be similarly tormented alongside them in sympathy for the pain that only a father, a mother or a member of the family can feel under such circumstances.

I implore the world media to pick up this story and help uncover what has really happened to Raja Azman, and truly find out how is he being treated.

I beseech the government to clarify his condition and the circumstances under which he has been looked after. Prove to the people that the government is beyond reproach in this matter.

Let this not end in a tragedy for a family and a tragedy for the nation.

Suflan Shamsuddin qualified as a barrister at law from Middle Temple and has been called to the Malaysian Bar. He is currently working in a Fortune 500 company as a senior counsel and is based in London. He is also author of the book “RESET: Rethinking the Malaysian Political Paradigm.”

Martin Jalleh on the judiciary's failure...

Justice is done in by the Federal Court!

L-R: Alauddin Mohd Sheriff (President, Court of Appeal); Arifin Zakaria (Chief Judge of Malaya); Zulkefli Ahmad Makinuddin; Mohd Ghazali Mohd Yusoff; Abdull Hamid Embong (pic courtesy of Malaysiakini)

By Martin Jalleh

Once again justice is shamelessly sacrificed on the altar of political expediency by judicial shenanigans of the highest court in Bolehland. It is a sad day indeed to see how five “blind” men of supposed legal stature strove so hard not to see and sense what was staring at them in the Federal and Perak constitutions.

The judiciary – the very portal of justice continues to be reduced to a convenient playground for the ruling elite to legitimize their power grab, persecute their opponents and promote their political agenda, through the perversion of the rule of law by certain court jesters.

The Federal and Perak Constitutions are dead, done in by those who decided to disregard, desecrate and discard constitutional provisions to treat the doctrine of separation of powers with deference. They are rigorously and rightly interpreted only when it best suits Umno.

In stark comparison to the courageous, cogent and convincing judgment of High Court judge Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahim, the cowed five-member bench caved in and conveniently decided to take the cue from the powers that be.

It comes as no surprise that their “collective written judgement is apparently riddled with contradictions.” The five judges surely qualify for retired Justice N.H. Chan’s classic category of “recalcitrant” and “Humpty Dumpty” judges in the Perak conundrum.

Today the reputation of the judiciary or whatever was left of it, has been sullied irreparably. In the eyes of the public the judiciary has sunk so low as to allow itself to be intimidated, its independence and impartiality interfered with, and its integrity reduced to ignominy.

The judiciary has made a decision ignoring the overwhelming implications. As toppled Perak MB Nizar Jamaluddin said: “If this decision goes on and becomes the law of the day, it will lead to an absolute monarchy (which) means the ruler can now dismiss the prime minister or the mentri besar at any time.”

Chair of the Rulers Council, Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak (far right); together with the Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah Al-Haj (Selangor); and Tengku Mahkota Pahang Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah at the Council's 220th meeting on 10 Feb 2010 (Bernama pic).

The winds of change promised by the PM have turned into a stench of contemptuous compromise emanating from the corridors of the Palace of Justice. The rhetoric of the Chief Justice on a judicial renaissance and the Attorney-General on a “war against injustice” stink to high heaven.

In the halls of the Palace of Justice hangs a heavy suffocating air of hypocrisy whilst supposed men of honour with hollow character hang on to their high and lofty positions and holler, hype and harp on upholding and interpreting the constitution to the hilt as they hand out whimsical and warped judgments!

The Federal Court decision was merely the next logical step after the historic haste with which the judiciary helped Zambry back to the helm. Less than a day after the KL High Court had ruled in Nizar’s favour, and three hours after Zambry had filed for a stay of execution, a one-man Court of Appeal readily heard the latter and granted him a stay two hours later! Zambry won his appeal 11 days later!

The Federal Court ruling is the climax of the shocking and scandalous manner the judiciary has handled the Perak crisis. It has left behind a dead constitution, “bad” and “perverse” decisions, dubious declaratory orders, judgments devoid of reasoned grounds, and disgraceful double standards.

The judiciary was bursting with bias which even the blind could see!

The added fact that the “Perak cases” were made the exclusive domain of a few judges in the High Courts and especially the Appellate Courts strongly suggests a hidden hand of one who obediently followed the instructions of the same Umno elite who hijacked the Perak state government by high-handed, hideous and heinous means.

What is next fellow Perakians? Yes it was a very unfair judgment but then again life is unfair! Shall we move on and win the war in spite of having lost the battle today? Let us leave the judiciary and the those who make a mockery of our justice system to swim and drown in their own judicial vomit.

Surely the past one year has drawn the rakyat of Perak closer together and made us more daring and determined to dream and drive ourselves towards a government we really want in Perak. Personally, I have never been to so many PAS ceremahs before in my whole life!

Indeed the Perak Constitutional crisis has forged and fostered formidable comradeship amongst the leaders and members of the parties of Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in Perak. Who can forget the kind of support the PR Aduns gave to one another as they tried to enter the State Assembly or the historic raintree State Assembly? The crisis also revealed the real friends and foes of PR.

The struggle made us Perakians realize that there were heroes amongst us – an MB with an indomitable spirit, a Speaker whose courage became an inspiration to many, a retired judge intensely committed to the law, intrepid principled politicians in the coalition and unknown individuals willing to risk involvement – surely in continued synergy we will be able to serve up a surging and unstoppable wave of change… in the next General Elections!

Martin Jalleh
9 February 2010

Return from Bamboo River (Final Part)

Friends have been coming to me with pieces of a vast, multidimensional jigsaw that's still in the process of being assembled.

Where was I during the five days I spent comatose in the Intensive Care Unit of Sungai Buloh Hospital? (I can't call it the ICU after seeing Avatar without fantasizing about the beautiful blue-skinned Neyteri...)


My beloved friend Selina - whose eyes can penetrate the many veils of reality - said she meditated with the Blue Buddha mantra as soundtrack and found herself looking at my lifeless body all hooked up to life support equipment. There was nobody in. So she searched the astral planes for me... and eventually found me sitting on a rock, looking very relaxed in a sarong, with a cup of tea.

We had a long conversation and I conveyed to her that I was utterly fed up with the entropic, apparently deteriorating conditions in the 3D Matrix. She used the full force of her feminine charms and persuasive powers to convince me that it was worthwhile returning to my physical body. "You don't want to miss the grand celebration when all of us break through to the next level!" she said (or something to the effect) and offered me her hand. My expression softened at that point, she said, and I reached out to touch her.

Well, I was pleased to hear Selina's report - though I can't confirm if this astral encounter really did occur. Around the time she had this vivid vision, thousands of other people - immediate family, close friends and total strangers from around the world - were praying for me or sending positive vibes. For sure, my soul must have felt the massive force of all this love and was humbled by it. Perhaps falling ill was my soul's way of sulking, but such an outpouring of concern would certainly have convinced me that life on earth wasn't all that terrible and that I really ought to renew my earthly visa and return to physical embodiment.


A couple of friends - a practising shaman and spiritual master from Germany named Rainer and his angel-voiced wife Karin - visited Magick River with six other pilgrims in tow and stayed 13 days, about a week after I was discharged from the hospital. Rainer and Karin came with many messages for me: essentially, they wanted me to be aware that I was embarked on a whole new phase of my earthly mission with dramatically enhanced powers - and that it would require some time for me to fully integrate the new software.

I was grateful for Rainer and Karin's inspired insights and their magnanimous friendship. Seems ironic to me that the people closest to me physically are the most reluctant to acknowledge me for what I am - and that it takes a group of relative strangers coming from halfway round the planet to recognize and appreciate my gifts. In any case, I felt richly rewarded by Rainer, Karin and their friends' wonderful company.

I was required to report back to the hospital on 14 January to get a clean bill of health from the doctor in charge of my case - but when I showed up he was nowhere to be found. The nurses said he was busy on his rounds, so I distributed the thank-you cards and fancy chocolates I had brought (courtesy of my daughter Belle) and checked in with Dr Zulkifli, head of the psychiatric unit, who had said he wanted to see me.

Dr Zul wasn't in a chatty mood. He sat me down in his office and told me I had MDP. "What's that?" I asked. "Manic depressive personality," he said laconically. I wasn't in the mood to argue with Dr Zul who struck me as essentially a decent guy, even if he appeared completely caught up in his role as drug-dispensing psychiatrist and arbiter of sanity. I detected a trace of the Inquisitor in his ego-field and knew at once he wasn't keen to hear my opinion of psychiatry.

Dr Zul's prescription was 2 mg Risperidone to be taken twice daily. I knew from Dr Zul's expression that he was utterly convinced it was his moral and professional duty to slow down my brain functions and return me safely to the 3D Matrix where I could take my place amongst billions of other well-adjusted tax-paying robots.

Now, the question is: I was admitted to the hospital for malaria. So how did the shrinks insert themselves into the story?

As I have already narrated in earlier segments of this report, I emerged from my 5-day coma completely renewed, with gleaming neural circuitry and upgraded software. My brain functions were crystalline and I was able to navigate several dimensions simultaneously (imagine being promoted from driving a 4-wheeled internal combustion earthbound vehicle to piloting a flying saucer).

Naturally I was ecstatic and ebullient. Dr Zul's assistant, Dr Siti, had come around to interview me after the nurses reported on my being awake most nights. She subsequently told my daughter: "Your father is too happy." Belle found that amusing. "Isn't it a good thing that he's happy?" Dr Siti's enigmatic reply was: "Yes, but not too happy."

So, because I was too happy, I needed to be tranquilized, sedated and occasionally strapped to my bed whenever I did anything to upset the normal routine (for example, on two occasions, I tested the staff's response time by pulling on the emergency cord in the shower. Both times they took nearly five minutes to arrive on the scene and were chided by me. They must have taken offence when I suggested that the only acceptable response time was one minute. That would make the difference between life and death for whoever needed help.)

I must confess that I've always considered myself a top-level Quality Control Inspector whose job is to ensure that all systems are running perfectly. Hence the terrible frustration I have felt most of my life on this planet where dimwitted mediocrity still rules in so many areas - especially the country I chose as my operating base.

Why was I so over-the-top happy?


Simply because I had glimpsed the inevitable outcome of all evolutionary threads - and it was an extremely happy one. Our destiny is to be fully conscious in the body and free of all robotic indoctrination. We are not fated to remain semi-conscious, semi-intelligent slaves to any system. Indeed, we are baby gods who will someday take over the management of the entire universe - when we have become totally compassionate and infinitely patient.

Of course, the fast-crumbling and benighted power structure would like us humans to remain sheep-like and half-asleep forever. After all, it depends entirely on us for "manpower." The so-called ruling elite have for countless generations fattened themselves off the blood, sweat and tears of so many species. To them we are merely farm animals, their property. That's what feudalism is all about: a gross misunderstanding of the nature and ultimate purpose of existence.


However, there is absolutely no call to hate or resent the ruling elite - because they are only maintaining a misguided tradition inherited from their distant ancestors, the not-so-noble Creator Gods who established the early civilizations on this planet. And these were indeed great civilizations with astonishingly advanced architecture and a complex bureaucracy. Without their tutelage, we would be without written language, mathematics and technology. Not such a bad thing, actually, since the introduction of alphanumeric symbols eventually led to a left-brain-dominant culture at the expense of our animal instincts and intuition.

Those who believe they wield ultimate power on earth are, in truth, terrified of their own shadows - which explains why they allocate almost two-thirds of their time and resources to defence systems and live in a perpetual Green Zone behind barricades and barbed wire. They are trapped in their own compulsive, paranoid need for secrecy, gathering data through covert agencies and 24/7 electronic surveillance of the population at large. Take away their protective armor and sophisticated killing machines - and what you get is an increasingly desperate and bewildered bunch of overaged delinquents, totally panicked by the prospect of losing control over what is essentially uncontrollable. It is beginning to dawn on some of the brighter ones that money, power and prestige will not get them through the frequency gates. The qualities that will - compassion, empathy, integrity, and the capacity for love - cannot be acquired through reptilian cunning and public relations.

But there's no way back - only the way forward.

From simplicity we became enmeshed in complexity; and now it's time for us to evolve to another level of simplicity - the Zen state of Buddhic consciousness so lucidly described by modern mystics like Eckhart Tolle.

pic courtesy of dpchallenge

In my beatific state of fully expanded awareness, I could see all humanity finally released from drudgery and meaningless toil; from cruelty, injustice and oppression. Freed from mechanical routine, we would swiftly blossom into cosmically conscious beings and take our place in ever larger constellations of sentient beings as galactic citizens.

It would be the end of disease, debt, decay and death. Physical immortality (or at least indefinite life extension) would become an option. We would regain our childlike curiosity and sense of wonder and many of us would choose to become adventurers and explorers (but not colonizers, that's a big no-no), beyond the confines of our native planet. Yes, the promise and prophecy of Star Trek would be fulfilled!


From my expanded perspective, the political shenanigans taking up so much bandwidth were nothing more than a ruckus in the schoolyard. Even the most villainous players became mere manga characters in an X-rated cartoon universe.

PlayStation wasn't invented when I was a kid - but I now found myself in a 4D virtual reality game in which I could gleefully immerse myself with absolutely no fear of getting hurt. Within the confines of the 4D Matrix, all objects and characters appear 3D. Humans are programmed to behave in specific ways and whatever they say is scripted. And because the fictitious deity they invented happens to be a punitive and vengeful one, they have become compulsive liars in order to avoid - or at least postpone - punishment.


If you're a truth-speaking entity in virtual world populated by congenital liars, you'll definitely be viewed as a serious MDP case. MDP is what Dr Zulkifli chose to call my "condition." Other shrinks might have labeled it dementia praecox, schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder.

Truth is, my clinical death and resurrection experience had cleared my cache and made room for a massive file some might call the God Program. I wouldn't call it that for the simple reason that every time anyone installs that particular software and attempts to run it in public, they either get crucified for blasphemy or incarcerated in a madhouse.

Binder dundat.