[ GhL ] : Big Brother (Orwell’s, not the trash reality show) is already a reality.

About the private sector firms, I am not too sure about relying on them – it may be just me, but there is a lot of news about corporatocracy, profiteering and behaviour control these days. Perhaps an independent NGO (answerable to the people and to a lesser extent the government) may be better in the anti-corruption task, with members from foreign and local Universities, firms and the public rotated frequently.

The same goes for media censorship, perhaps just kick the government out of everything and form a media authority (again answerable to te people) to censor movies, advertisements etc.

I guess it goes back to civic consciousness as no amount of checks and balances can compare to the peoples’ ability to reflect on whether what we’re doing is right.

Whatever you do put in that constitution, please add a section where concerned people can form their own groups to monitor and report on government actions. Refreshing the system may be more important than getting it right the first time.

[ GhL ] : Chansey, see my reply to Satya’s post, just before yours. Most of the responses to your points are there.

P.S. women’s equality (or the lack of it) is too often taken for granted, especially in largely patriarchal societies.

What do you mean when you say “media authority”? Wouldn’t it inevitably have governmental involvement? FCC for eg.

I REALLY like the idea of a Wiki constitution. But I think the most important question to decide is who the moderators should be. Otherwise the Wiki Constitution is a farce. Ultimately, deciding on this is going to be very arbitrary… the same way that essentially a bunch of wealthy land owners wrote the US constitution. Of course in Malaysia’s case it was slightly difference since the Alliance had this enormous mandate, but the rest of the Reid Commission were also quite arbitrarily decided.

A possible way to decide on the moderators could be elections. That’s how the Alliance was chosen, right? Though admittedly, things were a lot simpler then. It’ll be proportional representation on the Commission of moderators. This idea does have it’s flaws, I’ll admit (then again, don’t they all?). The moderators have to be really trusted by the people, otherwise we’ll end up with a Thai situation (they’re on their 17th Constitution now, right?).

[ GhL ] : The suggestions on this page are not just limited to proposed constitutional amendments; any ideas on how to improve governance are welcome.

I suggest a change to the above line:

“We are Malaysian citizens: We are free; we are equal; we are brothers.”

I believe the reasons for the change should be clear enough.

Also, I suggest an independent body with the authority to investigate government projects. The results must be publicly disclosed in newspapers and the internet, and recorded in the national archives (not hidden under the O.S.A.), and its members must be chosen by non-government individuals from a selection of accountants and lawyers, possibly with one member from each state.

In addition, perhaps we should also restrict government control of the media, and unban all formerly banned political literature.

[ GhL ] : Chansey, that was the first version of the tagline, then I amended it to keep it gender-neutral, and ’siblings’ somehow didn’t quite capture the spirit.

The Word and Revolution

On the eve and in the early stages of all the major modern revolutions – the American, French and the Russian – the word was used to spread the cause. In Ten Days That Shook the World, his outstanding on-the-scene reportage of the Russian Revolution, the American journalist John Reed vividly describes this:

All Russia was learning to read, and reading – politics, economics, history – because the people wanted to know … In every city, in most towns, along the front, each political faction had its newspaper – sometimes several. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets were distributed by thousands of organizations, and poured into the armies, the villages, the factories, the streets. The thirst for education, so long thwarted, burst with the Revolution into a frenzy of expression. From Smolny Institute alone, the first six months, went out every day, tons, carloads, train-loads of literature, saturating the land. Russia absorbed reading matter like hot sand drinks water, insatiable. And it was not fables, falsified history, diluted religion, and the cheap fiction that corrupts – but social and economic theories, philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, Gorky ….

This quotation brilliantly describes a vast upsurge of energy among a people newly armed with the word. Something similar occurred in the early stages of the French Revolution. Unfortunately, however, in both instances, the violent train of later events mercilessly suppressed that energy. Tyranny and terror ousted and replaced freedom of speech. Silence was enforced on the people, and the spirit was defeated.

In America, on the other hand, as the classic analysis by the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville makes clear, the town meetings characterized the early New England were a seedbed for the cultivation of grass-roots democracy. The energy of the township at the time of the American Revolution was directed both toward the present, in the form of striving for independence, and toward the future, in the form of the search for an independent political order. Energy for the sake of liberation was at the same time constructive. During the struggle to break free from England, all thirteen of the original colonies were writing their own constitutions. The state of Virginia was at the same time drawing up the Virginia Bill of Rights, which remains a model of its kind.

I just needed to express myself. I am not calling for a violent revolution but a soft revolution, ie through the polls. Just do it guys!

[ GhL ] : Thank you for sharing your very lucid comment, Suekee, we usually get valid but unprintable stuff
Seriously, though… My reply to your comment has grown into a full-size post, which will be up shortly.

Would be glad to meet you at the Bangsa Malaysia Merdeka get-together next weekend. Full details at “The People’s Parliament”

[ new . GhL ] : whoops, accidentally deleted your email address during a routine commenters’ privacy protection exercise; would you mind dropping me an email at ghostline2501@gmail.com ? cheers

But as more and more of these conversation are brought online, the online style of quoting started taking root (you have to “link” to the page that says what it says), so people started making money out of it by copy and pasting large amounts of constitution of various countries and slapping ads all over it.

This made it worse because now it’s no longer .edu that’s hosting it, it’s .com and .net of the world.

Recently (actually just this year) a parliment.gov.my entry finally appeared, albeit in a PDF form (to prevent people from doing weird stuff to it I guess). I see this as how the channel matures – i.e. everybody will eventually crowd in and make some form of stand or opinion or exert authority etc.

Similarly, I thought if you want to have a good discussion on the constitution, somewhere somehow people will need to feel free to “crowd in”, give in their opinion / stand etc. Some will be pushed back, others will hopefully encourage change etc. It is hard because to have the collective will of the people enshrined in merely a few words that everyone can understand takes a lot of consideration.

Hopefully, some day in the future, technology will be able to help us collect this aggregated will.

End of story

[ GhL ] : agreed, jiinjoo. one of the objectives this site was set up for was to aggregate the aspirations of citizens to create a sort of ‘wiki’ citizens’ constitution (moderated of course) that could be used as the basis to update the FC. At the very least, we may be able to create a document to encapsulate the aspirations of the people… which may not tally exactly with the FC in its present form. Haris Ibrahim is an expert on issues surrounding the FC; see his views at his blog “The People’s Parliament“