Chit-chat on Article 153

From a conversation analysing Article 153:

UPDATED (unscribbling the scribbles - and adding a link to a comment I made on this last month):

Apologies for scribbling - still in bed atm.

- The bumiputera policies we see as implementations of the constitution, are mainly mahathirist policies.

- M's own political journey, from banned book writer, to sitting PM while being writer of a banned book, to turning the book into thirty years of bad* policy (mea culpa, i judge, but this is all debatable) is quite amusing.

- As you say, there is a clear difference between the letter of a law (constitution) and the policy implementations of that law by the executive branch of government (what the public thinks of as "the law").

- - Here is another example: the federal government is given the right but not the obligation to remove Malaysian citizenship from Malaysian citizens who behave like citizens of other countries (dual-citizens, etc.). That is in law; but it an implementation of that law, by the executives under M, that has enacted a policy of almost always removing the Malaysian citizenship from such citizens. Over decades of this particular implementation, many have come to think that the law obliges the government to ban double citizenships; the law does not do this - M did this (to the best of my knowledge).

- M for all his strengths, sadly, enjoys shooting from the hip when it comes to strategy; he intuits vaguely, and executes meticulously. This gave us the 1970s-2000s. (Unless, I am mistaken from my unprivileged point of observation.) Then in the 2000s-2010s, his brethren fucked that up even further (there were a few straightenings out, but the fuck-ups were more numerous, as we can all see).

- And now M is back. He has changed views, and updated his rhetoric on believing in a new and differently managed Malaysia. However, his political constituents have vested interests and cultures, and are not clambering over themselves to turn Malaysia's bigoted policies around.

- One of my key hopes these days is that M will have time to write a new book before he expires; lest we have to remember him by his first one forever.

- Also i hope he gets a better editor.

- previous thoughts: https://www.facebook.com/jerngatwork/posts/1082096415304398

Further Thoughts on Public Health and Criminal Justice

From follow-up conversations on this.

I agree with your main point. I think the chap has indisputably broken the letter of the grooming law, and must be charged.

That being said, I do think that his inability to engage with truth statements and social politics from a young age should be taken into account in the dispensation of punishment and/or treatment by the courts.

The church, or social club, or family has a role in the management of social deviance. These are tracks of support which are informal, and mostly unregulated by law. The formal tracks are the criminal justice system, the health system, etc.

What I saying is that we need both systems, and multiple tracks of *formally coordinated* support for deviants in society.

It is my hope that many of the punitive treatments in the penal code come under additional legislation, of having to be additionally recommended by clinical psychologists. I literally, at this point, want to have the clinical psychologists run the part of the criminal justice system which has the KPI of reforming the thoughts and feelings of criminals. I want all laws reviewed to give them this power and responsibility.

- Currently we probably don't have enough clinical psychologists to get this done. We probably don't even have a mature enough understanding of these things at the highest levels of policy making. I hope that the Women's/ Family / Human Capital / Law / Religion / Medicine arms of cabinet will form a joint committee to look into this initiative. Other countries are decades ahead, and we may not want to become exactly like them, but it would be good to look into it a little bit.

- I include Religion because it is still an inextricable part of Malaysian politics - any policies formed without those stakeholders are ultimately doomed. The question is never how to cleave between religion and state, but how to involve religion rationally in state. That's the hard problem of running states of religious peoples.

- To tie it all up a bit more: I really do think that crime / psychological deviance / personal preference / good and evil / social norms, are just one huge, long, slippery slope. So that's where my policy preferences come from. People who believe in abstract good and evil are accommodated in my model, but they believe in a different model.