Chats with my countryfolk. Malaysians often don't believe in the rule of law. I sometimes meet business owners or corporate staff who frame it as, "we're not here to be righteous," or "we're not here to demean ourselves in the eyes of the law." Whereas, I prefer to frame things in more legalistic terms.
In conversations about "righteousness versus law," I like to say that I prefer to avoid such notions as "living people good, dead people bad," as associated with popular concepts such as "murder is unrighteous," rather ... I personally have no moral quandry with killing people, but if I had to I would want to know beforehand, if it was legal or not to do so.
In conversations about "we don't want a criminal record, so we'll use extra-judicial measures to ensure this," I prefer to say that's a problem because if I'm going to play a game ... and life is a game, for the most part, as far as I'm concerned ... I want to know what the rules are so that I can beat competitors based on the rules.
An acceptable reposte is that "well the real rules in Malaysia are, the law is not the final rule, and we do accept other ways of doing things, therefore you lost that round if you tried to abide by the law and someone else didn't, and they weren't penalised, but you were."
And that's precisely what it means to reject the rule of law. Potato, potahto, it really is just a matter of preference, I suppose.
What do you prefer?
No comments :
Post a Comment