The Rise of Militancy
“Militarism is the doctrine that military strength is the basic foundation of all security. It is not solitarily restricted to the armed forces of a nation but to the legal enforcement agencies inside the country as well. It is a sad day when a country resorts to militarism to enforce its views upon its denizens.”
By Hakim Joe
Militarism is not exclusive to dictatorships or authoritarian states as portrayed here in Bolehland. Not evident here? Well, there is the introduction and implementation of compulsory National Service as a first example. Do not mistake my statement here as I am not saying that it is not a good thing but neither did I state that it is all bad. All I am merely doing is stating the fact that this action by the federal government is a route towards militarism. There are many ways and methods to character building and perhaps this is one of them. My question remains why is it implemented now and what is the rationale behind it.
Secondly, the arming of senior RELA members. While not many people realize this, RELA used to be an unarmed outfit that is basically used as support to the local police force. Their normal duties are crowd control, whether during an official government function or during the elections or whatever the “real” officers tell them to do. With the onset of foreign workers, RELA was roped into the system as a quasi-enforcement agency and legislations enacted to legitimize their actions. The powers of arrest are now part and parcel of being a RELA member (trained or under-trained) when it should only remain within the trained police force. Firearms in the hands of amateurs are bound for disaster.
Speaking of the police force, the reluctance to set up an independent monitoring agency with powers of investigation, arrest and prosecution, is yet another step towards militancy as it exhibits the government’s disinclination towards the admittance of responsibility and such a negligent decision empowers the police force to become more reckless. When certain “bad apples” within the force recognizes the fact that no independent body is ever going to investigate their actions, this becomes a bad recipe for disaster, and rampant abuse of powers becomes the norm as these personnel can depend on their colleagues to protect them (not that the government is doing a bad job now) as all investigations will be performed by their own members.
And then there are the “special forces” in balaclavas with automatic rifles running amok when the situation does not warrant such a drastic action. The arrest of DSAI is a prime example of sheer overkill. What was DSAI going to do? Talk the arresting police to death? Or was it a case of his goatee being so enchanting that it will mesmerize the arresting officers and leave them quivering with jealousy and thus unable to perform their duties?
What about the For-Rough-Use (FRU) being unleashed and set upon the peaceful public? A vigil is not necessarily an assembly of an uncontrolled mob of gung-ho armed people bringing unrest to the nation. What are candles going to do to the government? Or black T-shirts or even cakes? Arbitrary arrest and incarceration of the people are pure symptoms of a rise towards a governmental endorsed militarism. Bringing in the police is already bad, but setting loose a unit or two of these brutes are totally uncalled for.
Bringing firearms into a state legislature is yet another leading example of militancy. It shows that politics is above law and the endorsing of this decision by the federal government to forcibly remove a democratically elected people’s representative from his seat is merely confirmation that the existence of laws and its interpretation is questionable. Merely dressing these “enforcers” in ill-fitting suits does not deflect the fact that these armed men are under orders to remove the Speaker from his rightful place because the police in charge of the legislature security just stood by and watched the fiasco. It is a wonder why they did not assist their colleagues in this undertaking. Just outside the main doors, anybody that looked, smelled, stood or dressed “not right” were arrested and carted away. Even coffee-drinkers in a nearby coffee shop were not exempted from this action (maybe the police did not like that particular brand of coffee they were drinking).
One word of advice, militarism can be self-defeating. It can forever threaten the overall security of a country by energizing the enforcers (when they realize that no one can stand up to them, including their political masters) as depicted in Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia where the military apparatus becomes part of the national political entity. Additionally, militarism is also the fuel for the oppressed to take up arms themselves. What would become of Bolehland then?
