It's not often that a neophyte parliamentarian gets to enjoy a brace of triumphs such as PKR MP for Padang Serai N Surendran has had in recent weeks.

Following hard upon the compliments judge V T Singham paid him in the A Kugan custodial death judgment was the vindication delivered on Wednesday by judge John Louis O'Hara in a case of wrongful arrest that Surendran, with four other lawyers and a human rights activist, brought against the government a few years ago.

A third victory of sorts would be gained if Surendran obtains an overturning of the deputy speaker Ismail Mohamed Said's ruling that his reference to the Kugan case in his maiden address to Parliament on July 1 was out of order because the case was sub judice.

NONESurendran (far right) earlier this week filed notice of a motion to challenge Ismail's decision under Standing Order 43, asking the House to "reconsider the deputy speaker's decision."

Judgment was delivered in the Kugan case on June 26 and the government's intention to appeal was bruited about but not actually filed and yet the deputy speaker had seen fit to stop Surendran's reference to the case in Parliament on the sub judice rule which lawyer MPs among the opposition felt was a wrong application of the stricture.

The parliamentary arithmetic - 133 MPs of the BN as against 89 for the opposition Pakatan Rakyat - does not augur well for the success of Surendran's motion, but recent developments on the government's side indicate that the BN, even its linchpin Umno, are not the monolithic force they were.

The withdrawal of three bills that, if passed, would have facilitated the unilateral religious conversion of minors and the well publicised intra-coalition dissension over a move to abolish the Sedition Act have raised the possibility of the hitherto unthinkable: policy disarray within the ruling ranks.

A few years ago this possibility would have been unimaginable. But, first, Pakatan's erasure of the myth of BN's invincibility (March 2008), followed by its overtaking of the ruling coalition in the popular vote (51 percent to 47 percent in May, 2013) have combined to nudge parliamentary proceedings from the predictably insipid to the tantalisingly improvisatory.

Double denial to BN

This is posthumous vindication for the late Dr Tan Chee Khoon, the legendary Mr Opposition, who though retired from active politics because of a stroke, felt up to it enough to throw his moral weight behind a plea before the April 1982 general election that the electorate should avoid giving the BN an overwhelming majority because that would be a "negation of democracy."

Malaysian voters' deafness to that plea continued until 2008 when BN lost its customary two-thirds majority in Parliament - the breach sustained and accompanied in Election 2013 with BN's loss of the popular vote.

Deferred deference to Chee Khoon's advice has finally eventuated in a double denial to the BN - of their stifling parliamentary super-majority and the loss of their popular vote plurality - but, alas, it has not loosened BN's chokehold on rural seats which secured their lifeline in the 13th Parliament.

In one of those ironies in which history abounds, the party of plutocrats happens also to be the preference of the rural proletariat.

NONEHowever, the latter's counterparts in the urban areas appear to have thrown in their lot with Pakatan which explains the prominence of politicians like Surendran whose has worked the human rights furrow for the better part of two decades.

His long-time espousal of human rights issues, especially of stateless residents and victims of custodial mistreatment, was given a huge fillip by the Kugan verdict from judge Singham which found in the deceased's favour.

Singham praised the "quick and timely intervention" of Surendran in obtaining a second postmortem in Kugan case. The judge said that had it not been for the second postmortem "the truth of the deceased's physical condition and the cause of death would have not surfaced or come to light and probably swept below the 'blue carpet' and that would have resulted in a black day for justice."

Singham went on to commend Surendran for being "instrumental and protector of human rights."

Judge O'Hara's finding in the case of wrongful arrest of Surendran and four other lawyers and a human rights activist in a case of a human rights march in December 2007 conferred more stary quality on the escutcheon of this legal eagle.

It would be too much to hope that still BN-dominant Parliament would overturn a deputy speaker's ruling but the powers-that-be are served notice that they are no longer undisputed monarchs of the parliamentary survey.

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.