Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 6 October 2014 issue)

Dear Kam,
How is the sedition thing doing this week?
Free Willy

Each morning, I do the newest Malaysian activity. I read the news to know who is the latest person the police have arrested or charged with sedition. At the time of writing, it was the late Karpal Singh’s nephew. He is a 24-year-old law graduate (does anybody in that family do anything other than law?) and is from Penang. Sounds like an open-and-shut case.

Our Sedition Act 1948 is written so broadly that I’m guessing just about everybody has done or said something seditious at some point. Is it possible to question the government or the constitutional monarchy without being seditious? So, I’ve been trying to imagine what a country would be like where nobody ever said or even thought anything seditious, as defined by the Sedition Act.

People would all have to be completely non-questioning and utterly compliant. Active agreement would be good but passivity would also be acceptable. It would have to be a country where nothing ever changes because that would lead to a change in thought, and that only spells trouble. Sounds like a great setting for a science fiction movie like Logan’s Run.

Dear Kam,
What’s going on in Hong Kong?
Wind of Change

I must admit I’ve never really followed Hong Kong politics, so the recent massive protests have come as something of a surprise. The demonstrators have managed to make everything grind to a halt by assembling in several different parts of the city. Since 1997, Hong Kong has been part of China as “one country, two systems”, but unlike the mainland, it has a form of democracy (with lots of pro-Beijing appointees) and now the crowds are calling for greater democracy and the full universal suffrage that was promised for 2017.

I don’t remember reading about any demands for democracy during the 150 years that Hong Kong was governed by the British. When Margaret Thatcher was in power, she visited China fully expecting that China would agree to Hong Kong remaining under British control. But China wanted it back. A form of democracy was cobbled together before Hong Kong was handed back.

For 150 years, the people of Hong Kong were not particularly interested in democracy and yet they are now. I guess becoming part of the People’s Republic of China can really help focus the mind. Full universal suffrage was promised for 2017, but it looks like that is going to be reneged.

Is it possible that the truly massive demonstrations in Hong Kong might indicate that people, even Hong Kong people, would rather have a say in how their lives are governed than not? Is there a global trend, a desire for democracy? No, surely that’s just crazy talk.

The pro-Beijing line on the demonstrations is familiar: A disruption to local businesses, threat to stability, the “silent majority” is not in favour and so on. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Dear Kam,
Is it my imagination or is everyone taking too many selfies these days?
Stop the Madness

Many years ago, I was treated to a slideshow presentation of a family’s holiday trip. There were lots of photos of ancient ruins and awe-inspiring landscapes but not a single one of any of the family members. In those days, there were only a small number of potential photos on each roll of film, so they had to be used to record the holiday vistas, and the family photo could wait for the trip to the photo studio.

The other day, I was walking through the zoo and I noticed that everyone had their phones on selfie sticks (or narciss-sticks). Tourists were searching for different places to take photos of themselves. Each phone can carry hundreds of photos and we use that vast capacity to take photos of ourselves in front of things that viewers can’t really see because we’re standing in front of them. “Is that the Eiffel Tower?” “I don’t know, but doesn’t my shirt look good?”

Back in the olden days, a roll of 36 exposures was a real extravagance (kids, ask your grandparents what I’m talking about). Each photo had to be considered — do I really want to take that photo? But now, we can take as many photos as we want on our phones. I’m not complaining about this, but I wonder what our old photo albums said about our priorities back then compared with now. Now, we can take lots of selfies and become the star in the story of our holidays. The holiday landscape has become the backdrop when once it was the main feature. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Dear Kam,
What’s the really big news story this week?
Break It Down

Obviously, the really big global news story is that a prominent human rights lawyer has married an actor. That’s right — Amal Alamuddin has married George Clooney. This ridiculously good-looking and high-powered couple will no doubt go on to produce children that will be endlessly cloned to create the new master race. We will have no choice but to serve them and off er our children for televised fights to death in competitions that will be called “Hunger Games”.

The wedding took place in Venice with the guests being transported down the canals in speedboats. That’s right, speedboats, on canals, in Venice. The guests were the familiar A-list of movie stars and it looked like the wedding was just a distraction for an elaborate and stylish heist. Whereas the Kanye West-Kim Kardashian wedding party held in the Palace of Versailles (the spiritual home of our finest Mak Datins) was silly and garishly opulent, the Alamuddin-Clooney wedding was, well, flawlessly stylish. Too stylish. It was as if it was designed specifically to make the rest of humanity feel inadequate.

I happen to like George Clooney. I’ve enjoyed many of his movies and I think I like his politics. But he’s too damn handsome and now his wedding was perfect. He makes life impossible for all other men. We simply cannot compete with that. I just hope that somebody will raid his iCloud and release photos of him wearing a sarong and a Pagoda T-shirt that he has rolled up to give some fresh air to his overheating belly. But even then, he’d probably look amazing.

Reprinted with the kind permission of