The Latin root word ‘polis’ is the same etymological foundation for the concept of our modern version of the Athenian democracy. The roots of the concept start with the Greek democratic city state, then called a ‘polis.’ But, the same word is today used to describe the modern city or a metropolis, like in the name, Annapolis or Minneapolis, and is the home also for the root word for public policy, or even the police departments in all countries.
About.com describes:
The polis (plural, poleis) was the ancient Greek city-state. The word politics comes from this Greek word. In the ancient world, it was the central urban area that could also have controlled the surrounding countryside. Athens was the urban centre of Attica; Thebes of Boeotia; Sparta of the southwestern Peloponnese, etc. Each of these three poleis was separate from the others. The word polis could also refer to the city\’s body of citizens.
In the past, I have written in my Malaysiakini column about the ‘Techno-police State’. That was my original expression of concern related to the very first ‘techno-police state’ action which appeared arbitrary and callous. It was some years ago. I repeat my cry against such public abuse of the laws by the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) and the Road Transport Department.
I have now concluded that we are “putting aside due process of law and evidence by using technology to abuse and punish people who beat speed limits and rules that are not in keeping with the times through technology-based monitoring.” I mean it and refuse to pay any fine until the real evidence was adduced to my personal satisfaction. Therefore, I am open to a rational and reasonable dialogue on this matter in an academic setting, if organised by the police.
Idiocratic policies and the ‘polis’
The word, ‘idiocratic’ is my ‘particular’ coinage through my writings, to mean “when we lose all rationality and logical deductions from good analysis by allowing vested interests to capitalise on their particular technology and their official illegitimate connections to rule by law, instead of promoting the rule of law principle!”
The DG of the Road Transport Department, and his idiocratic minister, are promoting a programme called Automated Enforcement System or AES to police “traffic violations with technology,” when, in my view, all our rules and related officials have failed to do good public service because of corruption and abuse of the same laws; especially through the close one eye culture!”
And now they found an easy way to abuse citizens while increasing opportunities for greater occurrence of corruption; especially when ‘negotiations for settlement by the back-door still exist!’
What our law enforcement officers need is “to stop closing their eyes to manifest law-breaking, and to take action to bring law-breakers to book; without fear or favour.” This can easily be done, with mere political will and even with the support of technology, even without out-sourcing this public policing responsibility.
But surely the techo-policing option is only necessary when all human systems have failed. We are already so compromised with current law-enforcement that we can only do more; if we have the political will and the audacity to respect the rule of law.
Let me quote one example to make my point. In early 2000, I received a public offer to make me a “member of some kind of police association in return for a car badge given to me if I donate a
wheelchair for disabled police veterans.”
I wrote to the then-deputy inspector-general of police and enquired about it and asked him if it was ‘not corruption and bribery’ because their informal advice was that “with that car badge my car would never be stopped.” It is but a single piece of evidence of our embedded closed one eye culture which seems still endemic today.
If you do not believe me, please ask the police to state the number of traffic compounds issued to either royalty, excepting those in their official cars, or on all senior public servants in public vehicles, or worse of all; all kinds of tycoons whose cars carry those badges. Need I say more?
Why a techno-police state?
Some months back my car was being driven on a privatised highway and two weeks later I received a summons by mail accusing me of “speeding along the highway.”
I wrote back to the the police HQ at Bukit Aman and simply asked them to name the driver of my car based on their evidence-based photograph. I argued, since all three adults in the family, who still are in Malaysia, are named drivers of my vehicle, I needed to know who was actually driving the car.
Instead of answering the question, they continued to give me more illogical arguments and so I have decided to wait for them to take me to court; for my date with justice. I intend to make my case before the judge, to establish why I think we are seriously becoming a techno-police state.
A traffic violation is always against the driver of the privately owned vehicle, never against the owner. The owner is simply the property owner. The driver of the vehicle has to follow traffic rules; and the owner only does, if and when he or she drives. Therefore, unless the idiocratic police tell me with zero uncertainty, that it was me and only I who was driving the vehicle, they cannot issue me a traffic violation ticket.
That is also why “enforcement” cannot become simply a mere technological effort. For example, let me argue that, even if I was driving the car, I could have been speeding to take my 93 year old dad who was having cardiac arrest to the Sime Darby Medicdal Centre or whatever. Get my point?
Unless there is a human being who can hear my story about the truth of such matters, one is only pretending that stupid non-evidence which is technology-adduced can equate with guilty intentions. It is more of that “guilty by assumption” crap that the Article 114A is doing with the Evidence Act.
Moreover, a technologically generated but equally stupid and unverified summons cannot assume guilt of intentions of the driver; worse still of the owner. Unless of course, we now pass another
law which says that “any speeding, under all conditions, is guilt by assumption.” Then we are going into the world of the jurisprudence wherein we are guilty once charged and the duty to prove your innocence belongs to the owner of the vehicle. Sounds familiar; I wonder why?