Media statement by Lim Guan Eng in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, 18th May 2012: DBKL and the Deputy IGP Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar has shamed Malaysia throughout the world DBKL and the Deputy IGP Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar has shamed Malaysia throughout the world by not acting against those who harassed Bersih co-Chair Datuk Ambiga with a "butt dance" and an illegal burger stall protest outside her home. DAP agrees with Datuk Ambiga that the butt dance is a form of sexual harassment of a woman by a group of armed forces veterans in front of her house. Pro-BN supporters always have a big bully mentality and act above the law when they know they possess the tacit support not only of DBKL to set up illegal burger stalls but also Tan Sri Khalid's shocking statement that legally there is nothing wrong with people demonstrating in front of private homes. By demonizing Datuk Ambiga as the enemy of the nation and carrying out these repulsive acts, shows their lack of humanity and questions the moral legitimacy of the government they support to rule. Datuk Ambiga has not committed any criminal offence. She has not injured anyone nor harmed anyone with C4 plastic explosives. Neither has she stolen any public funds to buy condos instead of rearing cows. As a former President of the Bar Council, she upholds the rule of law to ensure justice is done. And yet she is vilified in a manner as if she is a greater threat to the nation than drug dealers or child kidnappers. Her only crime is to defy BN by being part of Bersih 3.0 that mobilized 300,000 Malaysians in the largest peaceful gathering in Malaysian history pressing for clean, free and fair elections. BN is now seeking revenge with a tit-for-tat demonstration at her home, a gross intrusion of privacy that is condoned by both DBKL and the police. To those who say that Datuk Ambiga should not be breaking the law, the black American nobel laureate Martin Luther King wrote, We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal". The willingness to accept the penalty for breaking the unjust law is what makes civil disobedience a moral act and not merely an act of lawbreaking. Malaysians did not seek freedom from an undemocratic colonial rule to be replaced by another native rule that is equally undemocratic. The time has come to remove unjust laws by removing the government that propagates and perpetuates such unjust laws. Whether this can be achieved is not important. What is important is that there is a clean, free and fair electoral process that ensures the will of the people be respected whether to remove or not these unjust laws. *Lim Guan Eng, DAP Secretary General & MP for Bagan
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