If they can’t even assign a prosecutor, what’s the point of the A-G’s office?

The ever so competent and refreshingly honest PM Department said they can’t find federal prosecutor to prosecute Datuk VK Lingam. Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, the defacto law minister, does add a sparkle of hope though: anyone (well, lawyer) can throw their hat in the ring and prosecute poor Datuk Lingam. Well, almost:

“Find anyone who can provide me a section in law to charge Lingam and we will do it,” Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz told reporters at the Parliament lobby on Tuesday.

You’d think we would be capable of hiring good lawyers at the Attorney-General’s office: after the Royal Commission findings, they can’t even try him under the Anti-Corruption Act? You know, the obscure, rarely used law that bans the bribery of public officials?

Look who’s being an Indian lit critic

Q & A, republished as Slumdog Millionaire, by Vikas Swarup. It’s an awesome book. While books generally are better than the movie (unless the book is written after the movie), in this case it was more notable on one count. The ease of suspension of disbelief. For the rest of the world (which includes me), Slumdog Millionaire (the movie) was awesome. For Indians, the suspension of disbelief was tad harder – the transition from a Hindi-speaking slum boys who could barely keep up their badly-taught English lessons suddenly became a tour guide of the Taj Mahal – not very likely.

As much as it is a good book simply for the story and story-telling, the language holds it back a bit. There was nothing objectionable about the writing, but the fact that the flashbacks were written in present tense. As the non-flashback bits were also written in present tense which cheapens the quality of the book. (More gushing review and comparison with the movie – with bonus spoilers – here)

Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup. I loved Q&A, but this, not so much. It’s still an engaging book. The story is hardly simple: industrialist son of a mafia don turn Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Vicky Rai, was murdered. There are six suspects, who had their stories told. And the suspect list just grows, making for a very convulated ending. One person got the blamed pin of him, he dies. The blame moves to someone else, he runs away. They consider another suspect, that seem like the best fit for the murderer. Meh, someone else. That was the ending.

The ending though was forgivable, what wasn’t so much was the writing. While still an easy read, it moves from newspaper editorial to telephone transcripts to narratives to TV show transcripts to diary entries. I don’t think all that was necessary for the story – look at Jeffrey Archer (perhaps the mainstream modern master of writing novels with a chokeful of characters): consistent writing styles for different facets, different points of view of the story. Its as if Swarup thought he needed this gimmick to make the transition between characters easier.

The story is still good. Quite convulated, but good. Not as good as Q&A (some cameos of Q&A characters thrown in though).

My friend Sancho by Amit Varma. My first exposure to Indian lit. It’s a good read, plenty of humour (unfortunately, it seems to be packed at the first half), and an almost subtle hint of libertarianism (and even less subtle plugs of his blog). The story is of a bored Bengali journo in Bombay who was assigned a job of writing a balanced piece of the death a local Muslim man – killed in a police raid and later was said by the police to be a gangster.

So the journo interviews his daughter. And the cop. Falls in love with one of them (named Sancho – you guess which). Some parts were a bit hard to follow for a non-Indian; but overall very accessible.

Dear Rajan Royappan:

Your email address isn’t rajanr [at] gmail [dot] com.

I know, it hurts that someone else got the email address before you do. Well, I wanted rajanr@yahoo.com and rajanr@hotmail.com* before Gmail came about, but someone was there before me. I lived through it, survived. Found a different address to call my own.

For that reason, I’m slightly unappreciative that I have to clear off your emails (for some, despite repeatedly clicking “Report Spam”, GMail doesn’t believe I’d prefer such emails to be blocked).

With less than kind regards,

Rajan Rishyakaran

* Don’t care about spambots getting those fuckers’ email addresses.

L’apprentissage le française

Don’t even try correcting the title.

So I’ve taken to learning French. I’ve even bought the Old Testament in French (I always found the l’Anciene Testament more interesting). Just that I never realise how hard it is to learn reading French. It’s like learning to read English: there are so much exceptions and rules, it doesn’t make sense to learn them. Reading is my big intermediate goal; I want to read Alexandre Dumas works in the original language.

I wish I went for German. German seems easier to pick up for an English speaker – largely because English and German are West Germanic languages, whereas French is a Romance language. Also I want to learn a language where I can legitimately use “ß” in everyday writing.

But alas, I must admit, the main reason why I want to learn French is to study at Sciences Po – and Sciences Po is in France, not Deutschland. And since I want to be in grad school by 30, I have oh, no more than six years to be fluent in la langue française? Completely «do-able». Not. But such is my irrationality.

P.S. Pointing out the high selectivity of Sciences Po is an invitation to be brutally murdered – you’ve been warned.

Libertarians’ lost opportunity on urban, transport and land use policy leadership

When ObamaCare reignited public debate about healthcare, libertarian intellectuals didn’t rush to defend status quo. Instead, they provided an alternative analysis of status quo (that distortions and public programs drive up healthcare costs), and alternative policies that addresses affordability and access. This is a striking difference with urban policy, land use and transport policy: when libertarian intellectuals give an interest, they usually defend status quo of suburbia and cars.

Take public transport – for some reason, there is a general disdain for it. Take Ryan Avent:

I respect Mr Cowen very much, but I think it’s long past time we stopped listening to libertarians on the issue of whether or not to build high-speed rail. Who will ask whether road construction remotely passes any of the tests they’re so prepared to push on rail? And if we begin charging an appropriate fee on drivers to maintain existing roads and reduce congestion, what do they all think will happen to land use patterns and transportation mode share?

Avent used Texas DoT data to show if gas taxes were set at user fee levels, it would be some $2/gallon. The offending words by Tyler Cowen were:

To give an example from a slightly different realm, I live right near the Metro in a high-density suburban area. Yet I don’t take the Metro to my Arlington office, which is about two minutes from a Metro stop. I’d rather do the 37-minute drive. Why? Because I stop at the supermarket and the public library on my way home at least half of the time or maybe I stop to eat at Thai Thai

In his defense, he wasn’t saying that automobiles should be a favoured, or even the only choice. Nevertheless, it just goes to show an inherent libertarian intellectual bias against public transport. But it is shameful that it is lefty liberals that point out the heavy subsidisation and the lack of internalisation of congestion cost – not the libertarian.

Beyond just a policy bias for automobiles, local land use regulations inhibit mixed-development, high-density, public transport-friendly towns and neighbourhoods. In most suburbs, it is hard for supermarkets and restaurants to be close to where people live due to zoning. Land use regulation like minimum setbacks and open space requirements artificially make neighbourhoods less walkable – causing folks like Cowen less willing to walk and more willing to drive to work, the supermarket or his favourite Thai restaurant.

In Yglesias words:

A while back I noted that the kind of libertarians who one would expect to go into conniptions if Fairfax County, Virginia were to propose a stringent rent control law seem surprisingly blasé about the vast array of land use restrictions that infringe economic liberty in that county and most other American jurisdictions. Indeed, some libertarian economists at George Mason University go so far as to laud America’s large houses and plentiful parking specifically as evidence of the superiority of America’s free market economic policy, blissfully unaware that in the United States pervasive regulation requires the construction of bigger houses and more parking spaces than the market would provide.

In defense of the George Mason University libertarian economist, Byran Caplan wasn’t defending the regulatory structure that created “bigger houses and more parking spaces” (rather, making a comparison of tourist impressions of European and American cities). But Caplan’s retort is dissappointing – he points to federal policies that, in some small way, inhibit suburban sprawl.

I think it is a lost opportunity here. The problem in status quo is as Avent and Yglesias points: the lack of choice. Suburban development is structured around automobiles because of government policies. Cars are favoured because of government subsidisation and the lack of congestion charging. City centres are avoided because of government failures like public housing ghettos, pathetic inner city schools and high crime.

It is true most Americans will prefer to live in their own McMansion up a cul-de-sac, with their lovely gas-guzzling SUV. And that is nothing inherrently wrong with that choice that we should ban it. What is wrong in status quo is the lack of free choice. Free choice involves those McMansion dwellers and SUV drivers bearing the entire cost of their choices. Free choice also involves allowing the market decide land use – including usage, number of units, height, setback from the street and neighbouring lots, and parking space. The common law principle of nuisance will deal with the post-zoning problem of all-hour strip clubs or heavy industrial facilities next to homes, high-rise developments in low-rise neighbourhoods, and the like.

Libertarians should be defending this free choice, not defending sprawl or cars. The basic principle of libertarianism is that free people making free choices make better decisions – the same principle should apply to land use and transport policy. Application of that principle in the United States, as well as countries that opt for the American model of urbanisation like Malaysia, will lead to denser cities and higher usage of public transport.

Denser cities and public transport usage may not, and should not, be the aim – but it will be the product of libertarian policy, and libertarians will do better to embrace it.

Public transport for conservatives (and I guess libertarians)

I just saw this video on Bill Lind, a public transport advocate, making a conservative case for public transport in the United States – pointing out that public transport provides choice and use less subsidies than highways.

As a libertarian, I would go further: as cities as diverse as Tokyo and Dehli show, public transport can operate without operational and capital subsidies – a little fiscal discipline, the good sense in not letting transit workers unionize and the use of markets can go a long way.

The Singapore water agreements: Mahathir’s failure

Dr Mahathir posted up a piece on the Johor-Singapore water agreements. Somehow, to me, it seems his argument is less of an indictment on Singapore and Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s government, and more of an indictment of the failure of Dr Mahathir.

In 1961, Malaya and Singapore signed a water agreement, giving Singapore the right to draw up 86 million gallons of water per day from Tebrau and Scudai rivers, as well as Pontian and Gunung Pulai reservoirs. In 1962, another supplementary agreement was signed, giving Singapore the right to 250 million gallons of raw water per day from Johore river. In both agreements, Singapore agreed to pay 3 Malaysian cents per 1,000 gallons and to supply Johore with treated water for 50 Malaysian cents. Also, most crucially, Singapore agreed to bear the infrastructural cost throughout the period of the treaties.

Both agreements gave an option for price review after 25 years – Singapore asserted that review can only be demanded at that 25-year point, while Malaysia asserts that review can be invoked at at point after 25 years . Since September 2001, Malaysia have been demanding that the price of raw water be increased – to 30 Malaysia cents up to 2007 (retroactively applied to the 1986 and 1987), and RM3 per 1,000 gallons after 2007.

Even if Malaysia had the right to review, any new price required mutual agreement – Mahathir’s government demanding an absurd price made any separate water resolution impossible.

To further compound Mahathir government’s failure to reach a new water deal, Singapore offered to pay 45 Malaysian cents for 1,000 gallons of water as part of a package of other bilateral issues. In October 2002, Malaysia took the water deal out of the package of bilateral issues. This further made it harder for Malaysia and Singapore to compromise on both the water issue as well as a host of other bilateral issues. Moreover, Mahathir government’s refused to discuss the extension of the 1962 water agreement – they said that Malaysia is only willing to start talking about it two years before the water deal expires in 1962.

Why should Singapore agree to pay significantly more on water when they get absolutely nothing in return? Instead, Singapore intends to let the 1961 agreement lapse in 2011: with NEWater, the Tuas desalination plant, as well as the addition of Marina Resevoir to the list of Singapore water catchments, they don’t need that water agreement. For Johor, the amount of cheap treated water will reduce dramatically in 2011. Johor will also have to take over the operations and maintenance of the the 1961 agreement’s infrastructure.

Certainly, even under Mahathir’s price of raw water, Malaysian raw water will still be cheaper than self-sufficiency: but capitulating to Mahathir’s demand sets a negative precedent on Singapore. Because of Mahathir’s inability to compromise, unreasonableness and impatience with Singapore, Singapore and Malaysia is stuck in a lose-lose situation.

So I dyed my hair in my latest move of defiance and rebellion

It was an abject failure as my impulse purchase of a home dye kit turned my hair from dark brown to slightly less dark brown with a tinge of golden brown if I stand under a light source. I wanted to go all the way and dye it auburn instead. Yes, folks. Fucking auburn was the extreme, not blue or bubblegum pink. Dark golden brown was the compromise. I’m living it, man, I’m living it.

I first dyed my hair after secondary school because I’m finally free from the oppressive school rules that prohibiting it. My act of defiance waited at least one week after my examinations were over, and involved deep negotiation with my parents.

My acts of more spontaneous (and real) defiance was coming home with a pierced ear (barely out of the mainstream while indicating my sexual preference – for the win!) and shaving off my hair (my mother threatened to disown me if I attempt that again). I wanted to repierce my ears and shave my head bald, but I live just a bit too close to my mother (350 km).

Such is my life. Living near the edge. A few kilometres from it. Behind a fence. Just in case.

The fall of the Berlin Wall

20 years ago, East Berliners scaled the walls and pushed through checkpoints into West Berlin – an action that will get themselves shot just a day before. It was the defining moment of the most liberating month of the most liberating year in history.

One of the most important lessons here was that the freedom of movement is the most important weapon against the totalitarian and the ruthless, against state failure. The inner-German barrier started going up in 1952, and the Berlin Wall in 1961, was due to the fact that the mass influx of East Germans to the West was undermining communist rule.

But the crucial bit here is that the Berlin Wall would likely still be there if the rest of Western Europe put up barriers as well – to keep East Germans out. When 13,000 East Germans crossed the Austro-Hungarian border in August 1989, they weren’t placed in internment camps to sort out their asylum status. They were welcomed. Malaysia instead sells Burmese refugees at the Thai border as slaves and wonder why the junta remain recalcitrant.

Our humanity isn’t merely measured on the respect shown to our own, but to the most downtrodden of the others.

Rethinking political impasse

Two things I’ve noticed about Americans, particularly the conservatives, which includes a fair number of libertarians. The first is that they have an overwhelmingly strong attachment to the political philosophy and constitution of the Founding Fathers. The second is that many of the flaws of the constitutional modal in the United States are seen as features.

One such flaw/feature is how prone legislatures within the United States (and the federal Congress in particular) are to deadlock, and how disconnected the electorate is to their elected legislature. The argument goes that people are stupid, they will elect stupid people, and most bills presented are stupid. Therefore making it difficult for stupid bills to be passed is a Good Thing.

Instead, what happens is a conglomeration of stupid bills into one Awesomely Bad bill, filled with enough pork to fatten it up so that it can passed both houses of legislature and signed into law. I don’t think you could find the scale of interest groups and lobbyists influencing legislature as in the United States in any other Western liberal democracies (especially the more representative ones).

Moreover, I don’t think it safeguards freedom. In terms of economic freedom, of the top ten liberal democracies making the list (i.e. the top 12 minus Singapore and Hong Kong), all but two have parliamentary systems. Only three uses a single member, first part the post system, only one with no mode of national referendum. This means that the United States is most prone from the lot of getting stuck in political impasse, and least representative of their electorate, and most prone to corruption (not just in interest money, Westminster’s recent parliamentarian spending scandal will barely register a blip in the United States – take Pelosi’s heavy use of the Air Force).

It would matter if the quality of legislation is better. But compare for a moment the various bills in both House and Senate for healthcare reform with, say, Netherlands’ 2006 Zorgverzekeringswet or Zvw (Health Insurance Act). Regardless of your policy preference, Zvw is simply a lot better – it is more parsimonious, lack all the requisite special interest provisions and also very likely the Act’s main sponsors actually read it.