DEWAN DISPATCHES: Punishing National Service dodgers with delicious irony

DEWAN DISPATCHES: Punishing National Service dodgers with delicious irony

By Azmi Anshar
DEWAN RAKYAT, 22 May, 2008

Just last week, a Dewan Rakyat lawmaking activity passed by with such perfunctory efficiency that it didn’t merit MPs’ hawk-like scrutiny: it referred to the first reading of a Bill seeking a minor amendment to Section 18 (1) the National Service Training Act, 2003 that softens punishment for the 20,000-odd and growing 18-year-olds who balked at attending the scheme, from a hefty RM3,000 fine and six-month jail sentence to an appeasingly malleable community service. The irony could not be more delicious.

Let’s ask this basic question: why are there 20,000-odd dodgers, 19,491 of them to be exact, who refused to turn up for NS in the years 2004, 2005 and 2006? What compelled them to circumvent NS despite the threat of punitive punishment? Why did they avoid NS like there was an infestation of a plague?

The reasons vary but the deaths of 19 trainees in varying degrees so far appear to be solid grounds. Certainly the most famous excuse came from a Kuala Perlis dropout who skipped the mandatory programme for a very fundamental non–capitulation – he had to work as a RM30 a day padi harvester to put food on the table for his family. The hard luck story was sympathised and accepted but punishment must still be seen to be served, so the kid was hauled up in court, pleaded guilty but forced to opt for incarceration because it was simply beyond him to raise the RM600 fine. A politician settled the kid’s fine after a hissy fit and with it came the predictable public outrage against a bureaucracy perceived as being pitiless.

What about other dodgers? It might be pertinent to point out that the choice to dodge NS wasn’t the dodger’s choice to begin with but that of the emotional fits of his or her parents, who dread the litany of woes afflicting the running of the camps, from bad hygiene, contaminated food, bad company (read gangsterism), lousy sleeping quarters (no air-condition), the prospect of drowning, alleged rape, amorous trainers, brawls to other nightmarish scenarios. The list is a stress test for parents.

So, what does the bureaucracy directly responsible for the programme’s organisation hope to achieve by softening punishment, from imposing a hefty fine/jail time to cajoling dodgers to collect trash, carry out charity work or visit homes of inmates of various infirmity? What will happen if dodgers who dodge the tough camp life also dodge community work? Do they get sentenced to “alternative” community work, which they will still dodge nonchalantly with ease? For the sake of sanity, let’s stop here. Let’s check whether dodgers will turn up at a designated camp and take part in the programme. What if they don’t? Because that is what they stubbornly wanted to avoid in the very first place. So, it would appear that the proposed amendment sets out a very silly vicious cycle, a merry-go-round of mindless endlessness.
(Here’s an alternative but hysterical scenario: if the National Service Training Programme is really serious about meting out punishments, don’t slap it on the kids but flog it on their parents, who will gladly absorb the chastisement until their dodging children beg the authorities to stop all castigation by agreeing to turn up at the camps. Then the melodrama begins all over again…)

It’s that simple: if parents develop this steely resolve that dodging that leads to punitive punishment is far charitable than endangering their kids after a perilous month in the camps, then the community camp penalty with its dainty inconveniences is absolutely no deterrent. In fact, it’s screamingly laughable. Which makes the amendment to Section 18 (1) superfluous, a backslide to the tackling the root of the dodging issue. Why don’t dodgers really want to go for all that fun and make new friends?

Following the bad press that NS had sustained in the last four years of operations, Opposition parties, some Government parties and distressed parents have made urgent calls to scrap the programme. They might have the last word if the current pro-Opposition political environment is applied as the bellwether, especially after the Defence Ministry, the parent body of the National Service, is seeking to extend the three-month stint to two years, according to reports.

Parents are no angels either, showering love on their kids but masking it with over-bearing discipline and over-protective supervision. Although their motive is understandable, given the slew of missing children, and sexual and paedophile assaults, once their precious teenagers are out of their sight and into the camps, their survival instincts don’t kick in because all those years of protective custody have robbed them of this instinctive evolution that compel many of them to get into trouble, some fatal. That too is a tragedy.

NS is seen as an extension of the Establishment’s regard for and treatment of Malaysian teenagers, especially the ones traversing through a difficult adolescent transition between childhood and adulthood. You hear and read the epithets and labels these youngsters have to endure, mouthed by the mass quantity of guardians of morality: mat rempit, bohsia, slacker, lepak, not ambitious, apathetic, lackadaisical, unpatriotic, selfish, and so on. It is no wonder then that these youngsters of the voting age abandoned the Establishment parties in mob fashion, preferring to throw their lot behind a political ideology that fit into their lifestyles and scheme of things, and that harnesses their energy, creativity and indulgence.

Nevertheless, National Service may still have its practical usefulness. There had been glowing reports that graduates of 2004 had enjoyed the programme and built a network of friendship and camaraderie that is expected to last a lifetime, despite all the negativity that surrounds the running of these camps. That’s all very nice. But if you articulate the rationale behind NS, you will hear lofty phrases like “instilling patriotism”, “fostering racial unity”, and “encouraging good values”, and a host of pamphlet-like rhetoric that passes off as a national integration agenda. But parents are not easily convinced. There are talks swirling in the blogs now that parents are insisting on “passive resistance” of not allowing their 18-year-olds to join NS, even at the risk of greater punitive punishments.

After the March 8 polls, a new thinking and understanding had evolved among parents who insist that the NS camps are not the place to instil these noble ideals. Most parents like the idea of summer camps but for that, they pay a princely fee and their kids enjoy their stay. In other words, parents are telling the NS to “get act your together first, clean up the camps of disease and unwanted propaganda before we send our beloved kids there.”

That would mean that MPs, especially those of the Opposition kind, may have to torpedo the Bill to amend Section 18 (1) because the last thing they have is the stomach to confront parents on a warpath. And a sick kid to boot.