I read the news yesterday while waiting for my roti canai. The headline said house arrest and there went my appetite.
Not because I was shocked. Because I was trying to figure out which house they're talking about. Because there are house is always arresting someone year after year. Every month, the bank arrests with the housing loan. The landlord arrests the tenant. TNB, water bill, internet bill - all arresting us nicely in our own houses. We just don't get an announcement.
You know what a common man like me understands by "house arrest"?
My aunt, retired, cannot go out because her knee pain. That's house arrest. My cousin, fresh grad, working from home with three Zoom meetings and a boss who watches his green dot on Teams. That's house arrest. My neighbor aunty, who has to take care of three grandkids because the kindergarten fees went up, that's house arrest.
But apparently, there is another version. A more... premium version. Like economy vs business class. Same word "house" but different spelling of comfort.
We, the common people, when we get into trouble, we know the drill. Police station, court, big words we don't understand, lawyer fees that cost more than our Myvi. We borrow money from brother-in-law to pay compound. We take unpaid leave to go to court. We sit on that hard wooden bench outside the courtroom and wait the whole day.
Then we see news like this. And we scratch our head. Not because we are lawyers. We are not. We left school long ago. We scratch our head because the math doesn't math.
Malaysia Boleh, right? That's what we always say. When we can build the tallest twin towers, when we can cut queue, when we can turn a 2-lane road into 4 lanes just by creative driving - Malaysia Boleh.
Now we add a new one: we can also invent new ways to serve sentence that most of us have never heard of in our life.
Ask the makcik selling nasi lemak at the corner. "Makcik, what is house arrest?" She will say, "Ha? You kena marah with your wife and she don't let you go out?" That's our definition. Because in our world, punishment is very direct. If you do wrong, you face it. No cushion, no curtain, no air-cond.
What hurts a bit, honestly, is not the legal part. Don't talk about Acts and Sections, my head spins. What hurts is the feeling. The feeling that there are two sets of rules. One for those who have titles, drivers, and press statements written by someone else. And one for us, who have to write our own leave application and hope the boss approves.
When a regular Mat gets caught stealing a tin of Milo because his kid is hungry, his face is on the front page. His house is raided. The whole kampung knows. When a big case happens, suddenly we hear words like compassion, health, old age, good behavior. Eh, my uncle is also old. My uncle also has back pain. Where is his compassion discount? He still has to wake up at 6am to tap rubber.
We are not asking for revenge. We Malaysians, we are very forgiving people. We can forgive a lot. We forgive potholes. We forgive floods every December. We forgive when the LRT breaks down. But we cannot tahan when we feel like we are being treated like we are senseless. Like we cannot see what is happening.
We go to work, we pay tax, we pay SST, and we pay parking. We follow the line. We stand in line for hours to vote. We believe that if we follow the line, the system will follow us too. That's the deal, right? The unwritten social contract between the government and the rakyat marhaen like us.
So when we see something that looks like a shortcut, we don't get angry because we love to be angry. We get tired. The tiredness of a man who carries a bag of cement the whole day and then is told the building he built is not for him.
At the end of the day, I finished my roti canai. Cold already. I paid RM2.50. I drove back to my house. My house is small. Two rooms. Fan noisy. But it's my house. No one put me here. I put myself here, working hard.
I just wish that when they use the word "house," they remember our houses too. The leaky ones, the rented ones, the ones with three generations inside. And when they use the word "justice," they remember our version of it - simple, direct, and the same for everyone.
Otherwise, don't call it house arrest. Call it what my friend said at the mamak: "Home stay package." We understand that better.
Let me be 100% clear before some people try to spin my roti canai story into something else.
To grant pardon, clemency, mercy, and commutation — that is the absolute right of His Majesty the Yang di-Pertuan Agong under Article 42 of the Federal Constitution. It is His Majesty's prerogative. Full stop. Every Malaysian, including me, respects and upholds the Institution of the King. We junjung kasih. We will never question His Majesty's wisdom and compassion. Daulat Tuanku.
But my question — our question — is about the system. It goes on to ask about the SOP, the Prisons Act, and equality But biarlah keadilan itu sama rasa untuk semua rumah di Malaysia.
ENDS
By
Sam Trailerman
Nganasegaran (tapessam@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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