There are around 7,778 public primary schools in Malaysia. The total number of secondary schools is around 2,439. In total, there are roughly around 10,000 schools in the country. Now, say that each of these schools raises the Jalur Gemilang every day, and the average number of schooling days in Malaysia a year is 200.
This means that in our schools alone, the national flag is raised 2 million times a year.
Even in a Six Sigma performance, where you target limiting your failures to 3.4 failures per million opportunities, this means that every year, there will likely be around 7 cases where the national flag will be flown wrongly.
In a Six Sigma environment, the success rate is around 99.99966%, mind you.
I doubt that we maintain our processes in our schools to give us that level of success rate. I think if we have a success rate of 99 percent in our schools, that is already superb.
At a 99 percent success rate of hoisting our flag up, do you know how many times we are likely flying our flag wrongly in the country every year?
20,000 times.
That’s right — with just a 1 percent failure rate, our flags will be flown wrongly – perhaps in an upside-down manner – 20, 000 times every year in Malaysia.
Now, 20,000 might sound like a lot, but what it essentially means is that the flag is likely flown wrongly 2 times in a school every year.
Why is this the case?
Well, it is because of Murphy’s law – which says that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
If it is possible to fly the flag upside down, somebody will fly it upside down, just because Murphy’s law says that what can go wrong will go wrong at some point.
Now, we might be thinking that surely flying the national flag is such an easy thing to do that you cannot fly it upside down unless you are purposely trying to insult the country. But not misplacing your keys is an easy thing to do also, and yet, has anyone never misplaced their keys just because it is an easy thing to do?
And even if you are right — even if out of 20,000 times that something goes wrong in flying the Jalur Gemilang, 10 percent or 2000 cases is due to ill intentions — that still leaves 18,000 cases of the flag being flown the wrong way simply out of statistical and natural reasons.
The problem, however, is that we cannot judge anyone’s intention – we can only judge their action.
In other words, if we have 20,000 cases of the flag flown wrongly, but only 2,000 of them are purposely flown wrongly, if we are going to punish people for flying the national flag wrongly, we are likely going to punish all 20,000 people — even if 18,000 of them are doing it for statistical or natural reasons, without having any ill intentions whatsoever.
Now, the reason that I am bringing out this point is because since January this year, we have had 6 flag-related incidents, and the second case of improper handling of flags this month.
In the latest incident, a 59-year-old hardware store owner in Penang who hoisted the Jalur Gemilang upside down was arrested by the police yesterday (9 August).
Supposedly, the hardware shop owner said he was measuring the length of an iron pole while hanging the flag and did not notice that it was upside down.
The owner said he rectified the mistake immediately after realising it.He apologised for the blunder and lodged a report at the Kepala Batas police station to provide an explanation.
However, 16 reports had been lodged against him nationwide over the incident, including 12 from within Penang.
Yesterday, the police arrested him.
Acting Penang police chief Alwi Zainal Abidin said the investigation paper will be referred to the deputy public prosecutor’s office tomorrow for further action.
In a statement, Alwi said the arrest was carried out in Kepala Batas.
Now, what do I think about arresting the hardware store owner for this incident?
I think it is an extremely bad idea.
To be more precise, I think it is an anti-human idea which is offering a solution that is worse than the problem.
I say it is an anti-human idea because it is human to err — and like I pointed out above, statistically, we are probably erring in terms of flying the flag properly at a rate of 20,000 times every year, just in our schools. If we include all the places that the flag is flown - from goverment offices to homes to courts and universities - the number of times that the flag is flown incorrectly in the country could easily be double or triple that.
To ask for there to be no errors in flying the flag is impossible – it will require us to not be humans – we would have to be gods in order to achieve a 100 percent success rate in flying the flag.
Now that police have arrested the hardware store owner, I shudder to think about what will happen when people start taking pictures or videos of all the 20,000 cases of Malaysians flying the flag wrongly in the country every year, and making police reports about them.
Is the police going to make 20,000 arrests every year against people who naturally flew the flag wrongly in the country for natural and statistical reasons?
But if they have already arrested the hardware store owner today, what other option will they have than to arrest every other person that also flew the flag wrongly, in order to remain consistent?
Rather than do that, I think the better thing to do is just give the person who is flying a flag upside down the benefit of the doubt, and advise them to correct their mistake.
If they are defiant and insist that they will continue to fly it wrongly, then perhaps it would be reasonable to believe that they are trying to insult the country and the flag, and perhaps take a more punitive stance against them.
But if they accept their error and immediately rectify it, it is best to just accept that maybe their error as unintentional, natural and statistically normal, and resign ourselves to the fact that to err is human, and to forgive is divine.
We have to do that, because if we don't, we will either be punishing people simply for being people, or punishing some people but not other people for the same mistake, and appear inconsistent and unfair.
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