Old Habits Die Hard

Yes, I may have been a little too hasty as pointed out by Bangsa Malaysia. Guilty as charged! I just could not help myself and do allow me to state my case. While it is true that one should not jump to conclusion pending police investigations, one must also have the presence of mind to remember where we are! Bro, do not forget, this is Bolehland, where everything is possible!

Here are some of those things that should not happen, but they did, and the perpetrators got away with it. Remember the Tun Salleh Abbas case? The Tun Mamak declared that after the usual Wednesday Cabinet meeting he went to the Palace and recommended to His Majesty to remove the Lord President. Fact is that fateful Wednesday was 1^st May, 1988, which was Labour Day, a public holiday, so need I say more? Petrol price increase, if ever, can only happen sometime in August, 2008. It went up a whopping 41% at midnight, the very same night!

After the 12^th GE, they declared that they shall be more sensitive to the Rakyat’s need and so there was talk of IPCMC and cleaning up the police force. That was it, just talk. Nothing has happened as far as the IPCMC is concerned. And as for cleaning up the force, all they did was to come up with a new look for them! The new look was sure clean, I am not so sure about the force. Couple of days back I was still able to come across newspaper report about some young girl raped by police! I still see traffic cops positioning themselves 50 meters away from road junctions behind bushes beneath giant trees! And very naively, I always thought that a policeman’s role is supposed to be a preventive role! How preventive can it be when they make it a point not to be seen?

It would certainly help to change my perception of them had they hauled in people like Hishamuddin during his keris waving frenzy. Incessant sounding of siren half an hour preceding the arrival of the mat rempits is also no preventive measure, more like clearing the road for them to me! Talk to any Indonesian construction workers; even those with permits, find out their opinion of our PDRM. Go to YouTube to see them in action, see how they supplement their income.

Coming to the AG and the judiciary, I also have my reservations. We all knew what happened on the eve of the Altantuya trial. Last minute changes to the prosecution team and antics like that does give cause for suspicion. Then we have the AG declaring, even before the case got underway, that there are only 3 people involved. The case has not even been tried, how could he be so sure? Or was he dictating it to be so? The findings and the expose of the famous Lingam case speak a lot about the state of affairs in the judiciary. Our new de facto Law Minister, a man found guilty of money politics in UMNO, not even selected to contest in the last GE, but made a Minister, suddenly wants to return credibility to the judiciary, and how does he do it? I always thought you’d use detergents or some kind of cleaning agent to cleanse things, but this guy uses money (ex-gratia payment) to do it!

The hippies thrust two fingers in the air reinforcing their call for peace, alas, in Malaysia, when you talk about justice, I only have my middle finger to show.