God Bless Malaysia
As a conscious Malaysian, and also one who vowed never to miss a single voting opportunity as long as he is eligible, I am amazed at how fearful our ministers, the police, and even the prime minister, are towards the country’s most prominent opposition leader in Malaysian history. I am equally perplexed at how they can conveniently shrug off a number of serious allegations as rubbish, yet deliberately pile whatever resources they have on zooming into allegations which, to date, do not have any convincing evidence to show that there should even be a case at all. The police, which should, by the way, be an independent entity, never seemed to be interested in (not even curious about) the startling allegations put forth by brave Bolehans who have, since doing so, gone into hiding in fear for their safety. Instead, as with countless other previous high-profile cases (“correct, correct, correct”?), they choose to dwell upon the authenticity of these reports and seek to haul these brave Bolehans to the balai for questioning (during and/or after which nobody knows what could happen to them). And, until and unless this (questioning them) is done, investigations into their allegations will not commence.
Don’t forget, all it took for the police to deploy 15 vehicles and a team of ski-masked policemen to arrest an unarmed Malaysian was an accusation by a 23-year old university drop-out saying that this 60-year old Malaysian had sodomised him. Who’d buy this story? The police. And in Malaysia, it is almost correct to equate the police with the ruling government. Do they really think that the People are incapable of exercising even a little bit of common sense? Everybody knows that if there was another case with similar circumstances - ie. someone accusing his boss of sexual misconduct - the police will not act in a high-handed manner like how they did to the former deputy prime minister. In fact, I think they would not even be bothered to investigate. Hell, if everyone starts making report saying that they have been sodomised, then the police will really be in for quite a bit of work. Given the facts and after all that the government and the police have done, our so-called leaders can still proclaim that whatever that took place were not politically-motivated. “We have got an entrenched, recognized system of criminal law administration”. If this is true, that means the system has been flawed all along.
Personally I’m not a fan of our former deputy prime minister. But I’d be lying if I say I do not wish to see him emerge victorious in this ridiculous, highly dramatic, political battle. Yes it’s been political all along. In fact, I think he has garnered more support from Malaysians nationwide than he ever had before he recently appeared live on a rare oil-price debate, which was beamed nationwide via satellite. The government must be kicking themselves in the behind for green-lighting the televised debate in the first place. It is widely assumed that he had won the debate hands down, although there was no official winner announced. He was subsequently arrested the following day over the unfounded claims brought forth by his former aide. To date, the police have not officially charged him for any crime, because, as many believe, an official report is still in the works, presumably due to the delay in obtaining a key (doctored?) document - the medical report of the said ‘victim’. To add spice into the drama, a copy of the medical report was recently leaked out to the media and, surprisingly, it says that the 23-year old victim had not been sodomised. As expected, the doctor and the hospital are now in hot soup. Instead of looking into the contradicting medical report, the authorities are looking at punishing the hospital and the doctor (who has since gone into hiding) for professional misconduct.
So is the report real or fake? If it is fake then why are the authorities taking the hospital and the doctor to task for “professional misconduct”? Who is the real victim? The famous doctor has now disappeared (according to news reports anyway), much like the way the famous private investigator did. Both are fearing for their safety. We have now become a laughing stock of the world community. A friend who’s studying in Korea yesterday told me that her coursemate had asked her about this case. The US government have also expressed concern. Our once-prided political stability is being eroded by the day. And I’m not referring to only the sodomy case, but the wanton murder of the Mongolian model as well. A powerful figure has been implicated in the murder, dramatically through a sworn statement, only to be negated by another sworn statement shortly after. It’s almost like in the movies. So many questions, but noone is making an effort to get answers. The fact that the authorities are averting certain leads leaves too much room for speculations. They can’t blame us, we’re not born yesterday. Our prime minister, whom I believe has not been able to sleep well in the past few weeks, is not of much help either. He’s still very much choked up with his party’s internal affairs since the elections in March. Not that we appreciate his meddling anyway. His recent directive to the Terengganu state government to use the 14 controversial Mercedes Benz E200K cars only to ferry “guests” drew scores of laughter.
I actually feel sorry for the ruling government for making themselves look so bad lately. You know what the country now badly needs? Royal intervention. I don’t agree that we should get the UN and/or other foreign bodies to step in and meddle in our domestic affairs. At least not now, becase I believe there’s still hope. If all fails, remember that we’re a democratic nation. You know what that means. I’m not saying that things will be better should the opposition come into power. In fact I don’t know for sure. But all I know is that, at the rate things are going, we’re definitely not in good shape.
30 Jul 2008 narrowband 9 comments
One fine morning, I decided do something about my pool of pending friend requests on Facebook. I had been trying to recall if I knew them, before approving the requests. I studied their profile but they rang no bell. I’d be more than happy to approve if we had at least something in common - like going to the same school or uni, or having met at some event before. But no, some of these requests appear to be very random. So I like to initiate a conversation in order to get to know that person better. And I like to do away with the ubiquitous “Hi, intro pls” one-liner. So I jump straight into something like this:
