Malaysian blogger and old friend Rocky of Rocky’s Bru has posted a comment on this blog saying he likes the new look (thanks) and what are my thoughts, as a fomer Malaysian journalist, on the political broughaha between Mahathir and Badawi.
Well Rocky, I think if you’re not living in the country it all looks a bit pathetic. On one side you have a real leader who refuses to go gently into the quiet night, and therefore threatens to undo whatever good he has done for the country; and other side you have courtiers and court jugglers who are good only in palace intrigue and little else. They are particularly pathetic because in their obsession with palace intrigues they have failed to realize that the world flattened in the meantime and what they hold dear has now been overtaken by technology and the times.
First the real leader. For all his faults, Mahathir is a leader of men. He had vision and he could execute against this vision successfully. The cost, however, of realizing this vision was an emasculation of the Press and much of the next generation of political leaders.
Mahathir, however, fails to have a sense of irony, as I pointed out in an earlier posting, and of grace. He’s done what he could for Malaysia. Is what he’s doing now for the country or, as suggested by P Ramasamy in his article What Lies Beneath Mahathir’s Attacks that was first published in Malaysiakini. because he and his friends are being snubbed by the current elite. I’m beginning to think that it’s the latter, with spite being the motivator.
Then there are the courtiers and court jugglers. Here some would include Badawi (more…)
Police yesterday charged Playboy editor Edwin Arnada and April centerfold Kartika Octavina Gunawan (picture as appeared in Jakarta Post) with indecency. Fair enough if such are the moral standards.
Probably it’s because everyone knows that if you smoke you’d be incapable of indecency – or or much of anything else because you’d be impotent. Still, its all a bit of double standards here, what.
