WHY? asked a vexed Lim Guan Eng before a hushed Parliament which was quiet because most of the Yang Berhormat were out sipping a genteel tea as was their wont.

Why, why, why? Lim the Younger was a decisive politician who knew that it was a day for certitude. Or was it? In any case, four why’s sounded better on the Hansard than one which was why he wanted to know why Barisan Nasional assemblymen from Selangor and Perak had spent their parliamentary allocations well before Lim the Elder could pronounce General Election . Why not? countered the Barisan ex-lawmakers cunningly, and it was a splendid and succinct rejoinder which went a long way in proving the benefits of possessing, in equal parts, a clear conscience coupled to a bad memory. They were people who believed in spending efficiently which meant being fast (and loose) which meant Keynesian economics of the sort that went… if they saw the light at the end of the tunnel, they simply ordered more tunnel. It was crisp and profound economic thinking that lay at the heart of the Malaysian economic credo. Malaysia Boleh, they boasted, proud of their mathematical acumen because according to their calculations, the problem did not exist and they knew that the Opposition was just trying to cast doubt on the previous administrations of both States. Actually, the Opposition was trying to stone the previous administration’s cast but that, shrugged the Barisan Nasional, was neither here nor there. S. M. Mohammad Idris disagreed morosely because he knew that sickness and ill-health were here, there, everywhere and a mobile phone away because British studies had confirmed beyond all statistics that cell phones caused brain cancer which was why he thought they ought to be banned. Mr Idris was a deeply suspicious man who did not think that he was and doubted that he might be but thought that they were trying to make him look paranoid. But he knew that danger was everywhere and worried constantly about the potential foes and blood traitors within the human body: those fertile, febrile, fiery fields of epithelia and sinew just waiting to mutate into cancer cells, and he called on the government to immediately ban corn flakes and legumes because they could cause gout. High uric acid, he knew, was the precursor of the first twinge, spasm and loss of balance that inevitably heralded the surgeon’s scalpel, that inexorable certainty just looming before everyone who lived long enough to die which meant that corn flakes had to be expunged from the face of the earth. There was no doubt about it: he was a cereal killer. The police jumped when they heard the dreaded Kword because the men in blue were sick of Malaysian neighbourhoods, some of which had more hoods than neighbours. They knew with a Barisan Nasional-like certainty that criminal lawyer was a redundancy and that thieves were constantly looking to upgrade themselves with Darwinian precision. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try a gun, the miscreants advised each other and it was sound poker: an M-16 would always beat four aces. Crime didn’t pay but so didn’t thousands of jobs held by Malaysians and low-skilled foreigners who’d come to Malaysia thinking it was the land of milk and honey. Actually, it was the land of milk that cost money so they turned to crime because they were deeply insecure people in need of therapy and counselling. It was better to be wanted for burglary than not to be wanted at all. S. Jayasankaran is the bureau chief of Singapore’s Business Times and can be contacted at sankaranjaya@yahoo.com

Source: Malay Mail – June 4, 2008