Someone way out in Putrajaya must be having a bad case of epiphanies - the latest being a 'National Integrity Plan' designed to "imbue our Malaysian society with a strong sense of right and wrong".

While the swords of moral philosophy remain unsheathed in the meta- and normative war of ethics, our government now sees fit to set in stone the 'boleh-land' definition of what is right and wrong. A Herculean effort considering the government has done so without the help from our poorly funded, gagged and darkened halls of academia and a distinguished philosophy department to boot (I digress).

Somehow, it is hard to cast out from our minds the image of Armani-clad gnomes tucked away in the ministerial palace, churning out cute phrases like "Tell me the truth"; "Work with me"; and now "Ethics and integrity".

Fine. We may collectively groan at yet another hare-brained idea from the powers-that-be involving pots of taxpayers' money, policy, research, data-basing and archival work to come out with a godown full of recommendations.

But it is a tad insulting to suggest that the general Malaysian populace is devoid of integrity and ethics, considering at most any one of us would do is buy a DVD to watch a movie peacefully without the Film Censorship Board in our living rooms.