I've often heard and observed that Malaysians are generally kind and charitable people, quick to forgive and forget slights, insults and offences. As forgiveness is a considerable virtue, I find this entirely admirable. But forgetfulness, I feel, can go only so far before it becomes a fault, or at least a failing. Because we can never hope to learn from unpleasant experience if we allow ourselves to fall or worse, be lulled and lied into a state of amnesia.

Some forms of amnesia, I grant you, are milder and less dangerous than others. Cramnesia, for example, which you may recall suffering back in your student days: frantically stuffing your mind full of a few facts at the last minute in the hope of scraping through an exam, then immediately afterwards forgetting every single scrap of whatever subject it was that you swotted-up on. Then there's jamnesia, the epidemic that afflicts millions of motorists after they endure endless hours of bumper-to-bumper festive-season traffic, then allow the ordeal to so completely slip their minds that they blithely set off on the torture trail all over again at the same time in the following year.

One form of forgetting from which no amount of preparation, foresight or bitter experience can protect us, unfortunately, is the dreaded RAMnesia, a sudden and catastrophic loss of memory in our computers when they completely crash. I wouldn't wish a black-out like this on my worst enemy, let alone a writer I greatly admire, like fellow malaysiakini columnist Sim Kwang Yang, who you may recall mentioning that he suffered one recently.

Systematic Scamnesia

But this and the other forms of amnesia I've mentioned so far, however inconvenient and even distressing as they can be, are mere minor irritations compared with the big one that perennially affects us all, and threatens our prosperity, liberty and even, in its most extreme forms, our lives: scamnesia.

The human tendency, indeed necessity, if we're to function in our day-to-day struggle for existence, to forget the misdeeds committed against us. With the result that many of the perpetrators, or at least the powerful or privileged ones, get away with their offences and go on making careers out of repeating them.

There are specialist institutions in society charged with protecting us from our tendency to scamnesia, of course. The law is supposed to have not just a long arm, but also a long memory. But unfortunately, to judge by all the irregularities and outright illegalities that go unnoticed, uninvestigated and unpunished, the police, the DPP, the Attorney-General's office and other such agencies seem as prone to selective, systematic scamnesia as we the populace are.

So councillors caught-out committing or colluding in shady deals escape with token penalties and then get themselves re-appointed for further terms. Menteris besar who repeatedly oversee and excuse such scandals somehow contrive to continue in office. The politicians who permit or encourage such travesties persist in retaining their party endorsement, parliamentary seats and even ministerial posts. with total impunity.

With almost total immunity from publicity, too, thanks to the fact that the press, supposedly the peoples' watchdog against scamnesia on the part of the powers that be, is actually largely the latter's lapdog. A dim-sighted, half-witted, toothless cur content to be kept on a very short leash, to bark only on its masters' behest, and to never dare to so much as dream of ever even figuratively biting the hands that feed it by alerting the rest of us to danger and disturbing the scamnesic status quo.

Thank goodness there are a few precious few newspapers, some politicians in opposition parties and a good many public-spirited individuals devoted to spotting, recording and recalling all the scandalous cases of mismanagement and malfeasance that take such a heavy toll on Malaysia and the vast, blameless majority Malaysians. An astonishing roll-call of wrong-doing ranging from banking scams, AP scams, construction scams, land-grab scams and building-on-unstable-slopes scams to vote-buying and even, some strongly suspect, vote-counting scams.

Hard to keep track

So many scams, in fact, that it's a wonder, with so much else to try and bear in mind, from phone, car, pin and postcode numbers through the birth dates of relatives and friends to everything that has to be done at work this week, that anyone can remember them all without making lists. Speaking of which, I wish that someone with a master-list of them all would publish it somewhere or send me a copy. My visits to Malaysia have been so intermittent, and my total time here so relatively brief, that my personal list of scams and culprits is hopelessly incomplete.

Of course I'm in no position to do anything about any of these misdeeds or the miscreants responsible for them. But I'm a great believer in karma, and love to see it come true. As when a malefactor becomes so arrogant as to forget he's only mortal, in which case his scamnesia can escalate into Saddamnesia, which may eventually prove the sufferer's death sentence. Or, in the case of en entire political party, such overweening arrogance may manifest itself as Umnesia, a tendency to so forget yourself as to use your general assembly to bully, browbeat and belabour people of other races and religions for so many years in a row that finally even some of your own get sick of your antics.

But however sweet it is to see evils avenged, it can feel like a low and vicious form of victory. So in our efforts to achieve an end to Umnesia and other forms of political, press and public scamnesia in Malaysia, we should make a major effort to do so in as generous a spirit as possible. Perhaps by adopting as our mantra what I understand was the late US President John F. Kennedy's favourite saying on the subject: "Forgive your enemies, but remember their names."