I refer to the Malaysiakini report No surgery on RPK's son to remove razor blade where it was reported that Raja Azman slashed his wrist and swallowed a razor blade while in prison. Azman is the son of Raja Petra Kamurudin (RPK) who is now a police fugitive because of his outspoken political views and allegations.

RPK claimed that his son attempted suicide because he couldn’t bear the physical and mental torture allegedly inflicted on him by prison authorities. He believed the abuse of his son was vindictively directed at him.

If this is true, then it is a terrible indictment on the authorities for punishing a son for his father’s so-called sins.

Barrister Suflan Shamsuddin said: ‘If indeed, the government is in anyway implicated in the physical and mental distress of Raja Azman, simply for the sake of getting back at RPK, then it deserves nothing less than the curse of the whole nation upon it.’

Saflan has been right to deem such retribution, if true, as a cowardly and shameful act.

Unfortunately, there’s a lamentable mean-spiritedness in Malaysian politics, where spiteful pettiness pervades the body politics.

We are all too familiar with the Barisan Nasional's denial of oil royalties to then PAS-ruled Terengganu and now PAS-ruled Kelantan. Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah from Umno had declared that the States’ right to oil royalties is clearly written as a legal federal-state contract, but alas, the BN government has arrogantly and disgracefully disregarded that, no doubt to spitefully frustrate the PAS Kelantan State government.

We have also read how the federal government is channeling the financial allocations for maintaining Penang’s heritage listings through Khazanah Nasional rather than the Pakatan government in Penang.

Now tell me, what has the investment holding arm of the government, roled as its strategic investor in new industries and markets, got to do with maintenance of the heritage buildings etc? Logic tells us that the state government should be responsible for the job, and thus the correct recipient of the funds.

Again, the bizarre decision has been nothing more than BN's spiteful mean-spiritedness. The list of the BN’s nonsense includes issues like, for example state assembly legislators in Perak being even denied use of community halls, and financial allocations for members of Parliament (MP) and state reps to perform community work in their respective constituencies where non-BN MPs and state reps are denied theirs.

The irony in the spiteful withholding of financial allocations from Pakatan Rakyat representatives is that there are also significant numbers of BN supporters in those electorates, but such is the BN's spite that they seem willing to punish their own supporters as well.

But the pervasiveness of mean-spiritedness is not confined only to the BN. We see the same type of nastiness on the other side as well. Only the degree of the pettiness and spite differs.

In retaliation for the BN’s denial of its oil royalties, PAS issued religiously-flavoured curses at their opponents in the BN. Hardly world-class democracy in action.

Then there was that infamous DAP function where some of those DAP people, upon entering the venue, were encouraged to step on strategically positioned posters of the three Perak state reps who defected from Pakatan Rakyat to the BN.

While one can understand the DAP's anger at the three's treachery, one cannot ignore the spite implicit in that incident. But at least Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng showed decency by avoiding doing so.

And we mustn’t forget to mention a Hindraf leader for his outrageous insult of Dr P Ramasamy. He petulantly and insolently vilified the deputy chief minister of Penang in a denigrating manner as a ‘mandore’. How terrible could that be.

But the PKR party must take the cake for mean-spiritedness on the non-BN side. I was disappointed to read how PKR vice-president Azmin Ali ‘tweeted’ jubilantly that Rosmah Mansor, the wife of Prime Minister Najib Razak was to lose her position as chancellor of Unisel.

Azmin Ali crowed that ‘thunderous applause’ greeted the agreement by the Selangor Menteri Besar to remove Rosmah. But in truth, there was no added value in that childish action for the people of Selangor; it was nothing more than pathetic partisan poison.

If this is an example of PKR’s reformasi credentials and promise, please spare us from the petty and mean-spirited spitefulness.

Rosmah Mansor was invited by the previous Selangor government to take up the honorary appointment of chancellor. The decent thing for PKR to do would have been to allow her to finish off her term, and okay, not to re-invite her to continue in that post, without gloating gleefully ad hominem.

Really, don’t Azmin Ali as a federal legislator and other PKR leaders have more important things to do, like running Selangor state, than to indulge in childish antics?

Perhaps PKR is deliberately targeting Rosmah as part of their tactic to divert attention from and mitigate the fallout from the ‘Sodomy II’ court case, but one cannot help noticing it was done with triumphant spitefulness that one normally associates with the BN side of politics.