At the launch of his ministry's Quality Day, Deputy Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin said Chin Peng mustn't be allowed to return to Malaysia because he's still a communist even if he now wears suits.

He said the former leader of the 'outlawed' Communist Party of Malaya had "brutally killed our people" and that those championing his return shouldn't make him out "as if he is a hero".

Zainuddin said this when closing the time capsule during the launch of the ministry's information and communication technology Manual Safety Booklet and Multimedia Archive.

The Orwellian setting couldn't have been more perfect for Zainuddin, with enough symbols around him to make him look like a galah just the part for dishing out disinformation and misinformation, joined in hand by the mainstream media, the mouthpiece for propagating the government's cant and canard, and its own.

Zainuddin's spiel and spin are in right portions. Take his other nugget: "Once a person is a communist, he is a communist forever. He will never change."

If only there were more better educated and honest ministers in the cabinet. Zainuddin has clearly again, like so many of his counterparts in cabinet, displayed his stupidity.

For starters, nobody has been making Chin Peng out to be a hero; I've scoured the Malaysian media thoroughly since this story broke and I've not seen any evidence supporting Zainuddin's claim. This is spin, born out of the government's penchant for dishonesty.

His argument, that although Chin Peng now wears suits he's a communist nonetheless, is the hallmark of idiocy. It's like saying: Mahathir wears a western suit but he's still a Malay-Muslim. A no-brainer.

Another claim 'once a communist, always a communist' is utterly fatuous and dim-witted. It's probably borrowed from the clich, 'once a thief, always a thief' and 'once a liar, always a liar'. You can't be more original than Zainuddin.

But the next time Mahathir Mohamad or Abdullah Ahmad Badawi shake the hands of Cuban or Vietnamese or mainland Chinese ministers, they'll transmit the brilliance of Zainuddin's intellect while seeking business deals with them, maintaining diplomatic relations with these countries, and allow Cuban, Vietnamese and Chinese communists to visit Malaysia.

The Star

still called the CPM an 'outlawed' organisation. But that's The Star for you. Research shows, though, that the CPM had been completely disbanded in the 1980s, probably before the collapse of the Communist Party of Thailand. And either Chin Peng had been offered safe haven in China before then or in the 1980s after a long spell in Thailand.

With such cant and canard at the centre of Zainuddin's brilliance, he's about to launch his book titled ' Wira Tak Didendang ' (Unsung Heroes) apparently a reminder to young Malaysians about how the country had defeated communism and gained independence.

However, given the government ministers' (historical) form since 1969, expect more spin, spiel and lies, and a whitewashing Malaya/Malaysia's history.

Of course one hopes that Zainuddin is capable of honesty, so that he'll clearly explain with checkable analysis in his book that were it not for British and Australians commandos working behind CPM lines, Malayan forces (alone) wouldn't have defeated the communist insurgency.

Or indeed had saved Malaysia from Indonesia during Sukarno's Konfrontasi in the early 1960s.

I dare say reading Zainuddin's book will be fun, worth at least a few laughs, but less than Mahathir's 'red book' that'll contain his thoughts, which no doubt will become the joke book of the decade, beating even Lat.