For a short while, I was very touched by the reported Merdeka Day message of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. It was so uncontroversial and sentimental, appealing to the hearts of human beings.
However, after my brain regained control, I began to feel sad again because I see not only injustices and tragedies but also hypocrisy being covered up by Abdullah's spin doctors and scribes.
After 47 years of Merdeka, we still have the mass media tightly controlled by laws imposed by government just like in those colonial years and during the Japanese occupation and the Emergency.
Detention without trial and the abuses of power by Umno and the police for self-preservation are still around. The tragic injustices inflicted on Anwar Ibrahim and his family are still not completely rectified.
What civilised progress has Malaysia made besides the bricked and concrete mega-structures put up by poor Indonesian and Bangladeshi labourers?
I am becoming increasingly sick of the discrepancy between reality and the fairy-tales being churned out from the prime minister's office by his Oxbridge spin doctors and scribes.