Easter retrospective

Resurrecting myself this morning after a long Easter weekend buried in academic assignments was quite a shock to the system.

And catching up with all the news and blogs I’d missed has made me feel that I’ve awakened to a whole new world, like some born-again Rip van Winkle. Or, considering how I looked when I unwisely glanced in a mirror on arising, maybe I’d better make that Rip van Wrinkle.

So much seems to have happened while I was mentally absent that I’m finding it virtually impossible to focus on a topic for this column.

When I last gave the matter some thought almost a week ago, I assumed I’d be writing a piece crucifying Najib Abdul Razak for choosing a typically bloated and boring Barisan Nasional (BN) cabinet of political hacks.

But that, I now see, has already been totally done to death - and brilliantly so. Some of the commentators I’ve read have taken the very words I would have used out of my mouth, and others have excelled both themselves and yours truly.

Lim Kit Siang’s immediate comment on the new line-up, “the first Malaysian cabinet with the most number of political rejects”, was up to his customarily acerbic high standard.

As was his expansion on this theme to the effect that “Maybe Najib forgot that these ministers were an integral part of the previous government that failed to deliver on its reform promises, including weeding out graft or initiating changes to the administration of the country under ruling Umno and its component parties”.

Lim then pushed the envelope further with his April 9 blog post headed ‘Najib’s cabinet not ‘lean’, maybe ‘mean’ - announcement overshadowed by the ghost of Altantuya’.

I also loved the piece that Tunku Abdul Aziz penned for Malaysian Insider , the title of which pretty well said it all: ‘An untalented team lacking in integrity’.

Another line that both took my fancy and accurately expressed my feelings was penned by in a letter to Malaysiakini signed Lim Chong Leong: “At the end of the day, it is still an overweight cabinet of cronies.”

Never to be outdone in the informed and incisive criticism stakes, former politico and prolific writer Sim Kwang Yang weighed in on April 11 with a sizzling performance entitled ‘Sizing up the new PM’.

He said of Najib: “He is the product and a survivor (of) a political system that has brought Malaysia into the moribund state that we are in today. To expect him to reform the Malaysian institutions of state is like asking a fat man to lift himself up by his shoelaces!”

I also loved M Bakri Musa’s masterly article propounding the seductive theory that Najib would be ‘The last Umno prime minister’.

But the prize for the most killing response to Najib’s announcement of his cabinet must surely go to my old email-buddy Antares, who ran Bakri’s piece in his blog, but re-titled it ‘The last Umno crime minister’. And that was on top of his April 9 post in which he featured two cartoons, one of them depicting a crowd of skeletons and captioned ‘Najib doesn’t need a new cabinet...what he needs is a gigantic CLOSET’.

There’s just no competing with an effort like that, let alone attempting to top it.

Bad news, good news

In any case, time has passed since then, and the press of events has from what I can see, and no doubt to the BN’s intense relief, pushed Malaysia off the international radar.

Admittedly Najib did get a mention in one of the major stories responsible for diverting attention from Malaysia, but only as a footnote, when he and other regional bigwigs reportedly escaped unscathed after protestors broke through security at the Asean meeting in Pattaya, Thailand.

The Thai riots certainly were headline news for a few days there, apparently, but as hard as I’ve tried for months to comprehend precisely what the long-running uproar has been about, I’m still no closer to comprehension.

I know the red shirts are for Thaksin and yellow shirts for the other side, but Thai politics are so corrupt and confusing I can’t figure out which, if either, are the good guys.

No problem figuring out which side to support in the other major contretemps that flared up while I was otherwise occupied, however.

It seems that Fiji’s President, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, in support of his puppet-master Commodore Frank Bainimarama, abolished the country’s constitution, sacked the entire judiciary and announced the postponement of elections until 2014.

The Bainimarama regime, which grabbed power in a coup in 2006 and was recently declared illegal by the Court of Appeal, has now put troops onto the streets and installed censors in the offices of all news organisations.

Fiji might have stifled free reporting, but the world’s media consoled themselves by turning their attentions to lots of other headline events, perhaps most notably the attack by Somali pirates on the US-crewed container ship, Maersk Alabama . A story that has had a happy ending for everyone but the pirates, with the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips by the crew of the USS Bainbridge .

Another good-news story that I’m delighted to now realise has been unfolding during my internment is the slackening of US sanctions against Cuba. US bullying of its tiny neighbour has persisted for far too long, and I had been hoping the situation would be addressed by a president as liberal and enlightened as Barack Obama.

So it was fitting, I guess, that Obama featured in the best news of all that I missed over Easter: that veritable feast for the watchdogs and newshounds of the media, the presentation of a long-promised puppy to the president’s daughters, Malia and Sasha.

The girls have named their new pet ‘Bo’, reportedly in honour of the late, great singer-guitarist, Bo Diddley. A musical allusion that brings us to the fact that I have to end this apology for a column on a somewhat downbeat note: news that legendary ‘wall-of-sound’ producer Phil Spector has been convicted of the second-degree murder of actress Lana Clarkson.

Though his counsel says he plans to appeal, as a long-time fan of Spector’s work I find all this a sad finale to such an illustrious career. But it’s also a sign that justice is a no respecter of position, wealth or privilege.

Except, of course, in places like BN’s Malaysia, where police, judges and lawyers appreciate how well it pays to please the powers-that-be, as in the case of Altantuya Shaariibuu.

But even BN can’t pervert or divert the course of natural justice. So just as Spector is condemned to live the rest of his life with the hantu of Lana Clarkson, those who ordered and orchestrated the killing of Altantuya will be forever haunted by her spectre.