The furore over the boy caned over the pork sausage may have died down, like many such issues in Malaysia that soon (and politicians fervently pray) will be forgotten by the rakyat. What remains though are burning questions about the government’s behaviour in all this.

Starkly, it is the behaviour of Minister in Prime Minister Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz whose knee-jerk response was to call on Jakim to probe the boy’s father’s religion.    

Firstly, why is the minister bending backwards to flatter the silly nonsense of an independent MP who sold out his constituency to jump ship?

Is it because the MP did his job by successfully deflecting rational debate on the central issue - the indiscriminate caning of a school boy - from one of education policy to that of religion?

Why is it that the mere mention of religion sends our ministers into a flurry of irrational activity? The main reason why such things become political beehives is that ministers do not stand firm on principle and send out a clear message.

Minister Hishammuddin Hussein admitted as much on the Allah issue, that a firm decision not to pursue the matter and ask communities to cool down and agree to disagree would have put a full stop to the fracas. Instead, after saying this, the minister ducks again behind the judiciary.

A judiciary, that is being proven by the S Shamala case and other similar bodysnatching cases, will wash their hands equally quickly of any responsibility over doing the right thing when religion is in the picture, when the solutions are clear and simple.

In the end, it seems clear any issue that touches on religion will have our minister hiding for fear of looking bad in front of their ketuanan fan club. So who is running the country now?

What does it make of the tired 1Malaysia slogan? It seems 1Malaysia is only used to fool the non-Malays, and ketuanan Melayu and pandering to religion to flatter the Malays. Meanwhile governance is going down the drain.

It is all out in the open for all to see. Very simply, the questions the minister should have addressed over the caning issue are:

  1. The authority of the administrator to arbitrarily cane a student

  • Whether there is a policy on non-halal food in the school, and why should that be the case

  • What would have been the proper procedure been for the administrator to act, even if it there were such a policy (should he have spoken to the headmaster, or consulted the parents etc)

    • Other questions that need the minister looking into are why the administrator targeted this boy specifically, that is, is every student being scrutinised for what they bring to school? And what are non-Muslim students expected to eat in school? And do schools actively regulate the behaviour of Muslims and mete out punishment in cases of transgressions?

    If the government was at all serious with 1Malaysia, which is pretty evident they are not (Najib’s every action of remaining silent further proves this), the right course of action would be for the ministry to immediate call for an investigation on the administrator and to assure the parent and the community.

    What has instead happened is that the boy’s father’s religion became the issue, when logically it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fundamental issue. That our minister fails to see the difference, is troubling.

    Regardless of the father’s religion, the mother and boy professes to be non-Muslim, and they have chosen to lead their lives as such. Who is the government to question their choice?

    In any case, it is the last thing the minister should be concerned with, because it is the school administration system that is in question, not that of the father’s faithfulness to any religion.

    By sending Jakim after the father, the minister is adding insult to injury to the victim, while the perpetrator seems to be getting protection for being on the right team.

    This surely shows once again, how our government is failing the rakyat.