There is always a right time and place to do things. And the occasion of our Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad's historic visit to the Holy See is certainly not the right time and place for Pax Romana Asia Pacific and Keadilan Youth to raise our domestic grievances about Mahathir's repressive use of the Internal Security Act (ISA) with the Pope.

No matter how justified these grievances may be, the Pope, and Bush-Mahathir meets are simply not the right forums on our part to raise them. For it will simply reflect more adversely on the complainants for their lack of protocol and nuance for the appropriate than the one complained against.

In spite of the United States having the physical power, the only remaining superpower knows that it requires more than that to counter global terrorism, a part of which is spawned by religious fanaticism. Bush looks to Mahathir to set an example as a moderate leader of the Islamic world and in that role mediate and bridge the chasm of misunderstanding and distrust between the Secular West and the Islamic world.

How will complaints about Mahathir's use of ISA get Bush's ear at this moment when the very draconian features of the ISA have been presented as being responsible for pre-empting alleged Islamic militants' attacks on American interest in this region, and to attack the ISA is to obliquely undermine the credibility of US' own Patriot Act?

The attitude of Bush  or the recent spate of American Catholic Church sex scandals of child sex abuse over which the Vatican has been criticised for not asserting sufficient leadership and vigilance to prevent; or, nearer home, the architecture of racial and religious divisions, abuse of power and patronage that Mahathir has been criticised for being responsible.

Seen from these perspectives, the according of a key role — the mission of peace — from players like Bush and Pope to Mahathir, a leader of a small country like Malaysia, which until recently, was not even known on the international map, is something that, like it or not, do the PM and Malaysians proud. It is a kind of Malaysia Boleh! — punching above one's weight class that the PM has been advocating.

So whatever domestic grievances (as that contained in Keadilan Youth's memorandum to the Pope), it would be wiser to keep them within us and wait for the next opportune time and platform to bring them up, for surely the Pope-Mahathir meet is not the right one or time to air them. Especially when the ones to whom the grievances are directed are unlikely, given the circumstances, to even give them any attention that they arguably deserve.

Complaints then would appear like whining — a wet blanket thrown for no productive purpose by a spoil-sport into a wrong occasion to dampen everyone else's pride and rejoice in Mahathir's achievement of positioning Malaysia as peace broker on the international stage.