I am bemused by Shamsul Akmar's response ( Clarification from NST writer

) to Bakri Musa's Feb 27 column ( Seeing it my way ) in malaysiakini . He wrote: "Furthermore, I guess it was o­ne of my 'bad days' when I wrote the issue o­n the malaysiakini raid in my Saturday Notes column."

Is this a sarcastic remark or an excuse? Or a justification after a 'whipping' by News Straits Times bosses for daring to criticise Umno Youth in this politically-charged saga?

Those of us who do buy NST and read Shamsul's column should from now o­n not take his writing seriously for fear it may be o­ne of his "bad days" when he doesn't write what he thinks.

I concede though, that Shamsul's response could be due to him having been strongly 'persuaded' to disown his negative remarks o­n Umno Youth, given that the wing's Feb 20 editorial had commented o­n his piece (see Isu pertikaian hak Orang Melayu apakah ianya tanggungjawab Pemuda Umno semata-mata?

)

Either way, the fact remains that NST refused to publish Bakri's piece. Shamsul took the liberty to reproduce his editor's e-mail to Bakri (a curious decision coming from a journalist) to justify that he had independently arrived at the same conclusion as Bakri's. Since NST did not publish Bakri's piece, any reader could not help concluding that his piece is indeed a "paraphrased and sanitised" version of Bakri's article.

As any journalist knows, a rebuttal-after-a-fact is not good enough to readers and is always perceived as a lame excuse. And the perception of a newspaper's credibility is ever so important in the current climate of mainstream media distrust.

Shamsul showed sufficient courage to speak his mind o­n Umno Youth's failings in this saga, and we will respect him for that. He doesn't need to diminish himself with this rebuttal in malaysiakini .