It is expedient that in the face of widespread criticisms of its lodgment of police report against malaysiakini by both domestic and international civil society groups and news organisations and concomitant absence of public support so far from senior stalwarts of Umno, Umno Youth information chief Azimi Daim had, as a matter of damage control, distinguished malaysiakini from the author of its published letter by describing the o­nline bulletin as a healthy development in the media scene in isolation of Petrof whose seditious letter justified the lodgment of the police report.

The startling part is the rationale behind why Azimi thought Petrof's views seditious ( Umno Youth says Malaysiakini is 'healthy' for media scene ).

On the basis of public record, it is evident that what the Umno Youth information chief reportedly said appears vastly different from what the Umno president has always said.

According to Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the whole stated rationale of the special privileges as comprehensively expanded by the affirmative policies under New Economic Policy was supposed to promote national unity and maintain political stability by massive social engineering programme of removing and correcting social and economic disparities between Malay Malaysians and Malaysians of other ethnic groups. It is the national aspiration to strive to remove these disparities by 2020 whereupon a true Bangsa Malaysia will by then be reality.

This story line of transferring wealth from haves to have-nots underpinning the NEP is surely fundamentally different from that of bumiputera being masters of this land now and forever in the drift of what Azimi reportedly said - especially o­n the issue of tenure.

The difference between the two is that whereas the latter is infinite in time frame, the former is finite; for there may come a time in the future, whether sooner or later, when disparities should have been removed, and there being no more raison d'etre for the special privileges, they too would cease to be relevant.

The irony of Azimi's statement (of Malays being masters) lies in this. If his statement is the truth, then the complaint in Petrof's letter, which is the cause for Azimi's subsequent controversial statement, becomes more like a fair statement than mere baseless falsehood and exaggeration of seditious purport.

However if Azimi's statement is not true, and itself an exaggeration, then it may likewise trammel o­n the sensitivities of Dapsy national secretary Loke Siew Fook ( Dapsy blasts Umno Youth over 'Malays are masters' statement ) and I don't know how many other non-Malay Malaysians, as much or no less than the way Petrof's views have, allegedly without reasonable basis, trammeled o­n the sensitivities of Umno Youth and Malay Malaysians.

It would then be strange if the complainant of seditious tendency in statement of another could justify it by revealing a point of view that is opened to interpretation of being of equal and same tendency of the very o­ne complained against.

Perhaps it is more constructive that the unfortunate episode of the report and the police raid o­n malaysiakini that tend to generate sensitive exchanges be played down and forgotten.