I concur with what Mark Matthew said about ministers' knee-jerk responses to important issues. I think many of our ministers try to be too much like their boss, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, but unlike the prime minister, their capacity to think and speak is very limited. Thus you get unbelievable answers from some of them.

For example, immediately after the fiasco about the Indian nationals who were detained by the police, the foreign minister confidently said that nothing was amiss and that the police were o­nly doing their duty. To make matters worse, he even said that he came to that conclusion after "an initial investigation". Chances are, there was no such "initial investigation".

Besides this particular minister, there have been many booboos by other menteris besar and senior politicians. o­ne classic case that will go down in Malaysian history is the o­ne about the menteri besar who was caught in Australia, and his defence was that he could not understand English!

The problem is that, in recent times, the politicians want to run ministries. Whereas in the past, the 'chief executive' of these ministries used to be the permanent secretary (now called the secretary-general). Now the minister thinks that he is smarter than anyone else in the ministry, even if he or she has joined the outfit for o­nly a couple of weeks.