The proposed merger between the New Straits Times and Utusan Malaysia is becoming a big joke and a farce, and Pak Lah is primarily responsible for it. It all started when, on taking office, Pak Lah thought he was merely following the old practice where a new leader would put his own man as the editor-in-chief of a major newspaper to build up his image and to spin to make him appear like a saint.

So for the NST , he put Kalimullah Hassan. Kalimullah was no longer a practicing journalist and his last journalistic job was with Singapore's Straits Times . Since leaving journalism, Kali and his mates got help from someone high up (now a key deputy minister) to set up a finance business which made them quite rich.

Now Kalimullah's ECM Libra has been able to merge his business with the Ministry of Finance's Avenue Capital, an asset management company, to become ECM Avenue Capital, an exercise which at best is unethical and at worst illegal because Pak Lah and Second Finance Minister Nor Mohamad Yakcop know Kalimullah very well.

Pak Lah could've endeared himself to the rakyat tremendously if the deal was done through an open tender, that is if at all Avenue Capital (which was making money and needs no bail out) needed to be sold off.

ECM Avenue Capital is now applying for an investment banking licence. Nice and so easy. Thus when (boutique financier) Kali arrived at 31 Jalan Riong, his mission was simple and brutal. To spin for Pak Lah, come what may. Any opposition or resentment must be dealt with. To help him, Kali also brought in his ex-ST colleagues like Brendan Pereira. Along the line he also got himself a big chunk of NST shares.

So they spin and spin. Many senior journalists were made unwelcome there and had to take the Voluntary Separation Scheme because they couldn't stomach the new Gestapo-like atmosphere where good decent journalism was no longer respected. But to Kali s surprise, something totally unexpected had happened.

Former prime Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who had promised to stay out of politics, had come out to criticise his successor with venom. Kali and his mates had to come up with (whatever) intelligence and guile at their disposal to see off this trouble-maker.

But it is not that simple because while the NST , Utusan, The Star and The Sun were willing to cooperate, Tun M got massive support in cyberspace and perhaps the SMS service as well.

So NST's credibility nosedived while The Star and The Sun got a massive boost to their circulations. What we have now is an NST that is the sick man of the Malaysian print media with circulation at barely half of the MCA-owned Star and the Vincent Tan-owned The Sun . Thus Pak Lah is solely responsible for this mess. The NST could have been the biggest English newspaper in Southeast Asia and making good money for Umno (like The Star for MCA).

So the question is, why should Utusan (also like the NST , Umno-owned) go and help the ailing NST ? Whose idea was it? Did it come from the son-in-law and his smart alec mates. Senator Dr Noraaesah Mohamad who spoke in the Dewan Negara recently put it quite beautifully, when she said: 'This ia like a marriage where one is healthy the other has HIV, which will make both of them sick'.