SATIRE Unlike the Eternal City of Rome, not all roads (and bridges) lead to the Lion City, at least that is what is being argued by Bolejaya when insisting that the crooked bridge it is planning to build to link up the two banks of the Tumrau Straits will not effectively connect the Yalaman Peninsula to the city state.

“We are building a bridge to cross the Tumrau Straits, not link up to the Lion CIty,” said Yalaman Prime Minister Lipshinee Noballer at a press conference in the administrative capital of Bolejaya today.

“You have to understand, the bridge does not mean we are linking to Lion City, we are not building a road that connects to city-state. We are only building the crooked bridge to cross the Tumrau Straits.

“The fact that there is a road on the other side that links up to the city is circumstantial, and pretty much weird coincidence,” argued the premier.

Noballer explained that the goal of the crooked bridge was to say hello from the other side without having to ride sampans and ferries and cross over.

Attempts to get further clarifications were stopped when the prime minister’s 50 press aides and wall of bodyguards closed in on the advancing reporters.

Two foreign journalist were whisked away for breathing without a permit when they tried to ask questions. Both were sent to a nearby immigration depot for further questioning.

Meanwhile, a foreign cameraperson who accompanied them was charged with standing without a licence and taken to the Bolejaya Internatonal Airport where he was immediately deported.

Noballer’s denial comes after pressure groups which had led the Lion City boycott noted that the bridge’s path coincided with a new road being built from Lion City to the coast on its side of the Tumrau Straits.

The All-Pacific Against Lion City Alliance, Alpalca for short, has decried what it believes is an attempt by the Yalaman government to rekindle ties with Lion City despite endorsing the ban that was declared six years ago over arguments on which mascot, the Yalaman tiger or the Lion City lion, is a fiercer animal.

“This is a blatant outright attempt to try and breach the accord over the ban that was agreed to by all including the government when the ban was first agreed to by all parties concerned,” Alpaca spokesperson Bee Goth said in a statement.

Comments from representatives of the Lion City could not be published as it is prohibited under provisions of the My Father’s Country Act 2016 which protects the government of the day and its leaders from negative and hurtful comments or refutation of what they say is true.

First planned in 1998

The crooked bridge was first planned in 1998 under then prime minister Benazir Apanama, though plans for its construction were abandoned soon after he stepped down from power.

But it was revived last year after massive lobbying from the ex-PM. Lucrative contracts that the construction of such a massive edifice entails was also believed to have contributed to the fervour of the government led by Noballer in resurrecting the project.

However renewed plans to construct the bridge had to be scuttled after the popular anti-Lion City ban forced the government to stop all business with the island nation.

Plans for the alleged rekindling of the construction of the crooked bridge came into the limelight after Alpaca was alerted to the tabling of an Appropriations Bill by Noballer in Yalama’s Rump Parliament to pay for the structure.

The controversy also caused a furore in Noballer’s own ruling coalition, as several cabinet ministers threatened to commit Hara-Kiri over the matter, preferring to kill themselves than live with the disgrace of being allied to a government that lies to its people.