There is this Kedahan (or maybe it is a national one I wouldn’t know) which fits exactly the overall situations Malaysians are faced with currently: “berjejeh”.
The word roughly means non-stop talking without anything being heeded.
That is also how I feel about things nowadays.
The powers that be are always talking about getting this feedback or that feedback, and then do exactly whatever it is that they wanted to do in the first place.
Case in point: the U-turn on the teaching of Maths and science in English.
There are others where words have come out loud and strong to no avail: PKFZ, a former Menteri Besar’s palatial home, the Perak state government, MACC, the Internal Security Act, et cetera.
Every now and then there will be some lip service paid on how the people’s interest yada yada would be looked after bla bla bla.
What happens?
A big fat nada.
Or something neither here nor there.
Whateverlah.
Meanwhile, in Libya, a wholly inappropriate (in my humblest of opinion) celebration took place during the welcoming home of the sole person convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing tragedy.
News reports told about hundreds of flag waving young Libyans greeting Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi as a “hero” when he was flown home on compassionate grounds after serving 8 of a scheduled 27 years in Sottish prison.
27 years for 270 lives lost in the incident when a bomb blew up Pan Am flight 103.
Abdel Basset - who continue to protest his innocence and offers his sympathies to the victims’ family members and relatives - is suffering from terminal prostate cancer and said to be three months away from death.
My sympathies are with him.
He has but three months left to his life.
There was no real need for any pomp and grand welcome for his homecoming.
All this would do is to tear open long healed wounds of those who had suffered the deaths of their loved ones in the incident.
How many of these people would now be wishing (nay, praying) the worse for Abdul Basset?
Whatever closure there was from Abdel Basset’s convictions all those years ago is torn wide open by this truly insensitive gesture on the part of the Libyans.
It will be Ramadhan soon and Syawal soon after, the two months when some muslims become their pious best.
We can take Abdel Basset’s words that he is innocent, or we could dismiss them.
What we should not have taken from him is the opportunity for solace these few months he's left with.
Unfortunately, some are now branding him villain yet again.
To whose benefit then the grand welcome?
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