One night a father overheard his son pray:
“Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is.”
Later that night, the Father prayed,
“Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be.”
- Unknown

I guess there’s no need to emphasise how important the role of a father is.

Here, I just want to reflect on my own father’s role in my life. I am thankful for the values that he has given me. Somehow or other, he’s made me who I am.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Likewise to all the fathers out there. Have a great day with your families!

The following article by me was previously published in Suara PRM, sometime in May 2003. A comment on my previous post has prompted me to republish the edited version here:

“He has honour if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.” – Walter Lippmann

Many people, especially politicians, say that the raison d’être of political parties are to win elections and, thereby, win power. Well, that may be true, but I believe we must make a clear and important distinction between a political party’s reason for existence and its ultimate objective. Similarly, we must make the necessary and also important distinction between means and ends.
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I was just at a DAP forum on the Lina Joy case. I must say that I am both disappointed and encouraged by what I saw and heard.

On the one hand, some of the speakers were terribly disappointing. To be fair, I shall not point them out. On the other hand, the turn out, which could have been anywhere between 700 to 1,000 people, shows that many Malaysians still care and dare to speak their minds.

Well, considering there were so many lawyers, politicians and Islamic scholars at the “dialogue”, I just had to say my two sens’ worth and ask the panel a few questions.
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Ha! Just got this email from a friend:

Is the Prime Minister using the media to divert our attention?

I’ve been meaning to write about the Information Minister’s recent comments about the so-called “social contract” in Malaysia. I’ve heard some politicians misuse this term before, and I believe they have been using it deliberately to mislead the Rakyat. Then again, maybe they think they sound clever when they use a philosophical term although they don’t really understand the meaning of it.

Well, I was prompted to write this by an email from a friend that contained a news article on Zam’s comments on another but somewhat related issue. Anyway, I think it’s time he and other like-minded Umno-BN politicians stopped misleading the people about how independence came about in 1957 and the current social realities.
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