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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