Last year, in my second post on this blog, I referred to Albert Einstein’s quote,

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

In that post, I quoted the genius in the context of our choice of government for Malaysia. At that point, obviously, I only thought of Einstein’s quote in that context.

Now, after a rather long and arduous year, I’ve got a different take on that quote. My new take may reach the same preference in so far as whom we should vote for in the imminent general elections, but it is significantly different insofar as how we should approach the “political” question in Malaysia.
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Once again, I’d like to comment on Dr. Chandra Muzaffar’s article, but this time, I agree with what he’s saying.

Basically, I agree that “when we go beyond labels such as ‘secular’ and ‘Islamic’ and connect with the substance of our three principal documents we will discover that there is a degree of congruence between the two positions.” And the three documents that Dr. Chandra is talking about are the Federal Constitution, the Rukunegara and Vision 2020.

Now, my question is, how do we move forward from this apparent impasse? It’s very obvious that the current hooha is created by the Deputy Prime Minister for political reasons. Indeed, it’s so idiotic for him to make such a statement that I won’t even go into the so-called debate.
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After reading Patrick Teoh’s blog, I figured we must be a member of the Axis of Stupidity. Niamah, indeed.

Oddly, whilst reading former President Gorbachev’s speech, I was reminded of how “slow” we are. In his speech, Gorbachev commented about the 5½ decades of Cold War – the confrontation, the hostility, sometimes open, sometimes concealed.

Further on in his speech, Gorbachev said:

“We have already graduated from the primary school of instruction in mutual understanding.”

Well, we’ve had 5 decades of Merdeka… Are we even out of kindergarten yet?

‘Nuff said?

Don’t know why, but I woke up with this idea in my head. You know, when you’re in that half-awake, half-asleep state, there’s something in your head that just doesn’t go away? Maybe it’s because I bumped my head yesterday at a shopping mall, where they have some stupid doorway that’s only about 5 feet tall!

Anyway, here’s my not-so-new idea: Gerakan, DAP and Keadilan start talks for a merger. It’s not a new idea in the sense that I’ve already mentioned this many times to friends already, and I’m sure some bright sparks out there have thought of this too (and probably dismissed it as some silly fantasy).
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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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