There’s an article in a recent Newsweek magazine which highlighted the amusing fact that now, since the handful of Middle Eastern coutries have come together to oust their dictatorial regimes, the CIA have lost valuable allies in their counter-counter-intelligence efforts in these hot zones.
Apparently, syphilis-ridden despots have been playing a crucial role in assisting the CIA in going after the badder bad guys. These include pulling people off the streets and straight into torture cells, assassinations off the radar and the seasonal run-of-the-mill car bombs.
Apparently, the trade-off for a clean government for the good of the people comes with the sacrifice of losing control of lurking terrors, safe in the constitution of renewed democracy and the sanctity of human rights. Yes, even suicide bombers can exercise their rights if they need to.
I wonder what the trade-off would be for us to have a cleaner, Singapore-like, by the book government. We keep demanding for it, sneering at Buletin Utama every time a minister is seen declaring some new policy. Scoffing is so second nature to us Malaysians that it’d be practically unMalaysian like to watch the news without giving a ranting comment about something. Even if your audience was limited to your mother in law, Indonesian maid and 2-year old daughter.
With all the brouhaha about BERSIH gaining a strong sarcastic momentum, let us not deny the fact that as clean as we want the government to be, these are the top 10 things in my list that we openly could not live without:
- Neighbourhood pirated DVD guy.
- Unlicensed, yet oh so good Ramly burger stalls
- Roti man
- Illegal nightclub valets
- Kakak jual air outside your kid’s school
- Highway durian sellers
- Newspaper guys next to the bus stop on Sunday morning
- LowYat AP underwater phone guy
- Ops Sikap discounts
- Fengtau Nightclub toilet Mentos and asam selling Uncle
So how squeaky do we really want to clean ourselves up, eh? As we sift through the rubbish, probably there some items worthy of being recycled before somebody really comes to take out the trash.
