Friday, May 16, 2008

Malaysian politics... meh again

I've generally held a rather dim view of Malaysian politics. Many politicians tend to shoot themselves in the foot, sometimes promising one thing and then not delivering or delivering something different altogether, or say the silliest things.

The recently concluded Parliament proceedings proved a point. They show the first half hour of the Parliament meeting live on television, and you would expect the peoples' elected representatives to be on their best behavior in front of the entire nation. Nothing could be further than the truth. They were bringing up trivial issues and blowing them up out of proportion, calling each other rude names, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. This kind of childish behavior can be excused for elementary school kids, but I hardly believe that elected representatives of the people (who, I might add, are paid a hefty salary from the peoples' taxes) are acting like 7 year olds.

On the bright side, it didn't break out into fisticuffs like the Taiwanese Parliament, but that brings an entire new level of childishness into politics, and we won't get into that here.

So, what are we paying these politicians for? To sit in Parliament and call each other names and talk about trivial stuff while the society at large still suffers from greater malaises?

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