Najib's Madcap Or Half Past Six Cabinet?

It is rarely that you will agree with the man who had been the Pm for a long time and still considered the Optimus Prime of the Umno clan.

This is because more and more Malaysians are beginning to regard his utterances as really out of touch with current political reality, like the utterances of a man trapped in a time warp fifty years back.

But once in a while in his moments of exasperation, he does seem to come up with gems like this one he  had uttered some time back: "Najib's Cabinet a cabinet of half past six ministers" or something like that.

Let's see if the Pm's current Cabinet consists of madcap or half past six ministers.

Whether they are half past six or madcap, I don't think I am qualified to postulate.

But many of the ministers now in Najib's Cabinet, were also there when Mahathir made that famous assessment on the character and quality of Najib's previous Cabinet.

First off, because it was melodramatic, there is this minister who hardly had he had time to warm the seat at the Home Ministry, then he somehow discovered that the country belonged to his grandfather, and told Malaysians to just pack up and leave if they did not like the sterling electoral system practised here.

This is also the minister who was alleged to have assaulted a man when he was in the previous Cabinet, and who is currently facing a suit for assault but refuses to step down until the case against him is disposed.

While he was then the Defence Minister, he was said to be more interested in finding the opposition as the source of the Sulu trouble in Sabah early in the year, than in quickly and firmly confronting the threat.

Then we have the Umno Secretary General and newly minted Federal Territories Minister who just a few days ago, confounded himself by declaring that we do not need to use indelible ink to conduct our elections because we are not a third world country.

Right, we are not a third world country!

We are right there at the top two in the world as the country with the largest illicit outflow of funds and right in the mix as one of the most corrupt countries to do business in in Asia, according to a business survey.

But perhaps the Tengku would consider Japan and Canada as third world countries for using indelible ink in their elections. That would be nice. And didactic.

Then we have the current Defence Minister who, when he was the Home Minister then, insistently insisted that the national crime rate had gone down and that everyone else was holding the wrong perception, and who religiously hammered away at petty Malaysians for refusing to see the truth and insisting on being paranoid.

While people continued to feel unsafer and unsafer, if you will forgive this grammatical impudence, and people continued to be mugged and murdered, sometimes even just right outside their homes.

That unfortunately, was just a poor perception.

Oops, the rakyat's, that was.

We have the same Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister in the man who had loudly declaimed that he was firstly a Malay and only secondly a Malaysian.

Beyond that famous declamation, we are waiting with bated breath for something more uplifting from the man who is supposed to make us a lot more smart educationally.

On education, how about the allegations that we have some ministers in the current Cabinet with dubious degrees to their names?

The rest of the Cabinet are nondescript to me, and hopefully not heard much of or from.