I am greatly offended

Posted by- Raja Petra

Here we go again. Sigh.....I am going to be stuck in front of my computer another 18 hours today. Last night they made another police report against me so I am going to be tied up formatting my hard disk and reinstalling all the drivers and software amongst layaning the many phone calls and SMSess I have been receiving since early morning. I can expect their next move will be, again, to confiscate my computer to use as evidence of my ‘crime’ -- so, like it or not, I have to clean up my computer so that they can take away a ‘virgin’ unit.



As it is, I am already receiving a lot of ‘hate mail’ from readers who are whacking me because I have not responded to their e-mails. One reader who goes by the nick ‘Ineffective Malaysian’ sent me an extremely long article that I have not had time to read and he is very upset because he (or she, maybe) has not seen it published yet and has threatened to send it to another blog with a qualification that he is going to ‘expose’ me. This was the message I received from ‘Ineffective Malaysian’:



As I have not seen my article published in MT or received a response from you, it does appear that you have chosen not to publish my article ‘Strategic Exclusion’ in your forum (even after I have set the expectations, T&Cs, and obligations very clearly in earlier emails).



I had chosen your forum as my chosen venue of citizen-expression, as my impression is that you have some amount of mental fortitude to withstand unconventional views and understandings - but now you have created the need to suspect that ulterior motives and interests are in play for your efforts and forum.



I shall hold back until this for a couple of days to see your response. Thereafter I shall have it published on other blogsites, with an accompanying footnote that you have chosen to not publish my article for your reasons and motivations, and the reader will be left to imagine your underlying interests. Once credibility is lost, it’s very hard to reinstate.



Give me a break ‘Ineffective Malaysian’! Your truncated article is 29 pages long. I dread to think what the length of the un-truncated version is. I am 57 years old and five hours of sleep a night is just not enough for a person my age. If I read every 30- or 40-page article I receive; with editing thrown in; I will need 40 hours in a day to complete my work. God gave us just 24 hours to work, eat, sleep, etc., which is clearly not enough. Anyway, if I can get a volunteer to help with the proof-reading and editing then maybe in future we can consider long pieces such as yours. Till then I will need to prioritise my tasks and at the moment long academic theses are at the bottom of my priority list. And that is why international publications restrict pieces to not more than 850 words. Anything longer, such as yours which is 15,000 words, either gets sent back for editing or gets trashed.



Anyhow, that is not really what I want to talk about today so let’s get back to the police report made against me last night.



I am very offended by this police report. When Malaysia Today was first launched in 2004, the Federal Territory Religious Department made a go for me. Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister jumped on the bandwagon and made a statement on prime-time television that Malaysia has many laws which can be used against me -- and if they can’t find any suitable law then they can always use the Internal Security Act and put me away for a long, long time.



I responded by challenging the Federal Territory Mufti and his retinue of Islamic scholars to a live debate at a venue and date of their choice. I even gave them the issues that we will debate to allow them time to prepare so that they do not blunder like how the Indian-Muslim Minister of Information did recently in his Al-Jazeera interview. The Mufti and the entire Federal Territory Religious Department, however, chickened out in spite of their earlier threat that they will detain me and send me for religious indoctrination and rehabilitation.



Then I naik pangkat when the Negeri Sembilan Palace lodged a police report against me resulting in me being hauled to Bukit Aman. They also confiscated my computer. This was of course not the first time. I had suffered this same fate in March 2001 which resulted in my detention under the Internal Security Act a month later.



Thereafter it was a turun pangkat when they got a mere Umno Information Chief who is famous as a non-English-speaking bumbling country bumpkin to lodge a police report against me. After incurring the wrath of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 2001, followed by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Federal Territory Religious Department, and the Negeri Sembilan Palace three years later, facing the man with two Muhammads in his name was an adversary not worth my time of day.



But last night was the pits and this is what has upset me. Last night, this totally unknown Noor Hisham Yusoh made a police report against me. It seems he is a businessman. Hey, he is no businessman. He is an Umno rent-seeker. Sheesh, calling him a businessman is like calling a prostitute a fairy godmother. A prostitute is no fairy godmother as a rent-seeker is no businessman. I suppose this Noor Hisham chap wants to make a name for himself by taking me down. This would be a feather in his cap and would allow him to climb up the political ladder.



I was told that many more police reports are being planned these next few days. It seems many Members of Parliament and Senators have been lined up to flood the various police stations with police reports. They hope that, with dozens of police reports lodged against me, I will be spending all my time in the police station and will not have any time left to work.



Sigh.....this is getting very tiring. If they think I am going to jump when the police phones and rush to the police station to answer stupid questions for hours on end then they have a surprise coming. This time if they want me they will have to come to my house and arrest me. I am not going to drive all the way to the police station to waste my time. I know my refusal to report at the police station constitutes a crime and they can arrest me and charge me for interfering with a police investigation. Well, to hell with them. You want me then come get me. And you can lock me up and throw away the key for all I care. Eventually you will still have to send me home to be buried in the Royal Mausoleum in Shah Alam. I think I will drive over there this evening to reserve my plot.



Before I sign off, have you noticed the contradictory statements coming out from our most illustrious leaders? Nazri Aziz said that the newspaper reports are not true and the government will not be setting up a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the Lingam Tapes. Then, even before the spit on Nazri’s lips could dry, Rais Yatim contradicted him and announced that the Royal Commission will be set up after all.



Then, Tan Sri Rashid, the Chairman of the Elections Commission, announced that he knows the date of the next general election but is not telling. He would just reveal that it is very near. The Prime Minister then replied that only he and no one else knows when the next general election is going to be held.



With these very contradicting and opposite statements these last few days, does it not make you wonder whether that so-called ‘official statement’ from the Istana Negara could actually be in the same category as Nazri’s and Tan Sri Rashid’s announcements which have now been rebutted? Yes, so-called ‘official announcements’ by so-called ‘authorised’ people may not exactly be official and they may not exactly be authorised to make them after all. Let us see if another and this time really authorised statement comes out from the Istana Negara to rebut the earlier statement. In the meantime, allow me to leave you while I go clean up my computer before the police come to take it away.