Critical Thoughts

Like the majority of Malaysians, I was eager to see the live telecast of our very first political debate which copied the American version of televised debate and so I actually waited until the very moment for the live event over Astro Awani at exactly 9 pm sharp. I must commend both the Information Minister dan DSAI for their impeccable behaviour during the debate: both were smiling and shaking hands at the end of the debate. No stones were thrown at each other and no physical blows were exchanged. I have to admit that I am impressed with the eloquence of the Information Minister, who was certainly notches above the previous Information Minister. Our politics certainly have matured a lot after the political tsunami of 8th March. Such a thing would be unimaginable ten years ago, much less televised.

But I certainly cannot say the same for the quality of argument proposed by Strawberry. DSAI made his case very well and I applaud him for not stooping so low to the level of Strawberry, who seems to certainly have an axe to grind against DSAI. He did not address the core issues. I was not interested to listen about world, world, world prices or the history of the Arab oil boycott in the early 1970s. Who the fuck cares? I don’t give shit about rising world oil prices. And I already know DSAI’s past and his involvement in the Baling protests during his mahasiswa days, so what the heck does that have got to do with the rising oil prices? I want to know what is the government doing to solve the issue of oil prices and how do they justify the current subsidy reduction without burdening the people? Because as it stands right now:

Fact 1: Malaysia is a net exporter of oil. We should be able to afford maintaining the subsidies and weather the storm of current oil prices.
Fact 2: We are not seeing the effects of those billion ringgit profits to improve the transportation system, etc. [in fact this question was raised by Zulkifli Sulong but was skimmed over by Strawberry]
Fact 3: The solution proposed by DSAI was not even touched by Strawberry, he seemed intent on character assassination. I wonder why?

DSAI - 1, Strawberry - 0