Stones, mangoes, bananas and papayas…

Instead of throwing stones at Ahmad Maslan, how about some rotten tomatoes or even some papayas and bananas?

COMMENT

Ahmad Maslan recently admitted his willingness to explain the benefit of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to the entire Malaysian population even if it meant he has to endure stones being thrown at him.

While I have no intention of hurting the Deputy Finance Minister with stones, especially a smarty pants like him with his 3.85 point CGPA (wouldn’t want to injure his ‘genius brain’), I wouldn’t mind testing the water with a couple of rotten tomatoes (just saying).

Ahmad Maslan’s statement actually reminded me of an incident in Venezuela sometime last week when one Marleny Olivio threw a mango at President Nicolas Maduro, hitting him squarely on the head.

At the time, the president was driving a bus slowly through a crowd in the central state of Aragua during one of his campaigns to get closer to his people.

The mango had a piece of paper attached to it – with Olivio’s full name, telephone number and a note which read, “If you can, call me.”

The president went home, ate the mango and gave her a call. Olivio then related to the president the troubles she was having with her house. She was delighted hours later when the president’s officials gave her a call, telling her an apartment has been approved for her and her family.

I wonder had something similar taken place in our country, what Prime Minister Najib Razak would have done.

Most probably Najib would have summoned our home minister, who in turn would have had the special branch skin the woman alive before prosecuting her for endangering the life of a nation’s leader with intention of overthrowing the government.

Maybe the right person to throw a fruit at would be Selangor Menteri Besar Azmin Ali or Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng who both seem nice enough, friendly leaders who enjoy approaching the people and listening to their troubles (with a group of reporters and camera crew on standby, of course).

Now I bet they would be delighted to award anyone who threw fruits at them with low cost government houses (just make sure you don’t throw the rotten ones, okay).

Talking about fruits, did you notice all those headlines about papayas and bananas dominating the news recently? Never in my 40 years of life have I known that papayas and bananas could offer one so much happiness and excitement!

So if you’re having a bad day, chill. All you have to do is to drive to the nearest fruit stall and get yourself some soft papayas and hard bananas – and just like Zahid and Kak Ijat, you too could probably giggle away.

Special note to PM Najib: If at any time you too would like to follow in the Venezuelan President’s footsteps, please do inform me, YAB. If a mango can get Olivio an apartment, I’d be happy to try my luck with a durian!