Tired of the same old story

Steeping myself in English Literature and theatre in university, I saw every film or play of Shakespeare that was available.

In 1990 Franco Zeffirelli released ‘Hamlet.’ Halfway through the video, I stopped it because I realised I was watching it because I was curious to see if Mel Gibson could take on such a challenging role.

He acquitted himself quite well.

I stopped watching because I knew how the story ended. And I haven’t gone near Shakespeare since unless his work was the inspiration for another genre or form.

This leads me to this dreadful, melodramatic soap-operatic 61-year series the government has been running as our national narrative.

It started as a feel-good family series, but within a decade, the established formula was a clichéd potboiler with quarrels and enmity within the family and with other families, shifting alliances in an endless power struggle, crime and scandal, murder and missing funds, lifestyle of the bitch and the infamous, with heartwarming moments in the scripts devoted to bonding generously with loyal, devoted peons and peasants delirious with joy at handouts of a few hundred ringgit.

The past few weeks it has felt like an extended Raya or Christmas season of feel-good episodes – the PM has been handing out goodies to civil servants, padi farmers, the police, etc.

Aside: The ang-pows are being filled from public funds. I wonder who is lending money to the PM for campaign expenses this election.

It must be difficult finding a generous Saudi billionaire nowadays, after the Saudi government detained dozens of them, accused of corruption, in a five-star hotel, their release dependent on them settling a financial penalty.

No chance of asking Robert Kuok for a couple of spare billion. A financial adviser is marooned somewhere without a boat, or up a shit-creek without a paddle.

Now this tedious, clichéd series is up for renewal for another five seasons.

The latest episode is the strongest argument against renewal.

It’s like a Loony Tunes episode of a boxing match between two teams… without the humour.

The size of the ring changes with every match. The ring-side judges and the referee are paid by the defending champ.

Charges that the champ has corrupted his blood-stream with dope are dismissed by the champ’s team doctor. His urine has been cleansed by Andean grain.

The no-hitting-below-the-belt rule has been changed. The news/new rule allows him to wear his shorts up to under his armpits.

The challenger cannot wear his red shorts but must borrow a blue-coloured one from a friend.

I’d rather start keeping up with a Kardashian, which is my idea of purgatory, than endure another five years of this depressing, dreary show.

The devils

I was asked at lunch a couple of weeks ago: The devil you know or the devil you don’t know?

A devil I knew over two decades ago, was someone who had a say in buying RM2 million worth of books for a new public university.

Can you supply books for the following subjects? No problem. I am linked to an established bookshop in London.

He didn’t beat around the bush. The next sentence: My share is 40 percent.

The size of his demand and his cutting straight to the chase promoted my blurting: 40 percent? How much profit do you think a book-seller makes?

He added insult to my injured naivete: You mean I must teach you how?

You figure it out. I can’t. Two million ringgit minus cost of books plus the devil’s 40 percent plus the seller’s profit – in the first year of the university, how many books were in the library?

Every year the auditor-general’s department rifles through thousands of documents. Every year, the year’s financial forensic report is presented in parliament – not following procedure in authorising expenditure here, equipment bought and not used or not suitable there, a few hundred thousand here, a few million there.

MPs on the government side murmur regret and promise to raise their KPI. Opposition MPs and tax-payers whip themselves into outraged froth about government mismanagement... for a couple of days.

New political squabbles and scandals will replace it, and the auditor-general’s department’s existence is forgotten till a year later.

Whenever the MACC reveals its latest haul of public officials with sticky fingers, the cynical are always quick to respond with the cliché: Ya, catch ikan bilis. The sharks are left alone.

Don’t sneer at ikan bilis. They are many and everywhere, in every state, nibbling at public funds in the government’s overgrown bureaucratic swamp.

Every week or so, MACC nets two ikan bilis here, three ikan bilis there, for swallowing a few hundred thousand here, a few million there of public funds. What they lack in size, they make up in numbers.

Not all of them are found guilty, the prosecution, for whatever reason, failing to make its case. That’s another story. But quite a few of them leaves the courts in T-shirt purdah and cuffs.

That’s the devil I know.

The devil I don’t?

In a pharmacy in Bangsar last week, an Indian and a Malay man, 60s, well-educated:

A: But your family is first-generation Umno.

B: It’s not the same party.

A: You think the other side is better?

A: This side, I know what they are. They are… The other side - simple. If the buggers don’t do what they say, we kick them out at the next elections.

I was tempted to interject: Sirs, before you can kick the buggers out, first we must get them in.

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THOR KAH HOONG is a veteran journalist. - Mkini