On the home front

I finally got the cheque for the pre-employment class - after a month's delay. However my friends Alby and Barbara didn't get their cheques and had to collect it the next day. I think the university is really inefficient. SKET is worse than inefficient. Imagine we received our letters of appointment today - after we had finished teaching and what is more, we didnt even get that for the pre-employment programme. We were asked to come and teach and we all went happily, without even a letter to appoint us. And now after its all over, they still haven't prepared our payment vouchers. I had to wait from 12.00 till 1.pm then the clerk told us to come back at 3.00pm. When we returned it was still not ready, though lucky for me, mine was. When will they pay us for the last programme I wonder. Next month perhaps?

Today's news is full of Anwar's melodrama - his so called death threats and running to the Turkish embassy for safety. He said or his wife said that the Turkish embassy invited him but the spokesperson at the embassy said he went there himself, not at anybody's invitation. As to the reports of his sodomy act with an aide, well I really don't know. Of course he and Azizah both claimed that it was a frame up, as before. But my mind can't accept this logically - who would frame him? The BN? Najib? But why? Political assasination? I think its Anwar himself trying to get some political mileage.The strange thing is that I know many of my friends are on his side. They believe him and say that he has been sadly maligned and that he is the only leader Malaysia can hope for. Maybe... I would have voted for him once. But ater the Gore affair and finding out that he supported Al Gore's campaign for presidency and gave money to his cause, well... now I think he's just a greedy man who wants power.

Malaysia's political future really seems to be in a shambles. Today's parliament sitting looked like another farce - a comedy of errors, with the DAP and PAS making accusations and the speaker trying to maintain order. I think its becoming more and more farcical - the whole parliamentary session. As long as these people are only interested in promoting their own agenda, things will never improve. Why can't they ALL be more mature in their thinking and work only for the good of the country and not themselves. But this I think is naive thinking. Most men are greedy anyway - for money, for power. Whether it is one political party or the other,the end result is the same. Its just they way they do it that's different. Some spout religion and wear the ulamak's robes to swear that their aims are pure and altruistic. Some try to gain the people's sympathy, giving a picture of a down-trodden political opponent who is subjected to all kinds of malicious rumours...

I think I'd rather trust Lim Kit Siang with his verbal attacks on parliament than hypocrites who show a smile to the world, hiding malice behind their words. As Shakespeare quoted in Julius Caesar -" Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look... such men are dangerous." I agree with him wholeheartedly. At least Kit Siang does not hide behind a mask of religiousness or goodness.