MU wins! finally
Alright, so Manchester United finally had a win after a bad start to the season, first losing to Arsenal during the Community Shield then to Chelsea in their opening match for the English Premier League. MU beat Norwich City (the Proton sponsored team) 2-1. A sorry win considering that Norwich was just promoted from the First Division and don't have the star power MU has. It can be argued that MU was without its top marksmen and defender (Rio of the doping ban scandal), but it was no excuse for them to clinch a marginal win against the minnows of the EPL. Arsenal is either drubbing its opponents with big margins or not letting in goals at all, while MU is wallowing in self-pity. Anyway, the best of luck to MU!

The highlights:
• David Bellion's goal -- Alan Smith' glancing header (as a result of his wanting to score with his head) was drifting diagonally across the penalty area far from goal, and the ball looked set to go past the left-hand post and out of the field when David Bellion came out of nowhere to send it straight into the goal with a right-footer.
• Alan Smith scores! his first for MU in the EPL --  Smith chested the ball. As the ball came under the influence of gravity, Smith volleyed it before it could make contact with the ground. His left-footed volley sailed past the Norwich keeper who was Greening (grinning) at the skies, thinking that Smith would once again send it diagonally across the box. And this time there were no other MU guys  in the box to change the ball's direction. To everyone's surprise, the ball landed just where the left-hand post and crossbar meet the net. Goal!

The shadows:
• John O'Shea's horrible conduct at the corner, pushing Huckerby around (this quintessential example of childish behaviour must be watched)
• MU goalkeeper, Tim Howard's howler -- reaching for the skies but not quite as Huckerby sent a powerful shot in his direction. If the shot had dipped a little bit at the end, it would have been a huckleberry goal. Luckily for Howard, the woodwork took the ball.
• John O'Shea's belief that as a defender, his job is to be in the opposing team's penalty box

What they don't tell us during M.S.
Pengajian Malaysia, or Malaysian Studies (M.S.) in English, officially aims to "help us understand our country from a cultural, political and economic point of view". It is a compulsory subject, with no bearing whatsoever on the A-Levels course we are pursuing, introduced by the Malaysian Government to ensure that we "are kept patriotic", in other words, they want us to conform to their mode of thinking. This is because the A-Level syllabus by CIE has no elements in which the government can influence our thoughts. And so, lacking control over what and how we think, they force us to sit through boring mdm. suraya's class every Saturday morning. And they threaten to withhold our A-Level results from Cambridge if we fail the M.S. exams...

If M.S. aims to give us a historical appreciation and understanding of our country, I for one think that its historical passages are too brief. They offer us no way of looking at things from all justifiable angles -- only the Malaysian Government's angle is presented. That is to be expected from shaky or dictatorial governments, but why can't our government recognise our mature minds and let us see things for ourselves? Must they always tell us how to think? No wonder private companies are loath to take in local graduates when they are given a choice between the former and foreign graduates. Why? The main reason is because our local graduates in general are perceived as being unable to think out-of-the-box. This may be harsh, but unless the government relaxes its reins, our local graduates who are not lacking in talent will suffer in their pursuit of finding an honest way of living (allusion to the crazy criminals our there).

M.S. also has noble ambitions in educating us about our constitution and civil liberties. But M.S. sometimes breezes through without giving us examples of previous governments' actions that are not in line with the Federal Constitution. According to the text we read that "mengikut Perkara 9 dalam Perlembagaan Persekutuan, tiada seorang pun boleh dibuang negeri atau ditahan masuk ke dalam Persekutuan" (in English: "according to Article 9 of the Federal constitution, no citizen can be banished from a State or prevented from entering the Federation"). According to Barry Wain's article in the Commentary and Analysis section of the Asian Wall Street Journal, 21 July 1978, Vol. II No.226, a citizen was barred from entering Sabah:

"He stood his ground and argued the point for 2½ hours but it didn't help. The fuss ended when Immigration officials placed him in a wheelchair, pushed him across the tarmac and lifted him bodily onto a departing aircraft... In different circumstances the incident might be appreciated for its lighter side."

The reason for this incident? He was the Opposition Leader at that time. Barry Wain's views on this matter reflected the foreign democratically-aligned countries' views of that time, "denying him [the Opposittion Leader] access to a state within his own country raises fundamental questions about an alledgely democratic society. It also indicates that many in the country have yet to adjust to new political realities."

The trouble with Barry Wain's article is that he was judging Malaysian democratic practises from an idealised democratic point of view. At that time, the Communist threat hadn't ended yet, and the May 13 riots of 1969 were still fresh in Malaysians' minds. Security was paramount (our government says this till this day when ISA-ing political opponents). But was it really necessary to bar an unarmed and non-violent politician from entering another state of the Federation?

No doubt Mr. Wain's arguments are in line with Article 9 as quoted above. But my fellow Malaysians, it must be understood that Sabah and Sarawak have autonomous control over their immigration laws which are separate from that of the other Federated States. This is provided in the Federal Constitution under the same article. That is why we still need to use passports to get into Sabah/Sarawak (the succeeding governments have been trying to phase this out since 1973 but all they have done is drag their feet).

Finally, after analysing the whole scenario, it is understood that the Sabah state government decision was a politically motivated one to prevent the then Opposition Leader from campaigning in Sabah (the general elections were just around the corner at that time). So much for democracy in the 1970s. This case was a clear misuse of the powers vested in the government by the Federal Constitution.
 

A mature government, please
At least the "democratic" situation is not so bad nowadays, but that is only because we have a very weak Opposition that is unable to provide the necessary check and balance to the government of the day. This has its pros and cons: It provides for a stronger government that can push through its policies without being unnecessarily stymied by the opposition in Parliament but this also means that the government can do what it likes without regard for transparency, responsibility and justice.

The current government of Abdullah Badawi is still a relatively young one, the elections just finished (and some results still being contested in court!), so it remains to be seen if it is a mature government that can walk the straight and narrow without the need of a "strong" opposition party in Parliament.

The handling of the MRR2 fiasco and the recent "bird-flu" scare in Kelantan should be used by the government to show us how mature and responsible they can be. It is laudable that they project an image of "transparency", but in the case of the MRR2, the culprits have to be brought to task and someone has yet to fall on his sword (to take responsibility by resigning like in the UK -- but in Asia, political bigwigs don't ususally do this; they can sit at the top no matter how many slip-ups they allow to happen on their watch). Understandably, the Anti-Corruption Agency hasn't finished with its investigations, but when it does, let's see how the government handles the guilty ones.