LKS has a post about the perils of speaking SMS’d English, but starts off with a wild foray into the inner mechanics of editorials on the NST. You can check out LKS’s opinion of the offending piece here.

Personally, I absolutely love that editorial to bits. I didn’t catch it today in my print copy of the NST, foregoing it in the rush of things, so I’ll have to thank LKS for saying something about it. I’ve been watching local blogs one by one say something about LKS’s call for an emergency meeting to discuss the separation of powers. On the one hand I wondered if it was just sensationalist politics, but apparently LKS feels deeply about it — and so we all should because, nominally speaking, a separation of powers is the best bet against Big Brother’s encroaching influence.


On the other hand, I felt quite ambivalent about the whole drama because I was thinking about the smug authority of the incumbent, most tellingly displayed by the ‘Chin Peng bapa Merdeka DAP’ issue; LKS called for a referendum to refer Nazri to the Council of Privileges for mischievous remarks and was voted down by parliament.

That’s the spectre of party politics in parliament at work, that’s what you get from a 92% majority. That’s the absurd futility of it, and it’s how I felt about that emergency meeting. Apathy? Not mine.

Enter the editorial. Cheekily written, quite a number of rhetorical flashes, it’s own share of hyperbole and preposterous reductions, but that’s the beauty of it.

The word is an ideal to him, a point of unassailable principle; its order and process his lifelong bailiwick. Might this kerfuffle have been avoided, therefore, had the new department been named “Janitorial Services”? That would have lacked gravitas, but that’s what it boils down to.

Parliament, in this context, is just a big old building, into its fifth decade, constructed with state-of-the-art technology for 1962. It rattles and creaks. Its plumbing and wiring belong in Muzium Negara, its close contemporary.

And I don’t think we’re really talking about the big old building here, either. ‘Janitorial’ has such a rich nuance, and no it doesn’t lack gravitas; on the contrary, it’s weight carries through to the end of the article because it seems like a comedy, a word uttered in dismissal, an insulting characterization, but also a declaration of what the Parliament, without the trappings of concrete, really needs, doesn’t it?

And just mate this with another glorious characterization:

Nazri has since performed creditably in organising the administrative affairs of Parliament and the maintenance of its infrastructure. The new “department” is simply to further consolidate and expand these organisational, managerial (and yes, janitorial) services.

After all, our Members of Parliament deserve salubrious surroundings in which to discuss matters of national concern, where the air-conditioning works, the canteen is pleasant and the toilets flush. They do deserve the consideration of the allowance raises they’ve recently passed for themselves.

Brilliant, lah. I want to shake the hand of this writer, really! In one paragraph he/she reduces Nazri to the status of a hired hand at a mamak stall, and not that of a party whip. In two paragraphs the writer relates Nazri to the inconsequentials of the Parliament, and not to the core meaning. I mean, wahlau!! That one editorial has done to Nazri what LKS couldn’t imagine doing in Parliament, and have it stand!

And that’s not all: what does it say about our MPs in Parliament? I was, at this stage, slapping my forehead, giggling and going “aiyah!” over and over again!

The administrative reorganisation of Parliament has been set up literally to keep the house in order, not to interfere with the proceedings of the House. The notion that this has “downgraded” Parliament to the rank of a government department is ludicrous.

And that’s the point; you can’t downgrade something to a lower order in the scheme of things when its very members by their actions have made a mickey of it, now can you?

If these are the kind of editorials we can expect in the future, I’m going to be a fan!