The Perfect Crime (2)

Two of my favourite postcards in my growing collection hanging in my study, is one of a certain son-in-law in a ‘little-house-on-the-prairie’ dress and the other being two MP-monkeys (the ‘Leader’ snoozing away in a dunce hat comes a close third). They never fail to crack me up, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone those are made to elicit subjective responses.

But I must say, I was surprised, having gone through all the collated responses today, from Malaysia-Today to a number of prominent celebrity bloggers and a number of newspapers. They are very illuminating and I’ve printed them out for further study and to select choice quotes for a paper I’m working on, tentatively titled, “What Lies Beneath: The Simulacrum‘s Justice” (copyright ya).

“Dinner for 3” even snagged the prized Sunday Star editorial spot and a rather disturbing frontpage headline story in Nanyang’s Sunday evening edition (see below).

But the question which bugged me all evening was this:- Why are Umno and friends (including our dear rakan ‘Kimma’) getting all worked up, even to the point of hysteria, over this?
We’ve certainly seen better ones. So I called up a number of my friends and arrived at the conclusion that this is *THE* million-dollar question.

“What is it really, that is upsetting Umno?”

If we knew the answer to that, we would then solve the Perfect Crime.

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I didn’t find the following in Sin Chew, Guang Ming, China Press (maybe my eyes are tired?). Lest they disappear from Monday’s Day edition, I’ve made a very rudimentary (thus non-authoritative) translation of the headline news.

Nanyang (Evening edition 09 July 2007) headline news:-

(…) Hisham said Pemuda Umno is studying whether they will make a police report, when officiating the Gombak Division meeting. He got very emotional. He repeated the story of kissing the keris.

Malay kissing keris is defend and preserve Malay traditional culture.

Kissing the keris is a symnbol of bravery and power.

Moreover kissing keris is inherited from the first Umno leader Datuk Onn Jaafar thus passing on to us. You people want me to kiss the keris, I am willing to do it again.

Keris is a symbol of Malay unity. If a leader kisses keris it means he has the ability to lead.

If other races want to display or kiss their traditional weapon like the kungfu sword, we Malays will not oppose. This is because everyone is defending and preserving their traditional culture.

What Tian Chua did is like the Western media publishing Prophet Mohammad’s cartoon.

We have to stop this negative culture of exploiting transparency to insult national leaders.

He will study to see if Tian Chua has committed any offence under the law before they make a police report (…)

If anyone has done a better translation, please do append it in the comment box.

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