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Sunday, July 12, 2015

A lesson from my father, for Najib and Rosmah

Set the record straight with haste, the nation’s moral compass cannot be left in self-destruct mode.
FMT LETTERS
don't-steal
From J.D. Lovrenciear, via email
Fifty years ago, at a tender age of 10 I was taught a lesson by my late father, an experience that remains so true and absolutely relevant till this time. And I shall relate that episode with the sole hope that our Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak and his sworn administration as well as Rosmah Mansor will reflect and respond with a clear conscience that alone can save this nation’s battered reputation and integrity.
It was the first day of term holidays. I woke up at dawn and stepped out into the common shared compound, a garden space of simple flowers and a few fruit trees that belonged to every neighbour of a row of 10 houses comprising Chinese, Malay, Indian and Sikh families. None had any fencing outside their homes.
Right in front of my eyes on the sand was a top (gasing), its string neatly wound around it. There was no one in sight. It was not mine. I knew that my immediate neighbour’s son had been playing with it the evening before. Quickly I took it. Steal it I did and hid it in a tin-pot of creeper plants by the entrance to the house. Then I went in and opened my school book in an attempt to erase any evidence of me being out of the house so early.
Several minutes later the mother of my next-door friend came calling, asking loudly: “Has your son seen my boy’s top, Mary?” My mother promptly replied from the kitchen, “No, he is inside the house studying all this while.”
My heart was pounding fast. I buried myself deeper into my books to lend credence to my mum’s trust that I would not know as I was at my table studying. But luck was not on my side – or shall we say, the heavens were siding justice.
Shortly after, my neighbour raised her voice so that a few others could also hear and demanded to know how the top had been found hidden in the pot at our entrance.
My father stepped out to enquire, I was dragged by the collar into the compound, and broomstick in hand, he whacked the daylights out of me.
“Don’t ever take what is not yours for whatever reason, ever, in all your life!” was his repeated reprimand as he left me kneeling and weeping on the gravel in full view of all the neighbours, ignoring their pleas to stop.
“He is only a small boy, okay lah, cukup lah itu.” But he insisted, “What he learns now is what will make him to be when he grows up. And let everyone’s children know that too,” he added.
An hour later he left for work on his prized Raleigh bicycle. Only then my mother came to my rescue, but the punishment was not over: she commanded me to wash and then kneel in front of the family altar. It was another painful 30 minutes before she allowed me my breakfast of black coffee.
That experience has lasted a good fifty years.
Never take what is not yours. Worse, never take what is not yours and give to others with no right to it either, nor take something which is not the work of your labour even if you would have had the opportunity to repay in abundance some day in the future.
The means cannot be justified by the ends
Dear prime minister, as the leader of a nation, you must set the record straight with haste. You cannot go on with all kinds of responses and admonitions, buying time, and drawing more brickbats and flak from the very people you profess to lead.
The nation’s moral compass cannot be left in self-destruct mode.
We as patriotic citizens are fighting a losing battle with you and your professed supporters to regain our nation’s dignity.
As long as the 1MDB debacle drags on; as long as the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder remains questionable; as long as the AmBank affair kicks up new dust; as long as property purchases Down Under and God knows where else, keep embarrassing us, Malaysians can only keep asking their prime minister and their Cabinet members, “Who, why and how come?”
The question is who will be the father to punish those scheming, thieving, and playing mum?
J.D. Lovrenciear is an FMT reader.

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