The Things Politicians Say When They Are In Love

Malaysian politicians never cease to amuse me with the bizarre things they say and do (or maybe I'm just easily amused). My theory is that our politicians are blessed with a unique gene that makes them fall irrevocably in love with themselves. And since love is blind, it does make you say and do very silly things against your better judgement.

Take for instance the brilliant views of our Deputy Education Mohd Puad Zarkashi on the usage of English in today's workplace, reported in great detail by The New Straits Times today:

"Malaysians in the private sector should use Bahasa Malaysia and not English to show pride of the national language, Deputy Education Minister Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi said yesterday. He said they used English 99 per cent of the time and hardly communicated in Bahasa Malaysia.

"This also occurs in government-linked companies where we have this weird culture of people speaking to each other in English instead of the national language," he said at the launch of the Bahasa Melayu International linguistics seminar here.

Puad said the private sector, by not using Bahasa Malaysia, had tarnished the image of the national language.

He said Malaysians should emulate the French, Japanese and Koreans who were loyal to their language."

That was as far as I got before I stopped reading the article, but if you insist on reading his monologue, here's the link to the story.

I came away wondering two things after reading the article:

1. It must be love---how else could the Deputy Education Minister forget that Japan and South Korea are spending gazillions hiring English teachers to train them to speak the language fluently?

2. Does his press aide still have a job?

3. How long will he have his job?