Certain quarters in the country, including, and especially, but not limited to those from Taman Melewar, believe in banning certain undesireable elements in the society as the magical cure to every problem.

Smoking is bad ? Sure, just get Mufti to issue a fatwa stating smoking is haram. Akademi Fantasia allows boys hugging girls ? Issue a fatwa to ban it. They failed to look at Akademi Fantasia from the perspective of average Malaysians. But then again, as if they care.

There are two issues at hand. First, do we have a Malaysian population here that cannot think for themselves and decide on what is good and bad ? Second, do we want a gigantic administration which interferes every aspect of our life, while the modern trend in the world is to keep the government as tiny as possible, in order to award as much liberty as possible to its citizens ?

I believe Malaysians are smart. We have companies like Kompakar that are capable of attaining Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 5 within 2 years, while there’s none from our archrival Singapore so far. We have rights activists like Madame Irene Fernandez who have bagged 2005 Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel. The earliest alternative media initiative in the region, Malaysiakini, bears the name of our nation. Even the winner of Reporters Sans Frontier (RSF) Freedom Blog Asia is a fellow Malaysian.

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