When you can't argue with facts, appeal to the emotion

That seems to be the modus operandi of Umno as well as the Malay papers that are controlled by them. After the son-in-law turned down the chance to wallop Tony in public tonight (do you really think he will turn up suddenly tonight??), Utusan Malaysia goes to town on Sunday to wallop Tony and the DAP with exactly that - appealing to the emotions of the readers by claiming the race is under seige, they're being humiliated, and it's time for them to rise up and unite. How exactly these calls have relevance to the issue at hand is really mind boggling. The only reason why they have turned to such rhetorics is nothing but pure political attack, bringing up a host of unrelated and irrelevant topics (which are not even accurate most of the time). The constant harping on the inability of Malay graduates to find work in the private sector will come to naught if they refuse to see the actual reasons behind it.

Instead of blaming the apparent discrimination practised by the private sector, why not ask if it's because of the lack of proficiency of English among the graduates, the way they perform in the interviews, and overall results of their examinations? The use of "Mandarin speaking required" as evidence is just lame. Pick up an NST or The Star Jobs pullout and count for yourself how many ads actually do specify that as a requirement. Besides, what is there to stop anyone who is non-Chinese from being able to converse fluently in Mandarin? How about those "banana" Chinese who knows nuts about Mandarin or any other Chinese dialects? Would they scream discrimination as well? Going further, what about those job ads which specify "Bumiputeras preferred", or explicitly stating "Bumiputeras only"? All this tit-for-tat talk on race is just an exercise in futility as it will just divert us from the actual problem, let alone providing any solutions.

At the end of the day, if really want to achieve a developed country status with first world mentality, at least do away with the baseless rhetorics and irrelevant emotives. Claiming that his job is to destroy the opposition, but chickened out from a challenge to a civil debate is pure 3rd world and low class. Maybe his idea of "destroy" is to send in his Putera Rempit Umno stormtroopers (even that is not original as Umno Youth has been known to do that a couple of times already). But this controversy is also a baptism of fire of sorts for Tony who, in the short few months since he jumped into the game full time, is beginning to rise in visibility and reputation. Perhaps a note of thanks from him rather than an unwarranted apology is more appropriate for KJ.

Note: There will be a forum tonight, Wed 30 May 8pm at the KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, on the topic of "Civil Service Excellence: Quality vs Quantity". Do attend if you could. Details below:

Topic: Civil Service Excellence: Quality vs Quantity
Venue: KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall
Date: 30 May 2007 (Wednesday)
Time: 8.00 pm

Confirmed speakers:
Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim
Nurul Izzah Anwar
Lim Guan Eng
Lim Kit Siang

There may be two more speakers: a rep from MTUC and a respected academician.