One evening, a tired editor of a Canadian newspaper was dining alone at the university cafeteria. The prospect of a long monotonous lecture on journalism awaits him that same evening.

He tried to finish his food as quickly as possible so that he could catch a few minutes of rest.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a student appeared in front of him and threw a question on the subject of shadow cabinets.

The editor, being polite, looked at him and briefly answered him.

Not satisfied, the student persisted on pursuing the subject.

Looking agitated, the editor, not wanting to prolong the conversation, responded, but in a rather ominous manner.

"Look here, young man, I suppose you are not a student of politics, and if you were, you won't be standing here asking this question. But anyway I will not beat around the bush to answer your question.

"My paper is only interested in three persons in the Canadian mainstream politics; one, the prime minister, two, his finance minister (his successor) and three, the opposition leader.

"Anybody falls between or beyond them, I'm not interested nor are my journalists.

"The shadow ministers or critics that you mentioned, only interest me when they are caught sleeping with somebody's else wife or husband, that's all to it... can I continue with my dinner?"

For your information Premier Najib Abdul Razak, in the United States, the offer of cabinet posts (secretaries) before any presidential election borders on a precarious line between what is permissible in law and what is not. It is often seen as a bribe.

And for this reason, presidential candidates steer clear of this issue of selecting cabinet posts before any elections.

Somehow, this idea of illegality had slipped into the Canadian political system.

Although it is a British conventional practice used in Canada, they avoid using the term shadow ministers. In its place, the term ‘critics' is used as a common designate.

That's why in Canada, shadow ministers are referred as shadow critics not ministers. Thus, the naming of the new cabinet ministers are done after the general election and not before.

In Malaysia, Pakatan Rakyat has a shadow committee and its main function is to shadow issues not ministers.

The reason is that not all the ministries have issues. Thus, why bother shadowing them, and disturb their routine of spending their entire day playing golf?

Rest be assured, Najib, Pakatan will definitely shadow them when issues start to crop up in their ministries just like the ‘Cow' scandal involving the family of the women, family and community development minister.

This scandal was effectively shadowed by the then relatively unknown Rafizi Ramli.

Practically speaking, it only needs a few effective Pakatan MPs and a few non-MPs to shadow the immensely bloated BN cabinet .

Najib, if Pakatan were to mark your ministers one to one, Pakatan will need a bloated group to track your XXL Cabinet.

As for now, all Pakatan needs is to have a lean and mean shadow committee to hammer the hell out of your incompetent cabinet ministers in the House which they are doing right now with devastating effect.

In addition, NGOs too are shadowing your cabinet. One good example is Suaram and another is Bersih.

Suaram's role in shadowing you and the Defense Ministry is so effective that your government is putting all its resources to pin them down.

You are doing likewise to Bersih.

After all these, if you still insist on a shadow cabinet from the opposition, then please provide the funding, set up offices for the shadow cabinet ministers and also provide the workers.

And one very important thing for you to do is to allow the federal government chief secretary to have meetings with the leaders of the opposition so that in the event of a victory by the opposition, there would be a smooth transition.

This is standard practice in the Westminster system.

If not, it will make you sound silly for harping on this non-issue day in and day out.

Najib, one last piece of advice from me, please listen to your own Deputy Higher Education Minister Saifuddin Abdullah.

He is intelligent and speaks more sense than Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin and your deputy put together.

Concluding this article, I wish to quote from one British politician on this subject:

"There is no reason for the shadow cabinet to exist in our system of government which is already bloated with ineffective ministers. We don't need shadow ministers as displays - we have enough."

For further reading on shadow cabinets, please go to my blog .