COMMENT At least, we have the MRT, the biggest infrastructure project in Malaysian history, on the cards to ease the traffic jams that have been building up on our roads, particularly in the Klang Valley, over the past three decades.

But what solvents are there for the cultural stalemates we increasingly encounter these days, those that threaten to render public discourse in the country an exercise in which the argumentative appear to be talking to the deaf.

Strident Muslim groups, aided and abetted by a ham-fisted police force, frowned on an annual rite of commiseration for gays, lesbians, transgender and transvestites because, they asserted, it would promote an alternative lifestyle considered repugnant in some religious traditions...