COMMENT | The government, its leaders, some lawmakers, and a section of our population, please take a bow. You have shown the world that in difficult times, a modification of the phrase “Keep calm and carry on” can do wonders.

By replacing just two words, “carry on” to “divert attention”, even the most problematic issues can be put on the back burner while making way for trivial issues to be in the forefront.

Isn’t it an irony that at a time when the auditor-general warns the country that we are digging one hole after another just to fill the holes dug up in the yesteryears, politicians are trivialising a hitherto unknown brand of whiskey?

To put it colloquially, it is a case of “hutang sampai mati” (in debt until death) and yet the system pays scant attention to this gigantic problem.

Doesn’t anyone worry that Malaysians will have to carry the debts in perpetuity – generation after generation – while some decision-makers earn enough to last several generations?

Isn’t it an irony we are now understanding the mindset of lawmakers on both sides? The latest salvo by one politician that “drinking Timah whiskey is akin to drinking a Malay woman” must be the crème la crème of the...