I really don't know whether to laugh or cry at the state of affairs in the country. Fresh from the annual fix of the Umno convention where playing to the gallery has become the norm, the redoubtable Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz has announced the government's grand and noble desire for more non-Malays to join the civil service.

"We should be doing something now. Not just discussing it. We do not want a civil service that is from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s or 1970s. This is 2004 and it should be made up of Malaysians," Nazri was quoted as saying during the winding-up speech on Budget 2005 late last month in the Dewan Rakyat.

Then he came out with something else that knocked me off my chair. The good minister who has oversight of parliamentary affairs declared that he'd rather have Malaysian Indians and Chinese than non-Malaysians from Indonesia and the Philippines in the civil service.

I don't think one would be faulted for wondering whether those options have indeed been on the government's mind. To add to that looping left, he let fly with this: "If a Malay comes up to me and says we should get rid of the Chinese and Indians from the civil service, I will scold him."

Yeah right, that should teach him (or her).

If I had the means to collect all the breath from politicians' talk throughout my career I would have been able to send aloft more than an armada of hot-air balloons.

Nazri also urged everyone to help boost the number of non-Malays in the civil service. Hallelujah and glory brudder... way to go!

Now I'm having second thoughts. Why? Because Nazri has insisted this is his last term. So, was suppressed laughter tugging at the corners of his mouth as he delivered this stirring call? We'll never know.

After breaking down doors to help their Malay brethren serve the nation, the chances are they'll find themselves marooned on the island called retirement.

They can look forward to spending the rest of their golden years firing off letters to the editor with the same dedication with which they had laboured for the nation - this time, bemoaning the fact that their loyal service has yet again been ignored in the national budget and the fact they can hardly make ends meet on their pension.

NS elements?

The other albatross round the neck of the government, that appears to be growing heavier by the session, is the National Service (NS) programme.

Its main thrust is the integration of the various races, but the programme seems to be have put together in somewhat cavalier fashion, going by memorandum submitted to the NS Training Council late last month by MCA Youth and eight other Chinese-based youth organisations.

Among other revealing items, it contained a call for more non-Malay trainers to be included in the programme. I mean, really, that should have been obvious from the start given the theme of the whole exercise.

The other four recommendations point to weaknesses in the programme, which suggest lack of forethought on the part of the NS designers.

These are the lack of counsellors, imbalanced diet for the participants, poor communications among the various secretariats and no code of conduct for camp commandants or directors, trainers, facilitators and supervisors.

However, I'm chewing my fingernails even more over something that Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak reportedly said - that the Education Ministry should adopt some NS elements in secondary institutions.

According to him, bodies like the boy scouts and the Red Crescent society have elements similar to those of the NS.

They say that, as one grows older, the brain starts shrinking. I must have reached that stage. Otherwise why is it I remember being a cub long before independence and a boy scout just after Merdeka?

Now, for Najib to say that these organisations have some elements of the NS has me worried sick because doubts have began growing within me as to whether I really wore that uniform and really had so much fun at a time when there was no such thing as the NS. Maybe I've started hallucinating.

Quick fixes

I've developed this odd habit of shaking my head every now and then to pick up sounds of something hard and small knocking around inside my skull.

You can understand then why I have a hard time trying to figure out why our leaders have such difficulty giving due consideration to public opinion, before arriving at decisions that impact heavily on society.

They seem unable to grasp that quick fixes tend to court unnecessary trouble; and that seems to be a strongly entrenched national trait. This is underscored by the auditor general's report that the education ministry has paid RM14.25 per week for 8,860 schools nationwide.

That's the subscription fee for Astro's educational services ever since it took over the Educational Television programme from RTM1 and RTM2 in 2000.Within that period, the taxpayer - you and I - have coughed up RM20 million.

And it would appear now that around 90 percent of the 381 schools randomly checked were not even using the facility, according to the report. The list includes schools that have not repaired faulty Astro devices, and others with functioning devices but without television sets.

According to the report, some of the television sets and decoders have been gathering dust in storerooms. And here's the kicker: most schools don't watch ETV programmes....it apparently clashes with the time table.

If the private sector had been guilty of such negligence and wastage, rest assured that blood would have been flowing across trading floor and elsewhere. No wonder Indians of old used to say that even if you take care of chickens, do it for the government. Some things, it would seem, never change.

It's dream stuff for television sitcom scripts. But the pity of it all is that we have censors, whose main purpose in life is to protect the sanctity of the leadership. It's all got to do with Asian values, you see.

My fingernails are looking distinctly ragged. The urge to check into a psychiatric hospital is really growing overpoweringly strong. Oops and oops again. Belay that last thought. Have to send out a team to check for fungus and the state of the air conditioners first.

Laugh or cry? I think I'll just sigh.