I refer to the malaysiakini report Najib: No rift with Pak Lah. According to the deputy prime minister, there is no truth to the rumours that there is a rift between him and the prime minister. But why do I get this feeling of dj vu?

If I remember correctly, Dr Mahathir Mohamad complained about people spreading rumours that there was a rift between his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, and him. It isn't true, he insisted. 'Even if I were to embrace him in public, some people will still continue to say that there is a rift between us,' he said in his usual testy manner. We all know that the rumours were true and what the PM said was not.

Before the Bank Bumiputra Finance scandal, (BMF) there were all sorts of rumours. Of course, BMF maintained that there is no truth to the rumours. I, too, told people not to listen to the ridiculous rumours. I could not believe how anyone can be so stupid as to lose two billion (billion!) ringgit.

Of course, those were the days when losing billions was unimaginable. Thanks (or rather, no thanks) to the Mahathir administration, losses amounting to billions are no longer unimaginable. I guess you can say that the Malaysian government has been successful in stimulating the imagination of the Malaysian citizens and teaching us to think big.

And then, there was that ridiculous rumour that a royal personage murdered a caddy by beating him on the head with a golf club. Don't be silly, I said. How can that be true? And then, there was an even more incredible rumour that the soldier who ran around town toting an M-16 rifle (or at any rate, a serious weapon) was the brother of the caddy who was murdered. Apparently, he wanted justice.

Don't be absurd, I told my friends, you guys must be watching too much television. Now, of course, I'm a changed person. Every time the government tells me not to listen to rumours, I do just the opposite. I confess, I listen to rumours ... carefully.