Tradition? (2) - new budget briefcase

Remember my post Tradition? just a week ago, in which I discussed the loss of many traditions, not just in Malaysia but elsewhere.

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I have just read an article by Tunku Abidin Muhriz, one of my fave columnists in the Malay Mail Online, titled Saving money transparently. Tunku Abidin is also the founding president of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas). It's a good article in which he lamented, among many important budgetary points, that:

The Finance Minister’s speech is perhaps the only remaining guaranteed set piece of parliamentary oratory in Malaysia; rarely are there long speeches tackling constitutional issues to arrive at powerful conclusions.

Now it’s mostly short and punchy statements for easy media consumption, assuming the YB in question isn’t being shouted down by other members or being reprimanded by the Speaker. (For an example of a proper speech, see Tengku Razaleigh’s 20-minute tour de force in denouncing the 1993 constitutional amendments, available on YouTube.)

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Surely it has been a gradual but inexorable sad loss of an important parliamentary tradition, one of beautiful or long-winded (wakakaka) debates where the people's representatives would demonstrate their mettle and competency in looking after the people's interests via their public show of understanding of issues and ensuing policy proposals (or counter proposals).

But on a trivial though indicative note, Tunku Abidin wrote (perhaps with tongue in cheek) on an aspect of our loss of 'tradition', as follows:

The budget speech is usually preceded by a photo session featuring the minister showing off the briefcase containing the budget documents outside the Treasury. I cannot find pictures of Tun HS Lee or Tun Tan Siew Sin doing the same, but I presume they did it too, since it’s a Westminster tradition, although in the UK they use a red ministerial box embossed with the royal cypher, of which only four have been used since the 1860s. Photographs suggest that the leather briefcase used last week is different to the one used in 2009.

tradition but with new briefcase

from Lederer de Paris or Montblanc Meisterstuck Selection?

Note in particular his words "... in the UK they use a red ministerial box embossed with the royal cypher, of which only four have been used since the 1860s. Photographs suggest that the leather briefcase used last week [by PM Najib merangkap-ing as Finance Minister] is different to the one used in 2009."

Wakakaka.

One thing about the Poms, just leave it to them to anchor themselves to and lay it thick on traditions a la Sixteen-K'ong-K'ong (1600 or 15th Century), where the Penang Hokkien word K'ong-K'ong means zero zero (kosong kosong) and also a dig at the pomposity of such declared or hinted vintage pedigree, wakakaka.

Once there was a certain brand of cigarette which avoided the prohibited advertisements of cigarette or smoking per se but laid it on thick about a piece of smoking accessory being made in the 'finest British tradition of craftsmanship of exceptional quality', etc etc etc, ... probably since the days when King Arthur lost his burning torch, wakakaka - that's what was meant by something-something K'ong-K'ong, wakakaka.

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Mind you, observation of such traditions a la the Poms would have at the very least saved the taxpayers the cost of a new leather briefcase, wakakaka.

I trust the current taxpayers-owned briefcase is still with the Finance Ministry and not on 'permanent loan' to a lil' Napoleon, wakakaka, which will then require another purchase for a new budget announcement - maybe this time one from Bvlgari or Hermès or Bottega Veneta.

Hope the Auditor-General will make a point to check on this, wakakaka.

Bottega Veneta (crocodile skin)

aiyah, only US$30,000

My uncles, who were officers in the military and also the police, told me that whenever there was a new CO (commanding officer) in their battalion or station, or a new PMC (president of the mess committee) had taken over management of the officers' club, the officers would be instructed to re-do the mess, especially the bar - yes, in my uncles' days, officers' mess bars were standard features.

Of course with limited financial expenses coming from the officers' mess funds, contributed by the officers themselves, each re-do or attempted renovation was at best a limited or even superficial attempt.

When the British Armed Forces in Malaya/Malaysia went home, they left behind the facilities in excellent conditions, such as officers' and sergeants' mess (clubhouses), each with a good bar.

tradition

Many Malaysian officers felt that consolidating the already fine facilities left for them would have been a far more sensible and more effective 'renovation', but alas, many of those COs and PMCs obviously wanted something new which could be recognized as their 'personal' achievements, for their bosses to consider in their annual performance reports.

In more than many a case, the already excellent features of a bar left by the British military were unnecessarily destroyed in the do-over.

Anyway, the above discussion is moot since the officers' mess bars of our military don't have bars anymore but only machines dispensing cans of soft drinks, or what the Yanks call soda machines.

Officers' Mess with soda machine? Alamak, no class liao lah, wakakaka.

Officers' Mess bar, RAF High Wycombe

I think we can reasonably assume that in the general case, behind each vandalizing or destroying of traditions and traditional features of an institution in such frequent do-overs lies someone's personal 'interests'.

Yes, BTW what had happened to the previous Budget briefcase? Wakakaka, and like Tunku Abidin, we'll be looking at the Finance Minister's briefcase in the next budgetary presentation.

tradition