MALAYSIAN FOLLIES

My slightly sympathetic comment about the outrageous Mohammad Mahathir, Prime Minister of Malaysia, elicited the following response from a rather irate Australian reader:

“Didn't Mahathir appoint as deputy a man he now accuses of sodomy and homosexuality? If an Australian Governor General was forced to resign over an appointment he made in a previous job, surely el Presidente should be held accountable for his decisions in office.

And weren't Malaysia's sodomy laws introduced by the British anyway? And didn't Malaysia once include Singapore, which is home to the notorious transvestite Bugis Street? My understanding is that the Singaporean government, since being expelled from Malaysia for being of the wrong race, has made efforts to 'clean up' Bugis Street. So where were Malaysia's allegedly squeaky clean "Asian values" back then? Apparently the apparently puritanical and precious Malaysians were not offended by Bugis Street when Kuala Lumpur and Mahathir's own ruling UMNO party called the shots?

Do 'Asian values' include torture? Apparently Mahathir's values do! “

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