The big question for 2026

The thin blue line: Policemen making their pledge to serve the country and people during the Police Day celebration at the state’s contingent police headquarters in Lebuh Penang last March. — The Star

I don’t have the habit of making new year resolutions because I know how futile the exercise is. Pledging to eat less and exercise more tends to fall by the wayside given the many festivals that crowd around the first few months of the year. But I did make one resolution this time, which is that I won’t sweat the small stuff and will instead focus on the bigger more important things in life. I will try to be more positive, kinder, more generous and more creative. Those can be interpreted in any way you want.

But not everybody made this resolution. Hence, it’s only been a month, and some people are already wallowing in trivia, all in the name of righteousness. The police are being made to spend their time investigating a young reporter who allegedly asked a sensitive question to a foreigner who possibly didn’t know enough about our country to know how to answer it. I’m not sure what the offence was; a badly worded question, or the “crime” of embarrassing some people in front of a foreigner. As always, we fire an entire bazooka at a hapless reporter, an approach guaranteed to not endear him to the powers-that-be. This is the reformist government, right?