Mr Wise, Mr Idris and a little matter of the GST BY: S. JAYASANKARAN

Mr Wise, Mr Idris and a little matter of the GST

Saturday, 4 April 2015
BY: S. JAYASANKARAN

A CANADIAN lawyer is on a crusade to prove that, as a matter of law, chimps are people too. For that matter, so are elephants, gorillas, dolphins and whales.
And, no kidding, his name is Steven Wise.
Mr Wise argues that animals are entitled to the rights of “persons” under law as are people and corporations.
Mr Wise was neither wise nor sagacious which meant he knew the law better than most. But he was also a naive animal lover who had once believed fondly that deep throat was a film about a giraffe.
In fairness, he also knew a lot about the animal kingdom and was keen to correct wrong suppositions.
For example, he knew that the cheetah was not the fastest animal on four legs. He knew this because it was a proven scientific fact that a bull dropped from a helicopter can reach speeds of up to 120 ft/second.
S.M. Idris disapproved of Mr Wise’s scientific theories. He was convinced that the only bull being thrown out now was the goods and services tax that descended on malaysia on april fool’s day.
Mr Idris knew full well that malaysian stores thrived on a single, unchanging law. When prices went up, they stayed up and no amount of government persuasion, or coercion, would change that fact.
Everything was GST-iable and it was clear that you should begin to worry for it was as bad as you thought and they were out to get you.
The fact was that the cost of living was rising and gst only compounded the phenomenon. Indeed, Mr Idris thought it was remarkable that despite the high cost of living, it still remained popular.
The government knew it could pull it off because the internal revenue board had what it took to get what you had. Indeed, it had statistics to show that GST was actually good for you. The only problem with that was that everyone knew that 45.26% Of all statistics were made up on the spot.
But that was the scientific way and it was unrepentant about it. “No one likes paying taxes,” said Putrajaya without a shred of regret. “What makes you so special?”
It was a good question and malaysian accounting firms agreed wholeheartedly.
Over the past year right up to the implementation of GST, they’d made a packet advising panicked firms how to become gst-compliant and they were still raking in the shekels.
So were the information technology guys who sold gst software to merchants to prepare them for the new tax.
House prices would go up. So would heavy-usage electricity bills. And haircuts.
Mr Idris didn’t like that one bit and he yearned wistfully for a royal commission of inquiry on profiteering.
But the merchants denied making excessive profits, pointing out that they’d increased prices way before the gst was implemented and so were clearly innocent of such crimes. You had to hand it to them: they had the gift of the grab.
Mr Wise also had the gift of the gab because he was a lawyer and he was proud of the fact that he’d practically invented the field of animal jurisprudence. That it didn’t make any difference to man or beast was completely beside the point.
Even so, the creative lawyer was not completely crazy and had not risen to the top of the food chain only to become a vegetarian. Actually, he had a penchant for dead animals, preferably in a delicious gravy.
But he drew the line at capital punishment. He thought that killing people who kill people just to prove that killing people is wrong was a proposition that did not make much sense.

Mr Wise, Mr Idris and a little matter of the GST BY: S. JAYASANKARAN

Mr Wise, Mr Idris and a little matter of the GST BY: S. JAYASANKARAN

Mr Wise, Mr Idris and a little matter of the GST

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