Wednesday October 31, 2007
Shall it be ECER or WEPT?
KUANTAN: What’s in a name? Quite a bit it seems.
Pahang Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob raised the matter of an appropriate acronym for the East Coast Economic Region, pointing out that everyone was using ECER because its Bahasa Malaysia acronym Wilayah Ekonomi Pantai Timur did not sound right.
“The abbreviation of the programme in Bahasa Malaysia would be WEPT which in English means ‘having cried’,” he said.
“As an example, when my cat passed away, I wept. So WEPT would not be an appropriate name,” the affable Mentri Besar said in his welcoming speech yesterday.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who took to the stage immediately after Adnan, pulled out the calling card of Petronas president and chief executive officer Tan Sri Hassan Marican, on the back of which someone had written a salutary explanation.
“According to this person, ECER when pronounced echeh, meant ‘to distribute’ in the local Malay dialect here in Pahang. If this is true then it is an appropriate name.
“However, my wife (Datin Seri) Jeanne (Abdullah) pointed out to me that wept was the past tense for weep. This means that the person had finished crying and was no longer sad. So WEPT in this case is also appropriate because we are now bringing joy to the people,” the Prime Minister said.
However, Abdullah said that the name of the programme is unimportant compared to the smooth implementation of the projects.
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