If there's one thing for certain...

JAKARTA (JP): I have a problem with certain words. Take "certain" for example. My confidence in this wee lexical item has certainly been undermined by the way certain people are wont to use it.

This may have begun with the way some football commentators in that salivatory way of theirs would gasp into the microphone, "It's a certain goa... Oh dear, he's missed it!" but, no, it's more sinister than that, I fancy.

Look at some of its recent usage in Indonesia, "students being manipulated by certain groups" and the like that events have again familiarized us with.

Now, if the authorities know for certain who these "certain" groups are then why don't they say so? But they won't, will they? And why not? Because it is a racing certainty that these "certain" groups do not fit the following Oxford English Dictionary definitions of "certain", to wit, "determined, fixed, settled, not variable, unfailing, definite, exact, precise".

In short, they are not all certain. If they had precise or exact configurations, then there would be no obstacles to uttering their names, would there?

Having smeared certain student groups such as Forkot with a communist association, certain high-ranking officials not a million miles away from the leadership of the men who wear big boots and carry SS-1 rifles now demonstrate their uncertainty with the facts by resorting to certain innuendoes that for certain are rather vague.

This is a case of "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, you know who I'm talking about". Trouble is, I don't, or to put it another way, I'm not at all certain that I do.

Of one thing I am certain, however, and that is that some people are rather economical with the truth. (Yes, yes, OK, what's new?)

And that reminds me of something Sir Winston Churchill once said: the truth is sometimes so important that it must be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies. But then Churchill was speaking in the moral certainty that the Nazis had to be defeated at all costs, not gunning down his own young people; a "moral certainty" arises when you are "so sure that one is morally justified in acting upon a conviction", Oxford English Dictionary. (Churchill did not have holy writ; he is remembered even now in South Wales for sending in the troops against the coal miners in 1912).

In all societies there have been taboos, things which have not been up for discussion. One of these is sex, not that would have troubled William Shakespeare. He has one character, a philanderer for certain, saying, "Certain it is that I liked her and boarded her in the wanton way of youth". The bard could see "certain" as a word full of the flavors of candor and plain-speaking.

When someone prides themselves on plain-speaking as much as a certain leader of a certain neighboring country -- OK, it's Malaysia -- you might expect him to eschew phrases such as "certain people" and "certain groups" but, no. And he is not alone. There is a constant drip of this innuendo from those in power and those who obfuscate, often, of course, the very same people.

The next time I hear this stuff I shall scream and, having leaped to my feet, shall shout, "Excuse me, didn't you know, as Benjamin Franklin had it, that only two things are absolutely certain in this life, death and taxes? And you being in power would be familiar with both of them!"

-- David Jardine