If you look up online, ‘Terms of Endearment’ are words or phrases used to describe or address someone with who you feel love and affection. Basically, if you’re close to that person, you can call them anything you want as long as they’re okay with it. With that being said, some terms of endearment should never be used to address certain people like those who are government officials.
In recent years, there’s been a trend to call our Prime Ministers a term of endearment such as “Daddy”, “Abah” or “Pak Long” or anything along the lines of a father figure. Some people find it weird and they find it weirder if the Prime Minister uses these terms to address themselves as well. It appears that our current Prime Minister also isn’t very fond of this idea.
Here’s what happened. Malaysia’s 10th Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim recently posted a quote from himself on his Twitter. The quote was him promising the people that wealth hoarding by political leaders will not be allowed under his leadership. “The old culture of hoarding wealth by political elites must be stopped. Policies must be based on the rights and interests of the majority of the people,” he elaborated.
Most would simply reply to the tweet with their opinions on the matter but for some reason, this person who goes by @mirulwrld decided to greet the Prime Minister by tweeting, “Good Morning Papa”. Much to his and everyone’s surprise, the politician bluntly replied with, “pls- don’t do that.” Anwar now marks as the first Minister in a while to break that cycle of being called a parental term.
Netizens all reacted to the Pakatan Harapan leader’s tweet with many showing support and even joking about his straightforward reply to the user. However, it is not currently known if the Prime Minister himself tweeted the post or if it was from an admin member who was in charge of his socials. Either way, the tweet had his approval.
If you’re wondering how the user must’ve reacted after getting a reply from Anwar, @mirulwrld clarified that he was simply joking and was not at all expecting a reply but he didn’t mind as he found the whole thing humorous. What do you think? Should we finally stop calling our Prime Ministers a parental term?
