Bawang: Prime Minister’s office rejects IKEA cabinet

Confusion following delivery of giant cabinet leaves diplomatic relations with Sweden “strained.”

A normal sized cabinet. It might not be from IKEA, but it probably is.

PUTRAJAYA: A heated argument broke out outside the Prime Minister’s residence here today after officials refused to accept a massive 20 foot high cabinet delivered here from Sweden.

After a tense hour of deliberating, arguing, and temper throwing by both officials and deliverymen, it was revealed the fracas had arisen after the Prime Minister had misunderstood instructions to “form a new Cabinet.”

“It was very confusing,” the Prime Minister said in a statement. “They told me to form a new Cabinet, one which could accommodate at least 30 ministers. So I called IKEA, and told them to deliver the biggest cabinet they had.”

“I am a Minister, not a furniture maker. How am I supposed to know what they meant? The terminology is so confusing. It’s just like when they told me the Minister’s swearing-in ceremony did not mean a ceremony where I swore at all the Ministers. How am I supposed to know all this?”

The Cabinet, made of teakwood, is at least 20 feet high and 15 feet wide, with bronze knobs and at least 40 drawers.

“It actually looks quite nice,” The Prime Minister’s wife was reported to have said. “I am always in need of storage space for all my handbags and shoes, and this may do nicely.”

IKEA officials, many of whom have travelled all the way from Sweden to make the delivery, however, are not amused.

“We are very upset. We cut down seventy trees to build this giant cabinet. Seventy trees, which could have been used to build a great fleet of longships, or two Viking dragon boats!” said IKEA Furniture Management Director Dagnar Hammarsthorin.

“That cabinet could have made storage space for three Stockholm neighborhoods, or been made into a giant portal to Narnia. Instead, we wasted all this time sending it here, where it will go to waste.” said IKEA Vice President of Meatballs Thorin Thorinson.

Diplomatic ties with Sweden are expected to be strained after this incident.

Asked what was to become of the massive cabinet, a source for the Prime Minister’s department said that should it not be returned, plans were underway to convert it into a rehabilitation camp for the nation’s deviants.

“The structure will be used to contain militant gays and lesbians until they learn to change their ways.” the source said. “We will call it ‘The Closet.’”

by Terence Toh