When all is said and done, the second season of Akademi Fantasia , which ended its 10-week run on Aug 14, made the organisers a lot of money: to vote Malaysians paid 50 sen for each SMS, and Bruneians RM2.20.

Fifteen million text messages 800,000 from Brunei were sent, three times more than last year. The organisers, Astro, found creative ways of hype and delusion to get more Malaysians to vote.

The media went bonkers and joined in with breathless prose to make Malaysians forget the crises in their future, as the government continues to insist all is well when it certainly is not.

Getting the citizens to panic or be deluded is an old political trick to divert attention from reality. The US relies on its old friend, Osama bin Laden, to frighten its citizens to return a bumbling president to power.

The sports madness is another, with fights and worse the reality of vicarious celebrations of victory. Even round-the-clock television programmes encourage this inevitable descent into the dream world. All it encourages is to ignore reality.

Akademi Fantasia is Malaysia's way to veer citizens away from its bumbling administration. It is easy to divert attention. The Barisan Nasional (BN) government is in tatters because its hold on the Malay community is slipping and knows not how to reverse this.

So shows like Akademi Fantasia , Malaysian Idol , Audition and Sure Heboh carnivals are all designed to divert attention. Malaysia's Islamic religious authorities look askance at these and are told to shut up.

The concerts are seen by government politicians as proof of their relevance to the disgruntled youth. It is not, of course, but self-delusion has been, for years, a strong point.