In the midst of that construction fiasco with "thousands of defects" at the Tanjung Pengelih Royal Malaysian Navy Recruit Training Centre (Pularek) in early 2000, Works Minister S Samy Vellu purportedly proclaimed with confidence that the government would award future projects only to contractors with excellent track records.

Transparency International Malaysia president Tunku Abdul Aziz welcomed that statement then, but went on to caution that a sheer statement like that does not guarantee that the shoddy work by contractors for Pularek will not be repeated elsewhere.

Aziz further urged the government to put into place internationally accepted procurement standards and guidelines for the award of contracts to show greater transparency and accountability.

Fast-forward three years and what is the response of that same works minister and the government on the current computer lab debacle?

To borrow MGG Pillai's parlance, the works minister "jumps up and down in high dudgeon like a kangaroo balancing his threats against the shoddy work with demands for a full-scale inquiry and passing the buck".

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad meanwhile, becomes extremely upset. As usual, he delivers another of his all-too-familiar tongue-lashing to the close-eared contractors. The deputy premier gets angry, too. He summons the mighty Anti-Corruption Agency to investigate for "irregularities". Ridiculous!

Education Minister Musa Mohamad ludicrously tries to evade responsibility. He squarely condemns the construction firms. The firms counter-blame the government. The government terminates the contract with the firms. And with magic wand in hand, the education minister summarily declares the case closed.

Case closed? You must be joking, Mr Minister! For, the next circus - yes, that failed police housing project in Batu Pahang, Johor - is already poised to come to town! (Concerned readers may refer to MGG Pillai's column for other failed construction projects).

The never-ending construction scandals are just one of the numerous, unnecessary ills that haunt Malaysia. The issue is as much as in the problem itself, and in the way the government responds to the blunder.

How and why we repeatedly landed on the same problems is a very serious issue. Equally exasperating is how the government reacts to these problems. There is just no real or sustained effort to unearth what went wrong.

A mainstream newspaper commented the other day: "contractors building computer labs score F". I suggest going one step further: "Government handling of problems scores F".

I sometimes wonder what we must do to knock some sense into the heads of the so-called "leaders" we now have.

Although I have no bright answers, I believe an eventual option Malaysians must exercise is initiate a change in the government through the ballot box. For now, it doesn't seem to be too much of a plausible scenario if we consider the somewhat disorganised status of the opposition parties, but we shall see.

In any case, the current horde of politicians have obviously overstayed their welcome. The alternative government may eventually turn out to be equally bad, but how worse can we get?

At least we can keep them on their toes with the clear message that the citizens will not tolerate nonsense, and will vote them out of office if they do not perform with accountability and integrity.