The recent interviews on BBC's Hardtalk of Syed Hamid Albar and Mustafa Ali did not break new grounds. (For those who missed it, they can get it online ).

While Syed Hamid Albar's interview was impressive, I was less impressed with Mustafa Ali's. He was constantly shifting ground, forced to defend himself and not really convincing in articulating his position. It gave the impression that he says different things to different people.

If this is the progressive face of PAS (as compared to the progressives in Turkey and Iran where they are intellectually more rigorous and far more eloquent) then it is a sad state of affairs. Can I trust this man enough to vote for him? Not by the performance he gave on Hardtalk .

I have also watched Focus Asia's current affairs report on the state of affairs of Indians in Malaysia that was deemed by Astro as too sensitive to show. I could understand why it was not shown. It was hard hitting. Unfortunately the responses garnered was along racial lines rather than focusing on the alleviation of poverty to whomever it affects no matter his ethnicity or religion.

In the programme, Culture and Tourism Minister Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir said: "Government will have certain allocations, special allocations and so on, to help the Malays who are the more backward economically. And special loan schemes and things like that. So the Chinese do not mind. You can help the Malays because you can understand because in the long term, there should be more parity between the races. If one race is very backward and the others is very advanced, that's very dangerous in long-term Malaysian security."

The Chinese do not mind? How does he know? And what has security got to do with it? If he thinks people don't mind now in 2003 when the economic cake has got smaller and there are less opportunities out there, than he is out of touch. But then he is a politician of a race-based party. How can he be in tune with the whole population when his party grassroots is based only on one segment of the population?

Abdul Kadir continued: "There is an income disparity and unfortunately, it goes along racial lines. That's no good in the long term. So the government has a lot of policies to close this gap. But here it is not by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but by expanding the economic cake and distributing it to the less developed race. So that's how we're going to do it."

Less developed race? Does he know what he is talking about? Less developed how? I though that particular sentence offensive and ill-informed. Every race in Malaysia has a rich sense of history and culture, whatever they may be, from the Orang Asli to recent migrants.

There is no "less developed people" here, only those who are economically disadvantaged. I think "less developed" is a term that should not be encouraged.

For someone who is our tourism minister, these are not remarks that give me comfort. I thought he should have given more care and thought to his remarks. But then he would not face the wrath of the whole populace since he does not represent them, does he? Would an Indian or a Chinese politician get away with the same thing?