The prevailing state of national euphoria which has been described as 'feeling good' following the end of 22 years of despotic rule of Dr Mahathir Mohamad would be short lived and the people's high hope for a new era of responsible, fair and effective government would be doomed to failure if we do not conduct an in-depth postmortem of major misdemeanours and malpractices of the Mahathir era.

The bitter lessons of experience need to be articulated and its safeguards and preventions need to be incorporated in our call for the new government that we would be electing soon. This should form the basis of what could be termed as 'The people's manifesto'.

We should not be giving Pak Lah a strong mandate at the forthcoming general election without us getting his firm commitment that this would be done. In this context I would like to do my bit in articulating the above in the hope that others would join in to complete and improve upon it.

1) Firstly on privatisation of public services and utilities. We know that the global trend is towards reducing the government's role in the provision of services in the name of quality, efficiency and with the view to reducing taxpayer's burden. This however is not always the case in this country due to various reasons.

a) These projects are privatised to cronies who are only interested in recovering their investments in shortest possible time after paying hefty front-end 'levies' to political masters and their henchmen in securing these projects. The result is that the public end up being worse off in terms of service quality apart from having to pay higher rates. The privatisation of the sewage system and its maintenance is just one of the examples.

b) The award of the privatised projects is not transparently done. Some mysterious names always appear as a minority shareholder and they invariably turned out to be the cronies of the political masters.

Mahathir had the lists of those who were awarded privatised projects published in the media some four years ago in a major showdown with Anwar Ibrahim. After scrutinising the list carefully it became evident to me that the names are those of the cronies, and the cronies to the cronies and their henchmen.

Mahathir in his rhetoric, argued that these projects could not be awarded to the man on the street as they were highly technical in nature and required huge capital outlay. Only those with the means and the required level of bankability plus track records were eligible. My scrutiny of these names showed that this need not always be the case.

2) Privatisation of government-owned institutions and companies, many of which were created under the New Economic Policy in the early 1970s were invariably privatised, or as some have it, "piratised" to cronies associated with the government or strong personalities in the government.

As in the case of the first round of privatisation of Pernas, the basic process itself was not even executed properly resulting in many issues and dubious practices being perpetrated without being disclosed to the public.

One particular personality was given and continues to be given more privatised projects than he could chew or managed even with a battery of corporate advisors.

3) Not all privatisation projects would be successful and some may need government interventions subsequently. This should however be done only after a very through evaluation. Whilst we can understand the need for the government to 'step in' to put the financial conditions of the Light Rail Transit companies such as the Star and Putra, the bailing out of other projects and companies are however shrouded in mystery. This lends credibility to the allegation that when it is profitable, government projects would become private property: when it is loss making, it would than become public property again.

4) Stop indiscriminate use of public funds, government institutions and public trust money (such as the Employees Provident Fund) from being abused to bail out private businesses that has nothing to do with public interest.

In the past, it is the man on the street that have been paying for all these misdemeanours through lower returns for their savings with the banks, lower dividend from EPF and Tabong Haji, higher rates for their utility bills and losses in their unit trust investments.

5) Freedom of public expression must be reinstated. The freedom of the mass media in carrying diverse views and comments on the running of the country and the happening inside and outside of the country without infringing personal and private rights and the sovereignty of another country must be preserved.

6) The government must be more serious and committed in protecting the environment and the natural resources of the country from being over exploited for short-term financial gains.

7) A proper plan must be drawn up on how the challenges of a fast aging population could be addressed. This should take into account the medical care and welfare needs of senior citizens in the light of the rapid disintegration of the extended family system.

8) Serious efforts must be made to revive traditional Malaysian culture as a basis for national integration and as a bulwark against the onslaught of popular mass culture of the west. This would help preserve our national heritage and identity.

9) More should be done to overcome poverty and lack of skill especially among the minority groups in the country, regardless of their religion and racial origin.

Truly we need a responsible, efficient and fair government that cares for the future of the people and the country - one that understands how to nurture the growth and development of Malaysian as a plural society that is out to find our own niche in the global village.

Finally we must accept that, putting the much abused buzz word 'democracy' aside, the quality of a government and that of the people will be reflected by the governance that is practised, the level of transparency that is being offered, the freedom of speech that is permitted, respect for the rule of law and how the minorities and the destitute are treated.