Abdullah Badawi continues a tradition of barring vital democratic processes in Malaysia. Anwar Ibrahim serves a jail term while his lieutenants frantically seek ways to release him from political persecution.

A High Court judge overrides a Syariah court ruling on the legitimacy of civil law defined custodial rights, whilst curiously enshrining the necessity that the victimised children be treated as determined by the subsidiary Syariah court.

A primary school headmaster gives notice to parents so that they would control their children's diet in order to please a singular religion's proclivity.

And the mainstream media feeds a nation with meaningless antics, records and pronouncements, that unsurprisingly have little redeemable qualities.

Did someone in the background say everything is A-OK in Malaysia?

Ladies and gentlemen of this lugubrious nation, democracy in Malaysia needs resuscitation urgently, or it may set sail and never anchor again on our shores.

To be honest, the scene is more complex than a Dostoevsky plot. Nothing is straightforward and all the sins are inherited.

Abdullah did not initiate an explicit and implicit democratic clampdown in Malaysia, but neither is he allowing the spirit of egalitarianism and justice to sprout. Anwar was a minister for more than 15 years, and in that time, many good decent people have had their freedom usurped and with no recourse for special medical attention

(Would someone bring forth the list of 1982-1998 ISA detainees please?)

Anwar ought not to be in prison for what he is accused of. However he cannot plead ignorance to being an architect of the structures that incarcerate him.

Shamala's civil rights were always suspect when the jurisdiction of civil and Syariah law in practise have always remained ambiguous in Malaysia, even if the former is most certainly superior to the latter.

The headmaster just acted as most bureaucrats do in regards to Islamisation which is 'just do as you please'. Hence, you now have schools that force all Muslim females to wear headscarves, that reprimand teachers for liberal attire and that dissuade any effort to teach other faiths as part of the syllabus.

Not allowing non-halal food to be brought into school by students is only natural progression. I am impressed he did not stipulate corporal punishment for offenders.

And the media? God only knows how they wake up every morning and produce inane and mind- numbing pieces of writing and take pride in being members of one the world's most conscientious community.

Malaysia is in the gutter of social equality and progression. Democracy is the process in which the disenfranchised are empowered, the challenging are met, the hapless given a stake and the despicable disgraced.

Without it, all wrongs are righted only when there is benevolence. Complete utter benevolence. If not, calamitous collapse reigns. This is why all monarchies have collapsed. The absence of representative government, suffrage, accountability and recourse is a nation's death knell in modern times. These are the pillars of any nation. Where are ours?

And what do I ask for? I have a few in this (very) early Christmas wish-list of mine.

Abdullah can allow the return of democracy to Umno. It is only a party, yet as the majority partner of the coalition government it sets the democratic tone for the country. The Machiavellian system currently in place, where dissent is crippled with the open nomination system, disbars those outside the favoured line from rising. This must end.

Money politics is fertile in Umno because underhanded methods to stay in power are already legitimised. If some can be unfair, then all can be unfair to achieve personal goals, so the simpletons argue. And then therefore, go on to make corruption endemic in the party.

Parliamentarians have to be given the chance to develop a spine. They are party men and women, but above that they are representatives of an electorate. Speaking with a clear conscience is mandatory, and that is never possible when coalition discipline is absolute and non-negotiable.

Cabinet meetings are not good enough. Legislation and national debate over resolutions that affect millions of Malaysians have to happen openly and properly under the watchful eyes of the whole nation. The rakyat has a right to pass judgement on what happens in the Dewan Rakyat or representative government becomes a joke.

Local Barisan Nasional committees should select their local candidates for any election. Putrajaya can put up a nominee, but the decision on who the candidate is has to be a local one.

What is the point of signing up as a member of a political party when KL decides everything anyway?

General elections must be held with due notice and adequate time for electioneering. If we were a totalitarian nation, then our elections are commendable. But if we are truly a democracy, then our elections are a sham, and every person who deigns this situation should be thoroughly ashamed.

Elections must run long enough for candidacies to be carefully prepared by their political parties, the public to be informed of these choices and a public debate of these platforms to be held in the media and in the middle of wet markets.

The officials that run these elections must be told repeatedly that the goal is to allow democracy to thrive above everything else.

Married to these reformations should be the reintroduction of local elections, to mobilise democracy at a most micro level.

An independent judicial commission if set up, can do much to concretise the real hierarchy of the Malaysian justice system and to protect civil liberties. They must make decisions as men and women of the law, and not as agents of the federal government so that the future interpreters of our law are not dogged by legal uncertainties.

Running parallel is an independent race relations commission, tasked to oversee without fear and favour the national debate on the place of Islam, citizenship and civil rights. Malaysians need to sit down and talk about ourselves.

Fifty years ago they argued that it was too early in the game, and parties retracted. You would now be hard pressed to articulate an idea that there is inadequate national literacy or a reduced number of intellectuals in Malaysia to talk about it. We need to determine where the lines belongs - the lines that have been grey for decades.

In the name of everything decent, revise the national poverty and community development programmes from being race-based to socially-based. The impoverished and economically disadvantaged are not colour or ethnic specific. This needs no argument, but having a government that would not even consider this means reason has no residence in their mind sets.

End government control over the mainstream media. Let our reporters report, and our journalists observe and analyse with differing perspectives, as they rightfully should. An independent media is a invaluable tool to promote all the things broad-stroked above, and to develop a sensible community.

And our most vital sector, education, has to go secular. All public education, primary to tertiary, has to go secular. Only then can lessons of equality and fairness, and the practice of equality and fairness, be seen by our young minds and in time adopted by them as the way to incorporate themselves into a globalised world.

There is so much more we can do, but for now these democratic pillars can start reinvigorating Malaysia as a democracy again.

Abdullah can be a real popularly-elected prime minister, Anwar can sit as leader of an opposition coalition that wants to contribute what they think are better ideas, Shamala can live with her children under the protection of a consistent legal system, schools can be places of learning and not political experimentation and I would not have to always read the sports section first when picking up a newspaper.

The future seems like a large burst of nothingness right now, but with a little faith in democracy perhaps being a Malaysian would make sense again.