I am a great fan of Dr M Bakri Musa's column . I read his last piece on competitive bidding and I think the good doctor may be a little out of touch with Malaysian politics.

The government has enough brains behind the scenes to tell them what is to be done and not. Some of these brains are Oxford and Harvard trained, so they can't be too bad.

However, the big problem in this beautiful country is Umno's agenda, of which quality is not the essence, quantity is.

In every aspect of Malaysian life this is true. With that kind of mentality, kickbacks is the name of the game. Every contract and every business has to hike up price tags so that a great number of well-connected individuals will get a cut and become instant millionaires.

After all, that magic figure of 30 percent equity has to be achieved by hook or by crook doesn't it?

At the end of the day, this results in the final subcontractor cutting so many corners that buildings collapse, hospitals have fungus in the air-conditioning ducts, flyovers develop cracks and computer labs are built that can only be used as cow sheds.

Why all these problems? The cancer called corruption was not removed early enough and now has spread through out the Malaysian body. And all this happened under the watchful eyes of a doctor.

We were witness to the cancer of corruption, now lovingly called 'money politics', in the recently concluded Umno elections. And Umno is home to three quarters of the cabinet. Tell me, how do you save this country?.

Simple, compare it with a country that is worse of than us and pat ourselves on the back and carry on as usual. You are right Bakri Musa, we don't have to go far to learn, our southern neighbour is a good example of how to do things right.

But again, how can we emulate them, we don't practice the meritocracy that the rest of the world practices, but some new type only our Education Ministry is familiar with.

When all is said and done, it boils down to just one thing. The Never Ending Policy (NEP) of the government. It will always be a source of Never Ending Problems for all of us.

God bless us all.