Our worst fears come true as Pak Lah achieves the ultimate. The national blueprint for the next 15 years has been scuttled and thrown into disarray, what initially appeared to be Mahathir's legacies have been disfigured, his image as a modern national hero was recently replaced by that of Tun Razak.

Umno's credibility from the vantage point of the educated middle class is now at its lowest ebb. Umno itself continues to disintegrate into factions as senior members engage themselves in blatant scrambles for corrupt money, government projects and positions. Component parties of BN are now engaged in internal squabbles over their conflicting agendas and priorities.

In his desperation to garner and sustain the support from his disgruntled followers and senior government officers, Pak Lah has become tolerant of all of their wrongdoings which had further increased during his three-year tenure as PM. He courted civil servants on the eve of a general election by raising their salaries. This had resulted in the abandonment of his declared goal of creating a clean and efficient government. His maxim 'Cermerlang, Gemilang, Terbilang' is fast becoming a mockery of his own leadership.

What used to be legacy problems inherited from Mahathir era have now become very much the property of Pak Lah due to his inaction and lack of courage in addressing them decisively. Now we are left with a government that is not well trusted and respected by the people .A government machinery that is inefficient and corrupt right to the core.

Umno party members are not well-selected enough to be respected and trustworthy leaders of the nation. Many of them have incriminating track records known for telling enforcement officials to 'close one eye' or sometimes even 'close both eyes' in order to protect their dishonest and illegal vested interests. Others pretend not to be English literate when caught laundering corrupt money in a foreign country.

As our nation's chief executive, Pak Lah loves to manage by auto-pilot as he dozes away in the cockpit. With no less than eight monkeys in the cockpit fiddling away with the avionics, he has certainly put the nation in a very precarious state. That is basically how Pak Lah's achievements have become the nation's nightmare.

The opposition parties are in the doldrums, with incriminating infighting. All of them are only for themselves and their weird personal ideologies and glorified self images. They would probably perform 100 times worse off then the present leadership if ever given the mandate to run the country.

We are truly left between the devil and the deep blue sea. If anyone is to be blamed for this, my finger would point to Mahathir. He has totally failed the nation in developing a strong and professional lines of successors who would take up from where he left and, of course, clean up his stinking legacies.

As a person who love this country very much, I always wish that the Dewan Rakyat should comprise 15 percent of the opposition members. They must be well-educated and truly committed in playing their roles. They must be knowledgeable, firm and fair. As it is, none of them come close to this. Many of them are far too old and hardly know, let alone understand the needs of the nation in meeting the challenges of a ever changing globalised world.

Others are more interested in harnessing the opposition for their personal agendas. As a result of this, none of them have any national agenda for the advancement of the country except of some wild dreams and outdated Utopias. I have no reason to doubt that they would be severely defeated again come next election speculated to be held sometime in November.

Our problem is that the country will be denied of a strong and meaningful opposition that could do play the role of the 'whistleblower' for the good of the nation. It is a pity to see individuals and bloggers taking on this role and filling up the vacuum at their own personal expense and to their own detriment.

Looking on the other side of the fence, I feel that it is fair to let the ruling party have a majority of about 80 percent.This is in view of the present volatile environment that the globalised world presents to us. We could be thrown into uncharted waters without warning at any time. The government needs a strong mandate to be able to make good and well-thought-out decisions. Any miscalculation could result in a long-lasting disaster for the country.

We therefore need a very able and professional set of leaders to help steer the ship of state to its destination in becoming a successful and dignified industrialised nation by 2020. Here, again, we are nowhere close.

The blame here is on every one of us, particularly the younger generation who have the requisite knowledge, skills and talents. They are, however, too selfish in only thinking about their own immediate well-being. They can be successful as professionals and businessmen but these successes, however, will never lend them to greatness. It would be sad if history would record that the last of the great Malaysians was Mahathir.

The reality being so exasperating, I am not sure whether the forthcoming election will hold any meaning to us all except more expenditure, more empty promises and more rotten members of parliament from both camps. Perhaps we should only thank Allah that our fortunes undeniably continue to be good. Perhaps this time there is no point of casting our votes at all.