I refer to the letter Don't be naive, race-based politics here to stay .

The above letter offers no real solution. The statement ‘race-based politics is here to stay’ is like saying ‘diseases are here to stay’ or ‘crime is a normal thing in any society’.

While those statements may have some ring of truth, they do nothing in helping society become better.

The dangers of raced-based politics don't need to be highlighted here in great detail as we intuitively know it.

They consist of all the cliched words we know of - polarisation, racial strife, unsustainable economic competitiveness and most importantly, that it doesn't appeal to our sense of justice and equality. It is just something forced upon us to be accepted.

Words are so important in forming the psyche of any nation, so it is nothing less than irresponsible, and worse, dangerous for Umno and leaders like Dr Mahathir Mohamad to make divisive statements of such nature.

There are as many models and solutions out there as our creative minds can fathom. Why highlight differences when we can focus on common strengths?

Would Barack Obama be the US president today if Martin Luther King had said ‘race-based politics are here to stay and we must learn to live within that framework of our social contract’?

Would Nelson Mandela have liberated South Africa of apartheid if that was his line of thinking? Malaysia is clearly functioning on a very inferior political model.

The letter also talks about political opportunism in a way that is in the author's own word, naive. Opportunism must be for some form of greater good.

Are we going to condone Hitler just because he was pandering to the ‘demands of the socio- politico marketplace’? The writer is not only naive but is like Mahathir and Umno.

The real problem with Malaysia isn't race-based politics. We only think there is something very racial in our system because the ruling class would have us believe it through a system of divide-and-rule feudalism.

The real problem with Malaysia is ‘class-based politics’. Malaysians know better and expressed an unprecedented hope through the political tsunami of March 08, 2008.