I share Tony Chew's views on the dismaying lack of issues raised for the Indera Kayangan by-election. What can we expect from the mainstream media which has become the mouthpiece of Barisan Nasional and the decadent high society crowd?

What can we expect from independent media if we do not give it enough financial support to enable it to hire more honest journalists to cover the news more widely and in-depth?

However, Tony Chew, himself a member of the urban elite living and working in Kuala Lumpur, should not be self-righteous too. What constitutes a political issue depends on the life experiences of the ordinary people and voters in their respective areas.

For example, traffic jam may be a hot issue in Kuala Lumpur, but it is certainly not in Indera Kayangan, or for that matter, Tapah, Tanjung Tualang, Raub, Air Hitam or Kubang Pasu. For the ordinary people and voters living outside Kuala Lumpur, the character of a leader may be all-important as are 'burning' issues like clogged drains, poverty, lack of schools, corruption and abuses of power by local authorities or ruling party bullies, unfair distribution of agricultural land, errant developers and failure of agricultural projects, etc.

These issues are usually addressed by politicians and their workers at the local level using vernacular expressions whereas city folk would probably use English and possibly lawyers, journalists and analysts to deal with their woes. The problem is not theirs, but ours.

The urban elite, whether Barisan Nasional or DAP, have lost touch with the ordinary people. They think only of legal controversies involving famous and well-known personalities or what they have read in international or regional magazines as "politics" or "issues". The rest is just trivia. This is wrong.