I refer to the Malaysiakini report Najib: Not the time for another by-election .

‘Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak today lashed out at PKR for playing political games at the time when the nation should be united in focusing on solving the global economic crisis', so reported your correspondent in the above article.

In this country politicians are always castigating opposing politicians for ‘playing politics' or ‘playing political games'. I do not understand such behaviour. Isn't ‘playing politics and political games' the actual job description of politicians?

I have always assumed and expected that politicians, even in the process of solving problems, be they economic, social, security or whatever, are supposed to play some politics at the same time. Otherwise how can they claim themselves to be politicians?

Civil servants, including the police and members of any other security services, are the ones who are not supposed to ‘play politics' while doing their jobs.

Therefore calls to stop ‘playing politics and political games' should only be addressed to non- politicians such as our inspector-general of police, attorney-general, MACC officials, Election Commission members, judges etc.

Asking politicians to stop ‘playing politics' is like asking doctors to stop healing the sick, carpenters to stop making or repairing furniture, lecturers and teachers to stop teaching or golfers to stop hitting golf balls.

Put in another way, it is like asking politicians to go on strike, if there is such a thing a politicians going on strike. In reality even retired politicians continue to ‘play politics and political games'.

Just witness the antics of our long-retired ex-prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad. I even venture to guess that ‘playing politics and political games' is what is keeping Mahathir alive and fighting fit.

Every night as he goes to sleep, he looks forward to another day when he can castigate and verbally abuse somebody who displeases him. Perhaps asking opposing politicians not to ‘play politics and political games' is also part of political play?

Those who do not desire by-elections at this juncture, namely the BN government, refer to the current economic crisis and the cost of conducting by-elections.

In fact, one local paper front-paged the cost of conducting the previous five by-elections, in particular the costs borne by the Election Commission and the police.

On the questions of economics in by-elections, one can claim that if the BN government scraps the practice of negotiated government tenders and privatisation projects and replaces them with open public tenders and proposals, there will be billions of ringgits that will be saved.

Saved from going into connected politicians and business cronies' foreign bank accounts and which can actually finance one by-election every week, with many more billions left over for other uses.

On top of that from the hive of activities generated during by-elections, many of which are of an economic nature, one can also claim that by-elections are more of an economic stimulus if compared with the money going into some cronies' foreign bank accounts.

On claims that by-elections have swallowed much of the police department's funds, perhaps most of the huge expenditures could have been avoided if the police were not so obsessed with suppressing the by-election activities of non-BN political parties.