The following satirical work is, obviously, fictional, except events that have actually happened and referenced herein.

The other day I had coffee with my cousin, who is studying at MIT and was back home for a short break. What he shared with me was most astonishing.

Although we had not met for quite a while, he went straight into the topic the moment we sat down. It was about his room-mate, a fellow Malaysian who is a genius in mathematics and got himself entrance into the prestigious college at the age of 15. Let's call him Mr X. According to my cousin, a limousine drove up to their dorm block to pick up Mr X two weeks ago.

That's during the US tour by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. The limo drove Mr X directly to Najib's hotel and they had a one-to-one meeting in the presidential suite. What happened immediately after the meeting is the astonishing part: Mr X quit MIT, where he only had another year to go before graduation.

‘Oh no, Najib is not doing a Saiful Bukhari again’, I thought. No, certainly not, for Mr X is one math genius, which is not a prerequisite for a Saiful. And Mr X has no 'YB' in his title to be a Zul or a Zahrain, although no one can be sure if he did talk all the way down to the underwear with Najib in the St Regis presidential suite.

Sensing my despair, my cousin quickly brought me back to reality. Mr X was simply given a project to do by Najib in return for a few million dollars, said my cousin. It is a project so heavy on maths that only a genius like Mr X can handle. The project is to price the democracy of Malaysia. ‘Price the democracy’?

I was curious and confused. My cousin quickly helped me understand it with the just-in-time context: Hulu Selangor by-election or ‘buy-election’. ‘You see, Umno-BN got a win in that crucial by-election, mostly engineered by Najib himself.

‘He practically bought the voters off. The challenge is, how do you price it korekly (correctly). The range went from the high of RM50,000 per vote offered to some Felda settlers, down to the low of RM200 per vote offered to the many uncles and aunties in KKB,’ explained my cousin.

He continued. ‘The outcome was less than desirable, with just a disappointing majority of 1,725 votes. It appeared that those uncles and aunties getting RM200 did not 'honour' the deal, whereas those Felda settlers could have beeen substantially overpaid. What if those uncles and aunties were given higher, say, RM2,000 when the Felda settlers could go lower at just RM5,000?’

‘Thus, the need of a sophisticated mathematical model. The project is titled 'grand democracy' because it has the whole Malaysia in mind. There are a total of 10 million registered voters in Malaysia.

‘If a successful mathematic model determines an effective average price of RM500 per voter, it costs Umno-BN slightly more than RM2.5 billion to remain in power with a simple majority, and a little bit more to retain its two-thirds majority. And these amounts are spread over four or five years, so they don't look infeasible at all.’

‘The value of Mr X leading the project is tremendous. If the price is overvalued by a zero, it costs Umno-BN an extra RM100 million unnecessarily. On the other hand, it would be disastrous if the price is fixed too low and costs Umno-BN Putrajaya,’ explained my cousin.

I was left at the cafe dumbfounded, and my heart had a tremendous ache. I must have had too much coffee and the caffeine was doing its job.

Well, at least this is one more motivation for those four million unregistered voters - get yourselves registered so that you are included in the final pricing of democracy of Malaysia.