On Saturday I had the privilege to attend the TEDxKL talks at Brickfields.

The theme of the day's talks was Interdependence, and unexpectedly there was little mention of Interdependence at a racial level.

The flavour of the day was primarily upon the interdependence between people, of people and their environment both built and natural and the striving of young people to bring some heart and accountability to this country.

But for all that positivity there was a fair bit of veiled and overt criticism of the institutions that dominate this country.

All in all, I ended the day with a feeling of renewed faith in Malaysia and its future.

I would like to record my appreciation to the organisers for a well conceived and well executed event

But there was a sad note to the day and there were messages that aspiring governments could well embrace.

The first message was that the audience and the speakers were predominantly made up of bright young people, who came from all over Malaysia.

That augurs well for the future so long as young people are given the opportunity to strive to achieve their goals.

But looking around at those young 20 to 30 year olds all I could think of was that in ten years time many of them will have left the country and the rest will be embraced by commerce.

The number that end up in the public service with be extremely small.

The second and more serious observation, which has a greater significance than all the crimes of the BN government combined, was that there were so few Malays present.

They should have made up 50 percent of the audience, instead they made up closer to five percent and if you excuse the students group that was there under 'sufferance' the proportion would be much less than five percent.

More than half were women. If you add this piece of information to the fact that almost 70 percent of university students are female, and that this is a male dominated society, then the future for Malaysia is looking extremely bleak

As one young male Malay said the me.... the forthcoming election is nothing more than making a choice for the lesser of two evils. I couldn't agree more.