I am sure everything Kim Quek has said in EC: adjudicator or henchman? about the recent redelineation exercise favouring Barisan Nasional and how such blatant gerrymandering was an affront to democratic electoral practices is true.

But the fundamental question confronting Malaysians is whether at this stage in the country's 45-year history, full-fledged democracy can work or should be allowed to work, and be taken advantage of by those whose political ideology would do it harm.

The country is presently at a crossroads in which the soul of Islam is hotly contested.

We have an opposition that is led by a party dedicated not to democracy but a religious theocracy. We have, in our midst, voters who are more moved by religious demagoguery than rational debate.

If the choice is narrowed to between the farcical democracy of Barisan Nasional and the sincere theocracy of PAS, many would choose the former as a lesser evil between the two.

And if the former, having regards to the ease by which many voters could be manipulated by religious appeal, needs gerrymandering to perpetuate its rule under false pretenses of electoral democracy, I would say, so be it! This is because the alternative is more difficult to contemplate. This is because democracy and fair electoral practices assume that the voters are literate and can vote rationally based on issues and not emotions.

Besides voters, it is not Barisan Nasional and many of its morally bankrupt politicians that are solely to be blamed for failure of democracy in this country.

The opposition themselves cannot come out with an agenda that holds promise for democracy. On the contrary, it seeks to install a new order of theocracy in which democracy is, well, irrelevant, and sidelined. And large segments of not-so-literate or not so well-to-do voters give it undying support.

I repeat again what is the choice?

Under the BN, the institutions of democracy electoral process, constitution, etc. are at least honoured in name though not in practice as BN's politicians merrily subvert, gerrymander and circumvent them.

We need, over time, to replace these politicians not the democratic institutions in place.

The 'alternative' opposition seeks, however, under the banner of democracy and through electoral process to win political power in order to replace these institutions with that of a religious theocracy.

How could we allow that? If that were the choice the Hobson's choice we should support the BN even if we look askance at its gerrymandering ways.

What the writer said about "in this time of rapid ICT revolution and globalisation, the trend of the world was towards liberalisation and democratisation, for the competition for survival and excellence among societies and nations have been shifted from the battlefields to the development of the individual minds" and that "it is now the creative mind that will reign supreme" are all true.

Though the BN's record in liberalisation and democratisation in past two decades has been dismal, the first tentative steps in that direction have been taken hence, the Human Rights Commission, the dismantling of "crutches" under the affirmative programmes, the re-emphasis on English, the tolerance of malaysiakini and public debate/discourse, etc.

And what direction does the alternative offer? The first tentative steps in Terengganu are to criminalise private immorality; to punish by stoning, amputation and decapitation; to segregate males from females, religious from irreligious, and so on that are too well known to repeat here.

No matter how undemocratic and untenable government policies are, the BN can always rely on our opposition to look, by sheer force of comparison, good!

In not being viable or acceptable to mainstream Malaysia, the opposition indirectly helps the BN to perpetuate its 'undemocratic' rule, and therefore should be blamed.

So what about democracy; so what about gerrymandering that marginalises the opposition?

To many of us, these are non-issues.