Wanli obviously has it in for Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in the letter Gag Dr M, save Malaysia . Nothing that the prime minister does or says is good enough for the likes of Wanli. But, obviously, Wanli has not thought the matter through.

Get real! Foreign direct investments (FDI) is not coming to Malaysia, not because of Mahathir's perceived anti-US, anti-Western stance, but because Malaysia is no longer competitive vis-a-vis countries like China insofar as labour-intensive industries are concerned. The Malaysian domestic market is not big enough to attract foreign multinationals hypnotised by the sheer size of the Chinese domestic market.

The reasons for Malaysia falling out of the list of the top 25 FDI destinations should be highlighted and debated upon. For example, why is Singapore able to be in the top-10 FDI destinations (according to a recent report, it managed to secure 65 percent of the FDI into Asean last year), and consistently attracts around S$9 billion (RM18billion) of FDI yearly. What is Singapore doing right? Surely the likes of the National Economic Action Council and Rafidah Aziz must be concentrating their minds on this.

The shortcomings of Malaysian policy makers have been too well-documented to receive additional airing here. The debacle of the KLIA (and the recent decision by Turkish Airlines to stop flying to KLIA from Oct 27 — a point played up in the Singapore newspapers, but carefully unreported, as far as I know in the Malaysian media), the less-than-inspiring performance of the MSC (where several of the 'flagship' IT applications are way behind schedule) and the possibility of the Bio-Valley project ending up as a white elephant shows that the government has a lot to learn in terms of planning, execution and monitoring.

The ongoing deterioration in Malaysian education standards, both at primary/secondary and tertiary levels, the falling standards of English usage, the less-than-welcoming attitude towards foreign talent, the brain drain of bright, young Chinese and Indian Malaysians to other countries — foreign investors take note of all these things and make their decisions accordingly.

Singapore is not the greatest place in the world, but, at least, the government there takes care to make things easy for foreign investors and foreign talent.

So, Wanli, don't dismiss Mahathir just like that. The problems are endemic in the Malaysian system. And they have been accumulating since 1957. Sadly, the solutions are obvious. The political will to address them is just not there.