Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said on Tuesday that "if everybody votes on conscience, there would not be any party". On other occasions, he has implied that if people act on their principles when they conflict with the government's position, the nation will have no unity.

Notwithstanding the repugnance of Mahathir's statement, there is actually quite a large grain of

truth in it.

If Barisan Nasional has a conscience, it escapes my attention (and I have been looking hard). So, of course, to vote according to conscience is to violate the party's creed its staunch belief in pressure and force.

If the basis for a party's rule is cowing people towards subservience and not serving people out of

conscience, then of course the party loses its flavour when its members act out of conscience.

Its leaders become insecure.

Conscience cannot be dictated or forced, it must be realised through deep self-examination and honest evaluation. BN's paranoia against conscience to the point that it's almost

become a bad word! is appalling, but not surprising.

And the frenzied move to discipline the two Penang state assemblypersons for merely

abstaining from voting against a motion to postpone the controversial Penang Outer Ring Road Project (PORR) confirms the infantile state of our democracy.

Vision 2020 aims, among other things to establish a 'liberal, tolerant and unified society', and a

'mature, consensual and exemplary democracy'.

Real, meaningful unity and consensus cannot be attained through coercion and subservience.

The package of lofty goals may be a vision for 2020. Here and now in 2002, it is all a delusion.