I have read and re-read Kim Quek's letter ' The Mahathir legacy ' many times, and cannot help but agree with him absolutely. The letter has brought into sharp focus the weaknesses of the Mahathir's administration, largely because of its racialist policies - the bane of the nation. Unless this is cleaned up, it will inevitably lead the nation down the drain. When there is a curtailing of the will to excel and to do o­ne's best, especially among the non-bumiputeras, it will invariably brush off upon the bumiputeras as well.

In end result, the whole nation suffers from the insidious malady of falling standards and excellence. The will to excel, to work harder, to build, to compete, and to take risk are highly curtailed, to be replaced with an attitude of 'doing-just-enough-to-get-by'. This is surely not the way to go, particularly in these times of globalisation.

Like it or not, racialist policies have severely affected the nation in the fields of education (falling standard), business investments (less of both foreign and local initiatives), GDP (lower and slower growth), employment (less job created), national cohesiveness (disunity in the nation), shared destiny (broken by polarisation in schools, jobs in civil services, armed forces, police, etc), enterprise (less productive nationally and uncompetitive globally), manpower development (brain-drain to other nations), lost opportunities for growth (from brain-drain and local investment moving overseas), national social fabric (weakened with rapid spread of corruption), and national resolve in the face of globalisation (severely weakened by all of the above).

Unless the leadership in Umno awakens to these realities and correct them quickly and realistically, the trend for the nation as a whole is downward - that is becoming less and less united nationally, less and less competitive globally, and slower and smaller GDP growth annually. Can anyone point in the other direction if these serious problems for the nation are left uncorrected, or worse still, aggravated?

Finally, I would like to say, time is running out rapidly for Malaysia. When the nation runs out of its oil and gas resources, it may be curtain for Malaysia. Some say Malaysia's oil will run out by 2020 - if that is the case, then this is the last and o­nly chance Malaysia has to rectify its weaknesses before time is up.

Therefore if we fail to rectify these problems now before the oil runs out, Malaysia would not have the financial capability to tolerate and continue these weaknesses without confining the nation to a pariah status. Our national debt is already quite considerable. It will do well for the nation and Pak Lah's incoming administration to analyse Kim Quek's letter carefully.