Allow me to respond to Kim Quek (' People are victims of Mahathirism, not its culprits ').

I do not absolve leaders from responsibility to guide and lead as trustees of the people's well being and longer-term interest, but human nature being what it is, private interest and personal well being will come first when those whom one governs are not vigilant and allow abuses to be perpetrated by reason of being distracted by issues of race and religion and symbols of infrastructure achievements.

In every election and by-election, candidates (of both ruling party as well as opposition) are fielded and electoral outcome are influenced by considerations of racial and religious demographics: Can Kim Quek dispute the obvious? Is this not a reflection of people's voting behaviour?

Which is the first cause - the ruling party's playing the racial card or the people's propensity to vote according to race. Which is why the ruling party is playing the racial card to maximise the chance for victory?

If the ruling party's playing the race card, isn't the opposition playing the religious card by reason of the perception that religious considerations garner votes?

Kim Quek asked whether Saddam's 90 percent electoral success in his two-decade rule mean Saddam's policy received much more popular support in Iraq than Mahathir's policy had in Malaysia. Electoral success by itself is of course no true measure of popularity especially as in Saddam's case where he decimated (literally) those opposed him, rigged sham elections and manipulated results all the way.

Kim Quek might allege the BN is guilty of the same, and he might well be right to an extent judging from well-noted complaints. Whilst we have our share of rigging or gerrymandering here (if complaints are believed justified), the difference is that of scale and proportion. One has to compare apple with apple and not orange.

Malaysia is not Saddam's Iraq. If it were, the writer will be traced and executed if he had criticised Saddam the like manner as he did of Dr Mahathir.

If Saddam was the culprit and not the people, we would now see the flower of democracy blooming everywhere in Iraq after his ouster. Instead we see bomb attacks on UN headquarters and targets and sniping of the "American" liberators.

There is little example in history where dictatorship can survive for long - no matter how repressive the state machinery army and intelligence services and spies - where the majority people rise against it (eg Shah's Iran). The fact is whether it is the case of dictatorship or corrupt or decadent or fascist administration, it survives with significant sections of the populace conniving or tolerating or having a vested interest in such a system (eg Mao's China and Hitler's Nazi Germany).

Whilst irregular electoral manipulation has probably a part to play in BN's victory in marginal areas, it is hard to believe that its consistent two-thirds majority throughout several general elections was not in a large measure contributed more by popular votes.

Kim Quek asked: "How much significance can we attach to an electoral victory in a totalitarian state where civil liberties are suppressed, mass media is used as propaganda machine, and election is manipulated?"

To him the answer is obvious. It is not to me because as far as Malaysia is concerned, some civil liberties are suppressed, some are not; mass media is used as propaganda machine but foreign publications and malaysiakini are not banned. Elections are manipulated to an extent but not in totality. In a word, we are not entirely a totalitarian state as he puts it.

Democracy is a continuum. Whilst Malaysia has draconian laws and corruption that makes it hardly a shining model of democracy (when compared to Western democracies), we still have a degree of personal freedom, public debate, a system of elections, constitution, due process laws, judiciary which though imperfect are still institutions that compare us favourably against some other Asian, Afican and South American countries, and hardly a shining example of its totalitarian opposite like Saddam's Iraq.

Everything boils down to degree and proportion. Even if as high as 50 percent of BN's electoral victory is attributable to BN's machinery's manipulation and propaganda (and I am not saying it actually is), who contributes to the other 50 percent?

When people's rights are eroded over the years, is it caused by totalitarian control by the regime or the people's indolence or lack of vigilance of their rights?

Now a large section of people alienated from the ruling coalition are veering to the opposition but does that mean that the opposition holds genuine promise of democracy - or theocracy?

The vice-president of the principal opposition party (Mustapha Ali) told Tim Sebastian in Hardtalk that PAS was not recognising the Islamic state that was not even mentioned in its manifesto!

Even as he spoke, PAS was seeking hudud to be gazetted as law in Terengganu. If PAS does not recognise Islamic state, what kind of state (promulgating hudud) does it recognise the secular state? There is a play of words here by Mustapha on Mahathir's 'Islamic state'. What stand has Keadilan publicly taken on this issue of Islamic state besides hemming and hawing?

As far as I recall, amongst all parties on both sides of political divide, only DAP and PRM have gone on record and taken a principled stand on many national issues cutting across racial and religious lines but do they get the majority electoral support?

Kim Quek compared incompetent Labour Front and competent PAP leadership under Lim Kuan Yew and concluded that, "It is only through the impeccably clean and dynamic leadership of Lee Kuan Yew and his colleagues that Singapore has leap-frogged from third world to a first world country".

The same dynamic leader who believes in clean and meritocratic government offered his leadership to this country (when Singapore was part of Malaysia) by vision Malaysian Malaysia and was kicked out in 1965.

If Kim Quek thought that it was due to the paranoiac Alliance government then and not the populace, would he get the votes for clean government and meritocracy from the majority of the people here if Lee Kuan Yew were stand for election here today?

Kim Quek asked whether anyone had an idea what the country would be if it had a rational, strong, capable and absolutely honest leader. So where is such a person after nearly 50 years of independence? Are we simply short of talent or is it again due to dictator or sinister forces within the government or ruling coalition keeping such a man down (or perhaps incarcerated)? It seems a politically naive idea.

The problem is that I don't have any idea whether such an honest man can ever make it up the political hierarchy here in the first place. When Pak Lah said that ours was a first world infrastructure and third world mentality, to which most of us can agree, does Kim Quek believe that the third world mentality is a reference to our leaders or us? The answer is equally obvious.

When politicians manipulate electorate for maintenance of power successfully, what I cannot understand about Kim Quek's position is that he keeps on blaming vendors of false political programmes without regard that their success is more often due to naivete of those who buy them. We cannot absolve the former but neither can we the latter, whose values and conduct encourage the former to continue.