Yesterday, General Motors started recalling 824,000 cars built between Jan 1, 1996 and Oct 31, 1997 to correct a steering problem.

Can we Malaysians imagine the scenario: an automobile manufacturer is planning to recall almost one million cars, some of which are almost eight years old, because they have detected a fault that may cause "the driver to experience an intermittent loss of power steering assist when making left turns, usually at low speed. If the pinion shaft moves too far, some drivers could experience higher resistance when turning left followed by unintended power assist to the right."

I live in California and once I took my Volkswagen for a routine service and the dealer had my power window replaced for free without my being asked. It seems that some weeks ago, VW Corporation had acknowledge this as a fault and will honour all repairs and have sent owners documentary evidence that they will honour the additional coverage on repairs to faulty power window.

We shift our focus back to Malaysia, we have had 20 years of protectionism, and yet we hear stories of tires coming off at the showroom, floorboards with water leaking into the interior during rainy days, power windows not working, rusty doors and inferior interior finishing, warranty not honoured, and also rude and ignorant service personnel. The list goes on.

If Proton has no sense of corporate responsibility to its customers, they should at least have some respect to the ordinary people; taxi drivers, teachers, wage earners, office clerks, civil servants and your ordinary man-in-street who fly the Malaysian flag on their Protons.

Is this show of patriotism being reciprocated? Proton is literally a company paid for by taxpayers, and will most likely again be supported by our children. Will Proton learn that being patriotic also entails providing the country, taxpayers and the ordinary rakyat with the best that they can have? Just so we can all feel for once that patriotism does pay off.