I refer to Dr Paul's letter, ' Pak Lah, please forgive us '.

The reason more intelligent and hardworking Indians in Gerakan have totally been sidelined in BN's candidate list is that both Umno, MCA and MIC have been unreasonably allocated too many seats, although Gerakan is also a major and long-standing component of the Barisan Nasional.

Pak Lah could have used his ultimate authority and power as the BN chairman to see to it that justice and fair play are put into practice in the selection of candidates. But unfortunately he has succumbed to power play and is pandering to the demand of the strongest groups within BN.

This is even more so in the case of MIC's controversial president Samy Vellu dropping his deputy S Subramaniam from MIC's and therefore BN's list of candidates. If the true interest of BN and justice is to be served, it should be Samy Vellu himself who is dropped from BN's list, not Subramaniam. Pak Lah has the power and authority to do that, but he sides with Samy Vellu. This is really shocking.

Another case is the MCA. Despite its bad image of being involved in many cases of money politics, phantom membership, takeover of newspapers, triadism and physical fistfights, it is still allocated many seats that it does not really need.

What have MCA's members of parliament and state assemblymen been doing in championing the people's interests in the legislatures and cabinet? If there is any contribution of MCA's elected representatives to the democracy-making process in Malaysia, it is certainly disproportionate to the number of members of parliament and state assemblymen it has.

Moreover, historical patterns show that MCA's allocation of cabinet posts is only limited to four, whatever the number of its elected representatives. There is therefore no good reason at all for MCA to be given more seats at the expense of, for example, Indians in Gerakan or even the whole of Gerakan itself.

Given these understandings, I think the best way to redress the root causes of the problem is for Umno, MCA and MIC to be weakened considerably all over the country in the coming general election so that they may be more humble and less greedy.

Let us vote for the opposition and give the extra seats of Umno, MCA and MIC to the opposition so that, at least, the oppositionists can speak up for the people in the parliament and state assemblies.