To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire;

They made a desert and call it peace.

- Tacitus, Roman historian

Well, an empire Malaysia is not, but like ancient Rome, this nation’s greatest glories may lie not ahead, but in its past, if the current leadership continues to feed on its own delusions and fantasies.

Each morning, we are greeted with headlines that either make us cringe with despair or make us shake our heads with incredulity.

It is like we are stuck in a bad movie. A lousy script is being made worse by an uninspiring and untalented cast. Against our better judgment, we chose to stay till the end, hoping that somewhere, somehow, the plot improves, or that the emergence of new characters will redeem the show. We are still found wanting.

We looked on with increasing despair as IQ-challenged politicians continue to spew out poisons and half-truths that corrupt the minds of the next generation. Possessing neither charisma nor intelligence, they sought to hide these deficiencies by creating fear and apprehension in their own communities, and then offers imaginary solutions to imaginary problems.

Meanwhile, the people that elected them struggles on with daily livelihood, but at least their perceived enemies has been dealt with by their brave ‘leaders’.

We kept on searching for that elusive bright spark in our nation’s future. Surely, with our natural riches; our solid foundations post-independence; our well-educated and sensible populace - we are destined for great things?

Yet we find increasingly less and less to hope for.

Instead, we find ourselves looking back longingly at memories of our past - when children played freely outside our homes; when religions are confined to the sanctity of the places of worship and the privacy of one's beliefs; when national schools were centres of excellence; and when leaders actually lead more than they preach.

We console ourselves that the best is yet to come. But that consolation turns to resignation when we realised that with each passing day, we have been talking more and more about our past than of our future.

Our leaders exhort to us - we are marching towards high-income status! Our economy is growing richer! We are joining an exclusive club of wealthy nations! Yet we are confronted with stagnant incomes; higher prices and rising debts. But our leaders insist we are richer, so it must be so! We simply have to get in line and wait for our turn.

But what good is this manic chase for a high-income nation status, when the perceived moral values and integrity that our leaders carry has sunk so low, that we are the subject of ridicule the world over? That we are either pawns of the Arab sheikhs or the Jewish billionaires, depending on who you choose to believe. That we as a sovereign nation have to rely on the largesse of one foreign benefactor to square off against another foreign conspirator.

So much for a high-income, sovereign nation.

And yet, we Malaysians, continue to hope. We refuse to give up. We spoke out our greatest fears. We voiced out our gravest concerns. But we are told that either we are wrong or that we should remain silent. For in our infinite wisdom, we have elected a government many times wiser than the population put together. They know what they are doing while we don’t know what we are thinking. So leave it to us, our leaders assure us.

For we are building you an empire.