When our present prime minister started off his premiership, I had looked upon him as a serious leader starting out on a heavy job to mend a country messed up by corruption, which had reared its ugly head here and there.

He appeared serious with a programme to wipe out corruption and power abuse, to clean up the civil service and make it civil and gleaming and to enhance the performance of our police force. In short, to make everything 'Cemerlang, Gemilang and Terbilang'.

But now, all that seems to have 'terhilang'. After the 11th general election, one would have expected him to have formed a cabinet with members who were sparkling clean without even a whiff of corruption hanging around them.

But he did not . At that time many said that the new PM had to bide his time and wait for the Umno elections to be out of the way before he could deal with tainted ones he had reappointed. But the Umno elections came and went, and nothing happened.

The 18 golden arowanas , meanwhile are swimming freely and the government appears to have forgotten about them. The minister who first made mention of them has been given a new portfolio. And the big fish seem to be swimming away happily into oblivion.

Until April 1 came. The malaysiakini prank that day once again brought the 18 back into the limelight and reminded the government and the public of the lack of action against corruption in general, and the 18 in particular.

Those who had read the prank were in support of it or at the least appreciated it for what it was meant to be. But some ministers and the attorney-general took a different view . Are we serious? Do we have serious people looking after the serious affair of governing the nation?

Are we serious when we have these top guns taking an April Fool's prank so seriously? Shouldn't they be spending their valuable time chasing after the real crooks amongst us? That would be time better spent.

Are we serious when after the pronouncements and announcements that the government is all out to protect the environment, we get to see the rape of Bukit Cahaya and Bukit Beruang by state governments who have gazetted them as protected areas?

Are we serious when we have parliamentarians who instead of worrying about affairs of the state, spend valuable parliamentary time passing comments such as 'How can your husband stand you for so long' knowing fully well that the fellow MP he directed the comment at is single?

And then we have also parliamentarians who spend valuable time discussing the uniforms of MAS stewardesses of all things.

Have we seriously voted in a set of serious parliamentarians who would seriously deal with the serious affairs facing our nation? Have we been serious voters in the last election?

Indeed, are we serious?