Why do Malaysia's senior politicians constantly admonish Malaysians to break out of their "Third World" mediocrity ([#1] Improve or remain a Third World country: Pak Lah [/#], Feb 12)? Their prescriptions don't carry any weight, because they're missing the point.

There's nothing inherently Third World about Malaysia.

You don't arrive at "First World" status by building monuments, by manufacturing cheap cars or by buying expensive ones. It's not just a matter of personal wealth, although the fair distribution of wealth through equality of opportunity plays a large role. Many of my relatives still live in Malaysia. They're thinking, educated, hardworking people, just like you. Just like so many people here in Australia.

Yet Australia, for being a small, insignificant country (in Dr Mahathir Mohamad's eyes), isn't considered Third World, or an undeveloped nation. Why is that?

Allow me to pose a few questions.

Would you consider a country to be "Third World", with all its unsavoury connotations, if the police, defending themselves against the charge of more or less murdering a political detainee, asserted he had died of some vague, non-medical condition called "inflammation in the lungs" despite post-mortem evidence of severe lacerations and bruising? And if the press actually reported that [#2] police defence [/#] uncritically and with a straight face?

Don't you think suppressing dissent by shutting down newspapers is fairly symptomatic of Third World values? If a politician tries to sell you "Asian values" as a pretext for some indefensible action, understand that it's got nothing to do with being Asian. He's really saying, settle for "Third World".

Would you consider a country to be something of a Third World political laughing stock if one of its leaders was convicted of a victimless "crime" with shoddy evidence gained through coercion and hearsay? In a court where the presiding judge is supposedly, by virtue of his station, one of the best legal minds the nation possesses? Is the standard really that low?

Isn't detention without trial some kind of dictatorial, Third-World joke? Of all the politicians in the ruling party, you would think that one/some/most would have the decency or the intelligence or the moral strength to personally and publicly repudiate something as abhorrent and as anachronistic as the Internal Security Act?

So the next time anyone in the government criticises the citizenry for Malaysia's position as a Third World nation, ask him why he and his colleagues are keeping you there.