Never in the annals of Malaysian history has such a conniving lot got to together with nothing but their own personal agendas set as national priorities and never in the history of this nation have the people been so submissive to such a conniving lot of plunderers.

Dr Mahathir Mohammed had during his days been responsible for the building of the Twin Towers and the Penang Bridge as monuments to a legacy he hopes to leave behind and with which he hopes the vast majority of Malaysians - who have been robbed of their heritage and wealth - will forgive him. He hopes these edifices will stand like the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China.

Since the Mahathir era, corruption in this country flourished, for it was the put in place by him to enrich a select few Malays (Indian Muslims actually) so that he could show the rest of the Malays from whom his power derives that he was the champion of the Malays.

These people used the ordinary Malays for their own purpose and in fact they turned Umno into a tool of their own convenience, to pillage and plunder and rid anyone who came in their way.

Abdullah Ahmand Badawi and Najib Razak are the followers of the Mahathir era, they have learned from it and are now executing their own plunder of the nation.

Amongst the Onns, the Razaks, the Mahathirs and now even the Abdullahs this clannish struggle to keep the power base within the family has taken root.

Not long ago when I was young and a scout I went to the Philippines. It was so advanced then, they had television when we had not even heard of it then, they were the first Asian country with a national airline, they had domestic airlines plying between the islands long before we even had our present road systems.

In the fifties when I went to Manila, Manila had more hotels than all the hotels in Malaya put together, the Raffles in Singapore was a far cry compared to the Manila Hotel, their Jeepneys were the forerunner to our ‘Bas Mini’ here in Malaysia.

But then corruption crept into the Philippines and woe betide, the entire nation collapsed to a state beyond repair.

Today we are light years ahead of the Philippines (or so it seems) but we have the disease that destroyed them and it has actually got into the core of the nation.

It looks almost impossible to get rid of this scourge and as each day goes by, we sink deeper and deeper into the black hole. We will not be a developed nation by 2020 for we will, in fact, be a poverty-stricken nation by then where our children will be glad to go and work as maids for the Vietnamese, the Arabs, the Indians and the Chinese.

This is the truth and the truth by any reckoning. If we do not see it now we'll never see it at all and we are famous for this, self denial, it starts from the top, like our prime minister denying that the nation is in recession.

On Aug 7, we witnessed one of our finest sons being accused of the most ridiculous crime an when evidence against his accuser arose, the police are ready to nip it in the bud. Very brazenly they dare go to seek evidence to plant a case.

Today we see murderers go scot-free, they can just come out and deny and the prime minister of the country exonerates them even before an investigation is done.

Today in the courts we see evidence being expunged by the prosecution that may link people to the murder of innocent foreigners.

Why, why, why one asks. The answer is simple. It is a ‘I scratch your back and you scratch my back’ attitude.

The police are involved, the judiciary is involved and the government is involved. So what has happened to the integrity of this nation? It is gone, it is lost and it is so bad that it would take a miracle to overturn it.

Never in the history of this nation have the non-Muslims voted for PAS candidates into power and that is a reflection of the hopelessness of the situation and unless we stand up and be counted we are doomed.