I was completely stunned when I flipped through the pages of The Star on Thursday (Aug 30) and saw the article '50 pupils get to know about Umno and its leaders'.

On one hand the government is trying to force the teachers to sign a 'good behaviour contract', supposedly to keep the children's minds from being 'influenced', and on the other hand, they are bringing busloads of primary school students for group brainwashing at the Umno headquarters!

In other words, Umno's history and viewpoint has become indistinguishable from the country's. I can see where this is going. Soon non-loyalty to the ruling government will be construed as non-loyalty to the country.

In other words, we are heading towards fascism. Remember that two of the most infamous fascist regimes in the world came into power through democratic elections, and then subverted the mechanism which would have allowed for their removal.

Our country certainly seems to be moving towards that direction now. The gradual removal of freedom of expression and the wanton use of mass media to brainwash the people are both symptoms of a fascist state. I am not suggesting that Umno is going to start ethnic cleansing soon. That has nothing to do with fascism; just one of the crimes that becomes possible with the advent of a fascist government.

I believe that much has to be done to prevent this process from coming about in our very own country. Independent media such as malaysiakini would do well to venture into more investigative work, like tehelka.com , the Indian equivalent to malaysiakini , which has exposed corruption at the very core of the Indian government. It's an open secret that high level corruption is rampant in Malaysia. Someone needs to expose this and shake the people out of their indifference.