Much was said during Merdeka about how grateful Malaysians should be for the development that has been achieved so far under the Barisan Nasional government. We should be grateful for electricity, running water, the LRT and tolled highways. Yet one only needs to look at our neighbours and other countries in this region to see how much of a failure the BN government has been in developing this country.

A perfect example would be the country I am now studying in, South Korea. This is a country that was poorer at the time of Malaysia's independence. Not only poor but war ravaged and under a constant threat of invasion from North Korea.

Here students are active politically and are quite militant when it comes to demonstrations, yet their top universities and the achievements of their students would put all Malaysian universities to shame. The facilities at Seoul National University are what the BN government would like to term as "world class".

The public transport system in Seoul would also put Malaysia's overpriced, unplanned and inconvenient 'system' to shame. Here, for less than a dollar (relative to Korean money) or even about two ringgit after conversion, I can go anywhere within the city and easily transfer to any one of the seven existing lines! Yes, that's seven and not two overpriced train systems like the one in our country.

Add this to regular feeder buses (every 10 minutes or so) for the equivalent Korean value of about 30 sen, I can get anywhere easily. No waiting for hours for some limping Intrakota bus to come whenever, or feeder buses that take another hour to get you to where you are going because the train lines in Malaysia do not get anywhere near where you are supposed to be going most of the time.

It is really high time that we stopped comparing ourselves with Bangladesh and Indonesia, and using them as a yardstick for our success and happiness as a nation.

It is time that BN woke up and realised that they are just politicians 'elected' to govern and that the people have right to criticise, oppose and work to change them if they so wish, especially when they have failed to deliver the level of development that citizens of Malaysia demand.