And Abdullah Ahmad Badawi should have asked the police why the traffic summonses were not sent to him, says a reader.

Sadirah K: It looks like the prime minister has now sanctioned a system whereby the police can come out with summonses without informing the party concerned. How do we know that there are outstanding payments? I suppose the only way is to log in. We then have to take the police statement as correct.

If such procedures are allowed to continue, it would be akin to printing money. The police just have to print our summonses and we, the public, have to pay. Why did the PM not ask them why he was not sent these summonses? Things seem to be going from bad to worse.

Anonymous: To hell with the offenders. No more discount - enough is enough. It has come to a stage that no one respect the law anymore. The enforcers have to be serious for once. Otherwise the mentality will not change. God bless all the law-abiding citizens. Sigh....

The following are comments from readers on other reports. These are on PM to break 'elegant silence' in Mahathir row .

Laundryshop: I hope Malaysians are not expecting much from Pak Lah's impending response to Dr M. I think it's sufficiently clear that there will be no public washing of dirty laundry. In other words, there will probably be no new information in the response. Just compilation and perhaps paraphrasing of previously aired explanations. Go home people, nothing to see here....

Muhammad Kirai: I wish to refer to the on-going issue of Tun Mahathir's harsh criticisms of the prime minister. A lot have been said about it by all parties. In the end, it seems the only solution offered by most people is for the prime minister to meet with Tun to 'settle' this issue.

But will it achieve anything? Everybody hopes that Tun comes out from the meeting saying that he has gotten the explanation he wanted. This will not happen because of two reasons. Firstly, everyone knows that prior to this, the government had already given explanation to Tun's queries and yet he would not accept them. Secondly and more importantly, Tun is actually not looking for an explanation. What he wants is his policies and decisions to be reinstated!

We were told that it was PM who asked to see Tun in Tokyo. This means that the PM is not avoiding or ignoring Tun. Although the meeting only took place for 10 minutes, it was sufficiently long and private enough for Tun to tell PM that when both of them were back in Malaysia, he wanted a meeting because 'there is one or two things I want to discuss that I am not too happy about.'

I am sure that PM would definitely have met up with Tun had he said something like that. I believe PM would have cleared his schedule so that the meeting with Tun would be the first thing he would do when he was back in Malaysia.

But no, Tun kept quiet about things and in less than two weeks after the meeting in Tokyo he unleashed his no-holds-barred criticisms on the PM.

If Tun requested the meeting in Tokyo he would be on the moral high ground because he made the first move, but it was PM, out of respect to his predecessor, that requested for an audience. If Tun is sincere about the issues he is so concerned about, that was his chance to tell his successor that he wanted some time to discuss the issues. So what happened?

Either Tun is really insincere because he kept quiet when PM called on him only to blast him in public less than two weeks later or since the meeting in Tokyo, people around Tun have convinced him that a street fight is the best way to bring this government to its knees.

On Half-bridge: The high cost of indecision

HJ Angus: Older readers will be familiar with this saying, 'Money doesn't grow on trees.' Our elders used to say this when one wasted anything like food or on unnecessary frivolities.

However nowadays it appears that money does grow on trees. So the PAC is going through the reasons why the overhead highway has ballooned from a RM30 million temporary road to RM100 million up again to RM250 million and now the astronomical sum of RM480 million for an eight-lane flyover on account of 'related works such as connecting roads and amenities'.

Works ministry officials announced all these numbers to the press during the past months so the question that should be asked is why were all these related works not taken into account before any such numbers were issued? Was the Works Ministry not aware that the CIQ would need connecting roads?

Those connecting roads would have been built into the original contract. The only difference now is that instead of the bridge we have an overhead flyover. Given my suspicious bent plus the fact that no open tenders were called, it appears that favoured contractors can be given much leeway to massage numbers to accommodate various needs.

The Auditor-General's office should be tasked to vet the numbers but given the usual non-action after their annual horror reports, we should not hold our collective breath.

On PSM: FTA will enslave Malaysians

Vasu: We should move forward and face the challenges ahead. We are already a signatory to the WTO agreement in 1995, thus, it is not a sensible idea to dispute outright now over the FTA with US.

Almost every country is racing to conclude its own FTA with other countries to avoid being left out. Remember, if we do not conclude the FTA with US, then we will be losing a lot, not the US. We need to see the benefits from the FTA with US; job opportunities, new flow in investments, training and education, labour movements, services, etc.

We have been left behind in many aspects, to name a few, insurance, banking, shipping, etc. If we do not agree to with the FTA or even delay in concluding the agreement, there are lots more to lose.