While I appreciate the agreement with my consitutional point of view, I would like to add that I disagree with Dr. Chen Man Hin that the root problem is UMNO/BN.

While its true UMNO/BN exploited the weakness of the people and the shortcoming from events and the uncertainty of the original constitution. The fact of the matter, its the animal of political parties to do so.

In order to really make change, one really have to examine root causes of our own differences that can be exploited by political parties. I suggest to you that our biggest divide is not racial practises or religious in nature. Our differences is more fundamental in the way we view human liberty itself i.e. how much state should interfer with our freewill itself. The truth is that each race and different religious group beliebe in free will are different. While there are commonalities, the truth is there is difference. UMNO/BN took those difference and through modern politcal machinery exploited it which is their nature.

If you look at economics and religion, its obvious different race view freedom and state interference differently. But although there are difference, the truth is government interference in freedom is much larger than any race believe or want to. How this is possible is really about the very shortcoming of our citizentry against the exploitation by politicians.

Politicians don’t originate anything, they exploit existing conditions and ideas at the right time and place. They exploit it for their benefit first and is the last to give it up when it no longer is what people want. Its why the divide between us will not be changed by politicians but that we have to decide the division no longer is what we want or that we want to change it. In other word, apathy is what cause our divide to remain and prevent change from happening.

But generally what people want and don’t want are also triggered by events and trends. The feudal system was created because of farmers were preoccupied with production of food and needed the protection and lords. The feudal system died and replaced by pure monarchy because roads and printing press made the go between of the king and the people unecessary. Democracy spread because industrialization raised productivity and leisure to participate in politics. Oppressive dictatorship became possible because of monopoly of modern media and modern enforcement and globalization and competitive economics/capital markets made unfeeling government impossible.

The only thing that will turn around our attitude in Malaysia are two things – a technological change or a seminal event change. One hope is the spread of uber-speed broadband and internet TV. The truth is if the opposition had their own TV channel and free distribution of their paper, UMNO/BN would have lost power some time ago. But that is not going to happen anytime soon. The truth is the recent changes we have seen in politics from Hindraf, Bersih and action of Bar Council would not have happened without the internet.

So we are left with a seminal event. That event is basically the slowdown in our economy. When our economy slow down at some point, the UMNO/BN formula is unsustainable because it needs a growing economy to feed its patronage system to remain in power. This seminal event takes longer as we have things like oil and other resources, very productive minority and high savings.

I believe that in the end, it will likely be a confluence of things – technoligical changes and seminal event that we will be able to see real changes and that is why UMNO/BN is so insurmountable because the two thing may not come together for a long long time.