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“The government you elect is the government you deserve” was supposedly said by Thomas Jefferson, and the quote “…every nation gets the government it deserves” is attributed to Joseph de Maistre.

Jefferson was a Founding Father of the US and de Maistre was a French philosopher. With hindsight, what these two men postulated rings true.

Although in Malaysia, at the last general election, the people voted to give 55.86% of our parliamentary seats to one alliance, but the government today is made of parliamentarians from another coalition.

Perhaps Malaysia in 2018 was the exception to the general rule.

Like many Malaysians, I observe the political landscape in our country. Of course, it is tiresome and fatigue inducing. But the country’s politics is like a bad road accident on our highways. You don’t want to slow down yet somehow you just cannot help but look and be horrified.

So, what’s happening in the southern tip of the peninsula is quite embarrassing with our ‘disgraced’ former leader holding court and garnering raptured attention everywhere he goes.

I place the word disgraced in parenthesis, because he doesn’t look like a politician who has fallen, been thoroughly humiliated, and absolutely disgraced, does he?

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YOURSAY | We deserve the government we vote for

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TheWakandan: The sheer enormous scale of this conspiracy - billions stolen in the name of the Finance Ministry to finance an election war chest in 2013.

To many people, it was obviously ordered by the then finance and prime minister Najib Abdul Razak and executed by Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low.

Now, Najib is on trial for this, whose defence was that he did not know what was going on. His hotshot lawyer thinks that this is the only viable defence considering so much has been revealed as evidence.

The defence expected the judge to buy this. How could he if even the ordinary folks can see clearly that that was one big national heist?

And he rightly called Najib a “national embarrassment” because we seemed to set records for the wrong reasons - the biggest kleptocrat heist of all time and losing a jumbo jet without a trace.

The biggest crime other than the alleged thieving itself is the flagrant violation of democracy, where illegal money was being used to win the election.

Now, those who are wondering why the people could accept this - that they were the same people who won the election because of these monies. How could they not want what they had gained?

OrangeKoala1303: The sickening part is that the vast number of Malaysians don’t seem to mind. As long as they get free oil change, free TV, RM200, BR1M, etc, they're happy to collect the scraps that fall off the thieves' table.

Malaysia is well on the road to perpetual mediocrity. Corruption and lies are just how things are done here. I am not pessimistic. Just realistic.

Businessfirst: We deserve the government we vote for.

Those who prioritise short-term gain for a few days of celebration with food and beer (in Sarawak and Sabah) and some RM200 every five years during election time, and vote for GPS, GRS, BN, etc, will not prosper.

They will remain stuck where they are, begging for scraps, struggling to get minimum wage or employment, be exploited, etc.

Meanwhile, in Norway, which discovered oil about the same time as Malaysia, each citizen there is born an instant millionaire (through a massive fund in which the surplus wealth produced by Norwegian petroleum income is deposited).

One country goes backwards to a failed state and another goes forward to prepare its citizens for the digital age.

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