We are now over ten over years into the 21st century. UMNO and their Barisan Nasional coalition partners are stuck in the 20th century!

All around us a concophany of strident voices are telling us that we are on the edge of Armageddon! Our economy, our cherished racial harmony and religious tolerance, our country even, are all on the brink of epic failure. A failure that we may never recover from – at least not in our lifetime and that of our children!

There have been many adjectives thrown around to tell us what is troubling this nation of ours. Truth and lies have somehow meshed into each other so that it is impossible, at times, too tell facts from fictions. Who to believe and who to ignore? Everywhere there are messiahs of doom and gloom telling us in no uncertain terms that salvation lies only if Barisan Nasional are return to government! Are we going to allow malaputaka-  catastrophe – to befall our nation by voting anyone else? Really?

Maybe if this is the 20^th century  - or, as  some of you would argue, in the early parts of the 20^th century - there would have been no need to hold any general elections. Many of us would have thought that neither DAP or PAS would be worthy of taking UMNO’s place. DAP were then relegated to the backwaters of Malacca. PAS?  …PAS can have Kelantan.

There would not have been a whimper of protest at that time worth considering if UMNO had asked that the constitution of our country be amended to allow the UMNO led Barisan Nasional to govern in perpetuity! Such was our reverence for UMNO then! Then was the time when government was by the very few over the very willing many. All this while Anwar Ibrahim languish in solitary confinement.

But this is the 21^st century! Within one minute of powering my PC I can talk in real time to my daughter in Ontario and she can update me on my grand daughters latest ‘quoatable quotes” ..this time it is Sofia wishing all the bodies (everybody) : "Nappy Poo Year everybody!" but again I digress!

We are now over ten over years into the 21^st century.

UMNO and their Barisan Nasional coalition partners  are stuck in the 20^th century!

They are still in the 20^th century when government could arrest and incarcerate our people without trial.

In the century when Main Stream Media could publish government propaganda at will and expect us all to swallow the storyline hook, line and sinker. And most off us did!

The time when the present Chief Minister of Penang – Lim Guan Eng – was arrested and put away under the ISA for having the audacity to come to the defend of an underage Malay School Girl raped by the Chief Minister of Melaka Rahim Thambi Chik.

And we now know what it was during these times that the BN government did the following to our people simply because they could!

bamboozle, beat, beat out of, beguile, betray, bilk, buffalo, burn, cheat, circumvent, clip, con, cozen, cross up, defraud, delude, disappoint, double-cross, dupe, ensnare, entrap, fake, falsify, fleece, fool, gouge, gull, hoax, hoodwink, hook, humbug, impose upon, lead on, outwit, play joke on, pull fast one, put on, rob, scam, screw, sell, skin, suck in, swindle, take advantage of, take for, take for ride, take in, take to cleaners, trick, victimize etc etc 

Yes they did all of the above and more to us!

But not anymore. Today they are being dragged screaming into the century that we have already been in for the past 12 years: The 21^st century.

The century when the blind are able to see, the dumb able to speak and the deaf to hear! The digital century where the Internet lets you see the handbag that Rosmah is using on any day of the week and at the click of mouse allows you to go back into time  - to May 2012 - and see a hapless Najib being heckled at the 02 Arena in London by BERSIH activists.

If I wanted to I could play and replay PDRM’s brutality when going after unarmed protestors who were excercising their civil rights in asking for a clean, fair and open elections.      

 This government can no longer hide what it has done wrong to us from us. This government is now vulnerable. This government, whether it likes it or not, now have to answer to each and everyone of us for anything that they do - each of us that has a PC, has access to a PC and to each of us that talk to those who have a PC. That is what the 21^st century is all about.

This is why this 13^th general election is personal.The internet has made this 13^th general election personal. Never before in any election has so many of our people understood, accept and insists that they had a personal stake to ensure that the right Members of Parliament , the right Prime Minister and the right government take its  seat in Putrajaya!

My question to Najib is simply this. When will you and your Barisan Nasional collegues join us in the 21^st century? 

When will Najib understand that we know he tried to bribe the people of Sibu with RM$5 million to vote for BN’s candidate?

That we know he is not telling us the whole truth about the need to murder Altanatuya?

We know that the IPO of FELDA is flawed because it serves not the interest of the rural settlers in Felda but that of UMNO?

We know that Najib has gone into an orgy of spending OUR money on the pretext of helping out those of our people who are in need but he is in reality doing so to buy votes for himself and for Barisan Nasional. 

We know his wife is obnoxious and she is a liability to his and UMNO’s chances of winning the 13^th general election. We know all this and more.         

You and me can make a difference.I  will not be coming back to vote but I and my brother and sister bloggers will continue to write. I hope that what we write will help our cause. It is a just cause. It is a good cause. It is not just my cause it is our cause – and that cause is to fight the good fight so that we can have a decent, reliable and accountable government in Putrajaya!