Former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad has told a gathering of diplomats and other foreigners that, due to scholarships and higher education, “there are hardly any idiots left in Malaysia” and that “this gives the government a headache”.

But from all the symptoms I see, the vast majority of Malaysians are as “slightly less intelligent” as Dr M and his Umno/BN colleagues could possibly wish them to be, and gibbering idiots are as plentiful as ever.

In fact Malaysia’s perennial epidemic of political idiocy continues to rage unchecked, with millions of apparently sentient adults still so intellectually or ideologically-impaired as to be somehow unable or unwilling to register to vote.