During those long winter years under the rule of the former prime minister, reading the morning papers could often be a traumatic experience. You glanced through the headlines and a surge of silent seething rage coursed through your veins.

With a weakened federal government elected into place, one would have thought that the morning news would be far more palatable. But alas, it is not to be!

When I read that Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin and Syed Akbar Ali have been charged under the Sedition Act, the same old rage returned. It is a crude reminder that the kind of open, democratic, and enlightened Malaysian society I have yearned for Malaysia is still far far away.