Despite strenuous official efforts to bill the forthcoming March 8 polls as a genuine election, there’s no way it promises to be anything but a sick travesty of the real thing.

Like last year’s contests in Machap and Ijok, it’s liable to be nothing like free and fair, but just another cynical Barisan Nasional (BN) exercise in freebies and fear.

The freebies are ostensibly out of the goodness and generosity of the incumbent government, but actually crony-enriching, non-competitively awarded projects and outright bribery, all funded with money plundered from the public purse.