It’s not easy to write a column about something that leaves you speechless. But as dumbstruck as I am by the sheer bodoh-ness of the Barisan Nasional (BN) election manifesto and the breathtaking falsehood its head uttered in the process of launching the thing, I’ll try and get a few words out.

Starting with the observation that every Malaysian I know, of every colour, race and creed, is too smart to be anything but insulted by Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s assertion: “We made many promises in the last elections and we have fulfilled them all.”

What does the man take people for? A bunch of gibbering idiots? Surely even the people who BN patronisingly refers to as “the masses” or the “kampung folk” are too clever to swallow such rubbish.