With polling day fast looming, it is imperative that the gullible, the uninitiated and the hardcore myopics are reminded that the only way that politicians can be kept honest and true is to ensure that they face a knife-edge result after every election.This applies to every politician in every constituency and for every country under the sun.

As Umno has been so unconscionably and spectacularly successful in gerrymandering and systematically rigging the electoral processes such that the number of voters in constituencies can vary from a measly 5,000 to a massive100,000 besides engineer all manner of other electioneering irregularities, the only option that the good people of Malaysia have is to vote for the

opposition at every turn in this election and beyond.

It is only when the Barisan Nasional is reduced to a slim majority that the evils of corruption, cronyism, nepotism and money-politics can be curtailed or brought to an end and good governance can prevail.

And to do this, you have to have as many opposition politicians in parliament as you can muster. Hence, in the near term, don’t worry if the non-Barisan politician standing for the elections is black, brown or brindle or has only one eye or three legs or has a mermaid for a partner. Just vote him or her in. If you don’t, you will only end up with more of the same rubbish that passes for ministers and political hacks in the government ranks these days.

A diverse opposition group with varying philosophies, platforms and interests may not be the best outcome at the outset but at the end of the day, what matters most is that no political party will have the numbers to cow the rakyat into submission as what Umno is currently doing.

As you are not beholden to any opposition politician, you can always get rid of the unsatisfactory ones at the next elections anyway.

But if you still harbour doubts on the wisdom of voting for an inexperienced opposition politician, just look at what is unfolding before us in the US today where a young, relatively inexperienced black man could very well end up in the White House within the next twelve months even though blacks make up only 25 percent of the population.

It is an exciting time to adjust our sights and fine-tune our political mindsets so that only honest and decent politicians are elected to serve the interests of the people instead of ruling political parties and their cronies in power.