We seemed to have welcomed in the New Year with a power outage has caused unnecessary loss not forgetting the inconvenience to the public at large. When the curtain of 2004, we were hit by the tsunami disaster, and now, at the dawn of a new year, we are hit by a massive power failure.

God knows what in store for us following this.

Meanwhile, the Tenaga Nasional Berhad officials will repeat their favourite mantras that they do not know why they blackout occurred and the promise that there will not be a repeat (as if this is the first time that a major outage has occurred.

They will then say that they will appoint an independent consultant to look into the fiasco (at the taxpayer's expense).

Don't the leaders of our nation learn from past mistakes? What happened to TNB's check and countercheck procedures to prevent a major power outage? The damage has been done to our economy and now the goodwill among foreign investors will take a dive.

During the last big power outage in 1996, the head honcho of TNB had to take the rap and leave the company. One tends to wonder whether for the latest incident - which caused the government and the private sector to come to a standstill - there will be someone up to take the rap in the name of transparency and accountability

Taking into account the short memory of Malaysians, it would seem that the old mantra of 'We will look into this matter and leave no stone unturned to find the cause of the problem' will persuade the public to forget the incident - until the next one occurs.

Our prime minister's observation of us having a 'first world infrastructure and third world mentality' is proved yet once again. When will people learn from past mistakes and not to pass the buck or blame the Almighty every time a mishap occurs?