Neil Khor's letter merits highlighting. Whilst a perception is realised regarding increasing transparency, in Malaysia, I beg to differ as there are no hard data to validate this. Malaysia's corruption perception index remains insignificantly altered over the recent years.

I would suggest that non-transparency in Malaysian daily life remains as ingrained as ever and while noble attempts are being displayed by the government to embrace and enhance transparency, the road ahead remains long and tortuous.

I believe that increasing transparency within any framework leads to better outcomes when dealings are maintained above board. Non-transparency is the hallmark of the fallen human mind and in governance, this cannot and should not be applied universally when it is related to any issue directly or indirectly affecting the welfare of the public.

In a society where corruption is a way of life, methods to achieve transparency and to maintain it at an acceptable standard have to be persistent, regularly monitored and critically evaluated.

The reassurance by Umno that there is nothing to worry about regarding further government handouts does not offer a solution. It merely tells us of a certainty with some false reassurance. In the end, there will still be dubious transparency when dealing with the process of awarding and administering these handouts. No amount of adherence to feudalistic tradition can lead to any progress.

Given that now that some work has been purportedly achieved and is ongoing with police issues, serious political reform should be high on the nation's agenda. Firstly, a strong opposition must be allowed and encouraged to flourish. To this end, methods of abuse of the opposition (especially the ISA and OSA) must be repealed or at least modified in tandem with the recent emergence of global strategies to deal with terrorism.

When this is achieved, one possible way forward is to totally abolish handout-type scholarships and replace these with loans which have to be repaid with no interest. Loans can be any reasonable quantum and those who are truly scholastic can be offered prestigious nominal scholarships which can later be transformed into research fellowship or postgraduate support when a track record is proven and established.

Everyone should be eligible for these loans and those who opt to have nominal scholarships may choose to enter the civil service (professions included). There should be no racial or religious politics involved in awarding loans or scholarships.

Education support should be available to all, thus unburdening all parents. The fragmentation of society into racial, religious or other strata groups will also then be minimised. Loans may repayable by the individual somewhere down the line according to one of several options.

When this has been shown to work, its principles could be extended to other issues in daily Malaysian life. Some of these proposals may sound Utopian but to seriously kick start this ambitious scheme, at least two Acts need to be drawn up and enacted - a Freedom of Information Act and an Equal Opportunities Act.