The fact that Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has proven to be an ineffective and incompetent leader is obvious to those who choose to see. Ah Chong and Madhatter had highlighted current malaise that reflect his pathetic leadership. But in so doing, I urge that we do not miss the trees for the forest.

The fact remains that there are and have been countries, even in the developed parts of the world, which went through incompetent leadership in their modern history, and yet they rode it out well.

Heads of government come and go in matter of months in Italy for example, and yet the country remained intact and was never at severe risk as we are now. This is because they have strong public institutions which remain pillars that the people lean on for salvation.

As for our country, thanks to the megalomaniac Dr Mahathir Mohamad, these institutions were undermined, weakened, and ridiculed as obstacles to Mahathirism in his bid to establish control for bulldozing his tinsel dreams through. The control freak he was, he was not bothered by the very real danger of a weakling inheriting the levers of power.

So now it has happened. At best, the present prime minister is a Johnny-good-shoe wearing boots too big for himself. So havoc prevails. He has lost control of the levers, which are now being grabbed by warlords and robber barons. The rakyat is groping for salvation but to no avail. The pillars are crumbling, except for Petronas Twin Towers.

So never forget who destroyed the judiciary, the press, the Anti-Corruption Agency, the police force and even Umno. For just that alone, Mahathir is stopped from making any remarks about Pak Lah's paralysis.

What Pak Lah has done is showing up Mahathir's real sins. Let's just remove the manure that give rise to these mutants.