One way of looking at the so-called 'problem' of the university quota system is to actually to not look at the quota system. In my opinion, like everything else that Dr Mahathir Mohamad says, this is a matter of 'playing racial politics'.

Mahathir has repeatedly put tantalising suggestions into the people's minds so as to avoid what the real issue should be.

To me the issue is very simple and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the quota system. If students with 10 As could not get into a university, isn't it time to open more public universities? And note that I did not say the expected word - 'build'.

The old excuse of saying that the government has no money to 'build' and run new universities cannot hold water for two simple reasons.

Firstly, the RM20 billion spent on questionable mega-projects such as the Twin Towers and the imperial palace of Putrajaya as well as lavish mosques - something which the Prophet of Islam actually disliked - could have been used to open more universities.

Secondly, the government does not have to spend billions of ringgit building ostentatious new campuses but just to take over the loads of empty shop lots or office buildings that litter our city landscape.

Lots of famous universities overseas are made up of a jumble of 'non-architecturally unified buildings' and they provide excellent services purely because their main focus of spending is on well-trained academics.

Our forefathers debated at great length about the quota system to present what they believed to be fair to the different proportions of the multiracial Malaysian society and for better or for worse they had their rationale and I for one can understand that.

Personally speaking, I would not mind doing away with the quota system but the decision to abolish it is not an easy one in reality.

Most of the people who are creating all the hullabaloos over the SPM top scorers who were rejected from public universities are barking up the wrong tree. The real truth is simply that we need more public universities.

The interesting thing to remember is that we could have actually opened a lot more public universities if we had a say in where the hundreds of billions of ringgit of Petronas money went!

So please, Malaysians, don't fall into the racial trap of our demented leadership. It's simply not worth it.