After answering some relatively easy textbook-type questions from the human resources manager, it was now Mr Kon’s turn. Looking me over thoroughly, he lowered his gaze and asked: “Do you think you are better than this company or the company is better than you?”

On the verge of being stumped, my mind goes into overdrive, remembering home, school and the sports field while Mr Kon looked at me like an owl, waiting. Something told me that both the answer and the conviction that accompanied my answer will decide my fate that day.

I hear myself say, “I am better than the company. If employed it's my duty to make it better.” A faint smile creases Mr Kon’s face. In his stilted English, he says what I remember to this day: “The company needs better people to make excellent products.” 

I knew the job was mine. And in the two years I worked there, I understood why the Olympic Games was hosted in Tokyo in 1964, a mere 19 years after the death and destruction of a war that ended after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were flattened with nuclear bombs.

Successful democracies

And it's a similar story with the Germans. Ten years after surrendering in 1945, the German company Hochtief who had built Herr Hitler's bunker was awarded the tender for the complex engineering works at the heart of our first hydroelectric power station in Cameron Highlands.

Then a decade later in 1963, the German government funded the building and equipping of our first teaching hospital at University Malaya. Of course, German manufacturers got a welcome boost but then who can complain about the quality and reliability of their equipment?

The true strength of Japan, Germany, and other successful democracies is their people. Despite democracy’s many imperfections, these countries have used it to build solid civic institutions that make politicians accountable to the people and not the other way around.

Forget the rhetoric. Forget the promises. What we must do in this PRU (general election) is to stand up and insist that we too want a government that accepts that ‘We, the People’ build this nation and that no politician is better than ‘We, the People’. So get up, go out and go vote!

Whatever the outcome of GE15, the fight will continue until the day comes when every elected government accepts that ‘We, the People’ are far better than the government of the day. Your vote affirms this singular and fundamental aspect of a democracy.