"IT's crazy. The Thai prime minister has actually run away to Chiangmai," said a fellow Malaysian, currently wondering how he will return home from Bangkok. And we thought we had problems.

Malaysia is certainly far from daisies, rainbows and candy canes, what with the checklist of reforms on our plate. The judiciary and police force require refurbishment, polarisation and race-based tiffs need to be checked, the education system begs for further improvements. Money politics. Corruption. Parliament. Even our much fussed-over astronaut has to be investigated.

It is really, really bad. As youths would say: "We suck." This has been widely acknowledged, in conversations from shiny corporate offices to mamak stalls.

This week, however, two catastrophic events silenced us to awed murmurs. While we were losing our cool with yoga, the unbelievable scenes of coordinated violence and hostage-taking in Mumbai and the ongoing impasse in Thailand leapt from our screens.

We were suddenly the small, nerdy and slightly ridiculous student in class. Yoga versus forcefully closed airports, or a plan to murder 5,000 civilians. Our neighbours' situations are infinitely fascinating to us because of what they are that we are not, or not yet anyway. They have a strong, united and irrepressible civil society movement centred in Bangkok, which involves professionals, students, the media and the middle class. They revere their monarchy to the point of taking lese majeste charges very seriously.
They also think representative democracy is pretty much a joke. Thai academician Ji Giles Ungkaporn, who wrote in 2003 about the Thai non-governmental organisations scene and the problems of democratic representation in its peoples' movements, was blistering in his latest assessment of the situation in Bangkok. Back then he talked about social movements like the Assembly of the Poor, which consisted mostly of the Thai peasantry and rural poor. The assembly sat protesting in front of government buildings for their rights, but as Ungkaporn noted, it was actually educated activists who conducted the negotiations. Leadership was very much elitist, and ultimately the poor could only speak through their votes.

Ungkaporn on Wednesday wrote that it was now "fascist thugs" from the anti-government People's Alliance for Democracy who are demanding that their government, democratically elected by the majority of the Thai population, hands over power. "The PAD wants a dictatorship to replace democracy because they deem that the majority of the Thai electorate are too ignorant to deserve the right to vote."

Thankfully, we are not quite like surgeon Noppakoon Lagum, one of those occupying Suvarnabhumi International airport, who claimed: "Rural people have good hearts but they don't know the truth like we do in Bangkok. It is our duty to re-educate them." This is a scary pomposity.

Whatever our country's divisions and differences, Malaysians just have to look at their northern neighbour's current woes to see how far we have come in terms of democratisation and respecting our institutions and the Constitution. We have become fierce about our rights, but let's check bloodshed at the door.

Those who play the political game may hate certain electoral results, but nobody goes around thinking that the poor essentially cannot be trusted to vote. We may have had spats with our neighbours but they pale in comparison with the potential diplomatic war threatening to flare when Indian officials insinuate that there was Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai attacks.

There is a clear enough path for change. Over here we are talking, no matter how cattily at the moment. There has also been a healthy public pondering over issues important to our political understanding, such as the immunity of our royals, our feelings on defections, and concepts like ketuanan Melayu.

With issues like these, sensitivities are pricked and blood boils. But is it really so? It sometimes seems as though our leaders are trying to pick fights we ordinary Joes don't really fancy. Sometimes the mood among the ordinary people towards the authorities is basically, "just govern".

Our fishermen have not put out to sea since last week due to foul weather. The Fisheries Department has had to increase marine food imports from Thailand, and the fishermen are worried about their income if this weather continues. I doubt that they are banging their fists spoiling for a ketuanan Melayu fight among Barisan Nasional component parties.

Why try to make storms in teacups? Of course it is (still) the post-March 8 election season and the pre-Umno election marathon, and all manner of battle cries will be heard. But we have been through this before. We know that most of the roaring is only on paper, and we know what overcompensating can sound like. If we see the theatrics for what they are -- the dramatic calls for removals, resignations or blackballing -- Malaysians could actually be collectively donning their thinking caps, debating decently.

As we are not bruised, bloodied, or strapped in deadlock, why not?