For a country where nothing much happens most of the time and the national pastime seems to be shopping and watching pirated VCDs, Malaysia is still capable of surprising some of us once in a while. This week - within a space of 48 hours - two startling things happened.

On Aug 31, the country's Independence Day, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi delivered his Merdeka message, which focused on a singular issue: The equality of all Malaysians and the fact that despite their apparent differences in terms of race, language, culture and religion, 'no Malaysian was more Malaysian than others'.

He called on all Malaysians, from all walks to life, to work together to realise the goal of nation building, to forge a nation out of this disparate array of different and often competing ethnic and religious constituencies, for the sake of the future.

In any other context and on any other occasion this would have been a pretty mundane and commonsensical thing to say.