I refer to the Malaysiakini report Muhyiddin: I'm Malay first .

It is not only disheartening but despairing as well to hear a leader of a multi-racial country admit that he emphasises race above the country.

While we can and should be proud of our ethnic identity for historical purposes, we should be prouder of our nationality; of being a Malaysian first and Malay, Chinese, Indian and the rest second.

This because without the country, without a nation, we won’t have a home and we won’t have any identity. If we were go by the logic of the DPM that we must be a Malay, Chinese or Indian first and a Malaysian second - then the meaning of being a Malaysian living in Malaysia is lost.

We might as well be nomads traveling through countries and to anyone and everyone we meet we can tell them that we are Malays, Chinese, Indians (and the rest) and who by the way is also a ‘Malaysian’.

The DPM’s admittance has solved the mystery that despite having celebrated 50 years as a nation, we are still as fragmented and divided a society as the day we started. Do you see the correlation?

That is precisely why today, more than ever before, we need a true leader to stand up, a leader who can think, act and execute as a Malaysian first and as a member of his race second.

If the nation continues to vote in administrators who think, act and execute based on ethnicity, then Malaysia will never be able to move forward as of evident now where even Vietnam seems to have attracted more FDI than us.

What is worse is that we may one day have leaders in the form of the rancorous Ibrahim Ali who despite being given a ‘crutch’ for the past 50 years, is still suffering from a minority complex of unknown origins.

It is unfathomable for me and my friends why the majorities are the protected ones yet it is the same majorities (a certain percentage of them) who are constantly and incessantly haranguing the minorities for supposedly ‘questioning’ their constitutional rights and at the same time asking for more handouts from the government.

Will Malaysians do the right thing (not as Malays, Chinese, Indians but as Malaysians!) by voting in the right candidate in the next general elections?