I wish to respond to the Prime Minister' Najib Abdul Razak’s reminder to the people not to gamble away their rights by voting for the opposition. I wonder how on earth can Najib muster the courage to go on record like that.
Mr PM, do you still believe that we believe what you and your controlled media are trying to sell to us?
Gone are the days when we used to believe every other word that came out of your mainstream media that was controlled by you and your predecessors.
People today believe in citizen journalism, which has been experimented and made possible by the alternative media. Mr PM, you talk about gambling away our rights if we vote for the opposition.
But what have we achieved by trusting your coalition, except by becoming more racial in retorts and outlook?
I expected you to come clean and take on the opposition. However, all that you have done is pay some foreign company a large sum to come up with slogans that you would have learned from your political Godfather, and your continue to pull wool over the peoples eyes.
Mr PM, if it were not for the courage of the Malaysian people to vote considerably for the opposition the last time around, we would not have known the level of corruption that has seeped into every sphere of bureaucracy from the time we had gained independence.
Mr PM, for a democracy to work there must be an opposition, or else we might end up like what your coalition has been thinking all this while, where even one chief minister had the gall to start a slogan called ' Kearah Pembangkang Sifar' (Towards Zero Opposition)! I am sure everyone knows who that was.
Mr PM, if you really believe in your rallying call of 1Malaysia, you have to first and foremost lead by example. You have to put a stop to all forms of racism and recognise talent, even it is from a non-Malay and non-Muslim.
You should have taken the lead to spearhead change in the education system by not taking a step back by going back to Bahasa Malaysia on the two subjects that students were slowly getting used to studying in English.
Mr PM, have you come to the schools today to see what kind of graduates we produce after 11 years of schooling? Most Malay children from urban and the semi-urban areas can't speak and write in basic correct English after 11 years of schooling.
Is that something to be proud of? With the facilities and the training that teachers are given and go through, we should be having Malay children speak English like your Umno Youth chief.
But where have we come today? We have had many good and capable teachers before. Have you wondered what happened to these people? Yes, some have retired and some have passed on but we have had a system that produced capable graduates.
Have you stopped to ponder what has happened? Our system has become so race-based, where we see only one race in every sphere of government machinery. With the mixed composition that we have dad before, we were capable of producing good students because we had non-Malay teachers who taught us English well, although we all studied in the national language.
Since you took over the helm of administration in the nation, you have not shown any indication of change with the way things are being done. With the judiciary, for example, the judges seem to be more robotic after you took over.
We would have expected you to face the leader of the opposition in the court of public opinion and let the people decide as to who is best suited to lead the nation, instead of allowing a repeat of the sad events of the past.
The whole episode shows that you are actually worried about a particular personality, instead of leading the reform of the entire system.
The police and the prosecution services under you too have not shown any iota of change and act as though their only reason for being there is to keep a particular agenda propped up, no matter what the circumstances are or the situation may be.
Mr PM, the people are watching and we are not the voters of yesteryear. We are the voters of the 21st century. We reason out before we cast our vote.
Don't you think that we know what we see and what we research and read, besides the indoctrination spewed by your controlled mainstream media?
We expected you to lead by example. Instead, we see the return of hero worship and large cut-outs with some placed in religiously sacred sites like Batu Caves, How could you have allowed that? That was in total disrespect to Lord Muruga, the main deity in Batu Caves.
You are trying to court Indian voters. You may succeed in getting some back because they are just too ignorant to know anything else... but the large and silent majority out there are waiting to see how you are going to respond to their grouses, which even their leaders have not been able to solve all these years.
If you make a decision tomorrow that all Tamil schools will become fully aided government schools, it can be done. If you decide to make it compulsory for national schools to bring back the pupil's own language (POL) classes, you can do it.
If you decide to make it a policy to employ more non-Malay teachers and put the deserving ones as heads of schools, it can be done as well. But you have not, and the people are watching.
Of late, you have even started to speak some words in Mandarin and Tamil in your speeches. Isn't this copying what the opposition has been doing all these years?
Why can't the BN break free from its racial hegemony and accept everyone as a Malaysian first?
Mr PM, the young citizens of today want to be treated with equality and respect. They want to participate and be recognised, they don't want to be told that they would have to fit into their racial moulds and not question what others can and cannot do.
When we refuse to acknowledge this fact, our neighbours are the beneficiaries of all this good talent. So, Mr PM sir, please do not tell us who we can and cannot vote for. We have come to a point that we, the people of Malaysia, want a greater say in the way this nation is run.
We have come to the point where we will not be taken for granted any more by politicians. We will put paid to the fact that the power comes from the people, for the people.
