Both Singapore and our beloved country, Malaysia, graduated and inherited the same discipline from our colonial master, the British, pre- and post-Independence.
Only difference is, we had the added advantage of a geographically bigger land mass endowed with a rich hinterland of abundance resources when compared to a resourceless Singapore.
We are thus blessed with the better means and opportunities to reinvent our country to a glorious 1Malaysia, for all intents and purposes, much easier, faster and size-wise many times the success story of Singapore post-Independence, had we similarly stuck to and applied fully the inherited discipline to advancing our country.
We had a promising head start with an elected government led by the Alliance coalition comprising of Umno, MCA and MIC which supposedly reflected the aspirations of our freedom fighters, who are collectively the founding Independence leaders, spearheaded by our first prime minister, the late Tunku Abdul Rahman.
The lack of follow-through of sound and far-sighted integration policies following Independence to improving, uplifting and balancing the livelihoods of Malaysians led to civil unrest as early as May 13, 1969, followed by the imposition of Emergency rule directed by our second prime minister, the late Abdul Razak Hussein, who creditably introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), a drastic long-term bias policy with racial undertones, deemed an act of necessity to eradicating poverty, bringing to par as a catch-up and uplifting exercise, the status of our majority Malays, being singled out as poor and neglected.
Since its implementation, progress were made, with reviews, extensions and improvisations being introduced through the many national five-year plans leading to the sixth, by now.
Suspicions as to the attainment of the NEP, though disputed but highly claimed as successfully met, especially after having passed its reasonable and achievable implementation period with extensions until the present, are not unfounded and by now questionable.
The threshold of attaining and retaining a nobly-thought ‘jealousy and disunity barred’ minimum of thirty percent of the economic wealth by the Malays through the redistribution policy of the NEP is undeniably fulfilled and substantiated. It’s the distribution within the community which is highly questionable.
Evidently, 90 percent of the redistributed wealth is unmistakably in the hands of the 10 percent ‘elite bumiputras’ whilst the ‘hard-fought but easily earned’ balance is impossibly distributed to uplift the massive 90 percent silenced/forgiving-like contented Malays.
Unhealthy scenario
This prolonged and deeply-rooted unhealthy scenario is the result of past and present trusted leaders going astray, having not ingrained in themselves the inherited discipline to champion the aspirations as wished and willed by its people since Independence.
From the position of being endowed with an abundance of wealth-yielding resources which look promising to prospering Malaysians if well distributed, as pledged, our strayed leaders chose to introduce nepotism and cronyism in an already absolute power political environment, thus breeding corruption over many decades leading to the present upheaval-like disruptive politics which is potentially burdensome, worrisome and self-destructive.
The sooner we realise our setbacks, the sooner we rectify it, the sooner we get to redeem ourselves to our glorious past to enable us, at the least, to pick up from there, and if, we are truly awakened, to start catching up with the rest.
This is the utmost reality we fervently must attend to now, if our beloved country Malaysia is not to lose track, with others progressing steadily and rapidly.
Repent, rethink, refresh and reform we must, to redeem and regain our glory as truly 1Malaysia.
