I am of the same age as the country and as I was growing up as a non-bumiputera, I was well aware that the bumiputera had advantages not available to me. But like many children of non-bumi families, I was told to work hard and not expect any handouts.

I was prepared to accept such a situation in spite of also being reminded that I was a citizen with all the rights that citizens are entitled to. But I expected that such a situation of inequality would not be forever and that my children would grow up in a country where they would have equal opportunities as every other race and community.

Even I myself had long argued that I wanted to called myself 'Malaysian' in any official documents and I was prepared to leave out my ethnic origins because I believed in myself as being a Malaysian first.

But as I read newspaper articles during the recent Merdeka week about how things were in decades past -when I was still in primary school - I kept feeling that Malaysian society today is actually less 'Malaysian' than it was before. If anything, it has regressed rather than grown, which is the opposite of what one would expect as a country matures and its citizens integrate.

Maybe it is because we are multi-racial and multi-religious that this integration is so elusive, so hard to achieve. In many other nations, there is a dominance of one race and one religion and they manage to feel as one but in Malaysia, there is much talk about unity but it is more talk than action - at least not the sort of action that seems likely to bring about greater unity.

I think that much of the increasing friction in recent years has come from the expectations of the young non-bumi generations of today who believe in the idea of 'Bangsa Malaysia' and who have grown up seeing their parents having to live and work in a society where some have more privileges and those privileges

cannot be questioned. There is impatience now because it has gone on for too long and there are constant statements that suggest that things may not change for yet another generation.

Making constant references to the constitution is no point since it was formulated before such a thing as the NEP came into being and therefore did not provide for such a situation. That is partly where the conflict is today - the constitution provided a basis for the equality of all communities but the NEP changed that.

Though the NEP has worked against me, I have not been against it and accept the idea that it was necessary to adjust the economic imbalance. What I no longer accept is the fact that its original objective has been overlooked and is today being used as a way for certain groups to stay wealthy.

So at this year's 50th milestone, I feel that the way to end all this friction is just to come out and state that there are indeed two classes of citizens in this country rather than to keep on pretending. Why wave the 'keris' and say things to fellow citizens like 'If you don't like things, you can leave'? Why have such a charade? Tell those who are not privileged that they are really second-class citizens and to not expect equality. Then there can be no more arguments and no more fights in Parliament about 'equal rights'.