One of our former finance ministers, Anwar Ibrahim, recently wrote that "Malaysia desperately needs to remove her rose-coloured glasses we may once have been a lionised developing economy but those days are long gone". He is partially right.

The glasses are in fact tinted with hibiscus, for Malaysians are so used to hearing of our national flowers in almost every endeavour that to think that the nectar won't be sweet is nearly treasonable. The notion that Malaysia will be fully developed by 2020 is a mantra so ingrained it might as well be inscribed on a batu bersurat waiting to be set in Muzium Negara. Indeed, the year declared by Dr Mahathir Mohamad for Malaysia's accession to the ranks of the fully developed is in the public consciousness as significant in our nation's narrative as 1957 or 1963.