The right honourable deputy prime minister of Malaysia says to the people of Malaysia:

‘How can I say I am a Malaysian first? It’s not proper’.

This is and certainly must be, by any local or international gauge, a treachery and a national disavowal of the severest distinction.

No other elected head of government in any of the 200 countries in the whole wide world would ever be heard uttering words of such systemic national toxicity to his fellow countrymen and citizens.

Would it ever lie in the mouth of a Vietnamese, a Singaporean, an Australian, a Canadian, a Japanese, an Argentinean, an Indonesian, a Frenchman, a German, a Korean or a Thai to denigrate his nationality as not being the first in his heart?

Is this not the dimmest day for all Malaysians in the entire history of Malaysia? For the Malaysian nationality to be downgraded to a pariah second after race and ethnicity?

Surely bangsa is merely a subset of negara and never the other way around.

Has not such a person, by his very own words, forfeited his eligibility to ever become the prime minister of the country?

Of all the scurrilous catcalls for the stripping of Malaysian citizenship, is this not, objectively, the single most deserving instance of all time?

The national anthem is not: Negaraku, tempatnya kedua dalam hatiku’ .