This year's Merdeka Day celebration was held in Putrajaya where parades, patriotic songs and poems, performances by personalities and the PM's message reminded us that we have every reason to be proud of being Malaysian.

Flag-waving schoolchildren, fighter jets roaring in formation, floats bearing significant Malaysian landmarks and a full assembly of those who have achieved world-standard feats made the occasion a "fitting tribute and farewell" for the prime minister also.

As the refrains of Merdeka! and Malaysia Boleh! stilled and the curtain on the "biggest parade in Malaysia's history" came down, Malaysians returned to reality the following day accompanied by a major power breakdown in the north.

Behind the most magical moments of the greatest show in town, the magnificent mega-monuments which served as the backdrop, and the enthusiasm of the mammoth crowd, hung an increasingly stained and strained social fabric that none could ignore.

As the gloss of the country's "achievements" wore off, thinking Malaysians wondered aloud what have we truly achieved and how have all the world feats which the government fusses over, enhanced the well-being of this nation 45 years after Merdeka.

Perhaps the government is right after all Malaysia Boleh! (Malaysia Can!) for under the present administration we have been capable of the worst and the most worrying. One needs only to look at a very important issue such as public safety to see how substance has been sacrificed for senseless symbolism.

Public safety

After 46 years of self-rule, do the citizens of this country feel very much safer? Going by its very own statistics, the government has very little to boast about.

The Malaysian Quality of Life Index 2002, a report by the Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister's Department, based on a survey over a 11-year period (1990 to 2000), reveals a sharp decline in the public safety index with the crime rate measured by crimes per thousand population almost doubling from 3.8 in 1990 to 7.1 in 2000.

Present indicators show that the scenario has turned for the worse over the past three years. In the first six months of this year, 7,561 armed robberies were reported in the country compared to 5,764 last year an increase of 30 percent ( the Star , Aug 15, 2003). This is equivalent to an average of 42 armed robberies per day. Malaysia Boleh!

Who would have thought that one day urban areas such as Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya would be described as "black areas" or "high risk areas"? Will Bangsar become known as the Bronx in the near future?

Very soon KL may share the same history as the gangs of New York, with 30 percent of violent crimes in the capital city being committed by 450 members of seven most active gangster groups, involved in activities such as extortion, petty theft, armed and unarmed robberies, hired killings and debt collection ( NST , May 20, 2002).

Car thieves in Bolehland have been achieving a record of sorts. Last year, one motor vehicle was stolen every 23 minutes in the first six months ( NST , Aug 19, 2002). More than 11,000 vehicles worth RM249 million were reported stolen in this period alone.

The women folk in this country are not free to move around when they hear that an average of four women were raped daily in just the first five months of this year ( Star , July 7, 2003). 6,884 rape cases were reported nationwide between 1997 and 2001. Only one in every 10 rapes is reported. 50 percent of rape victims in Malaysia are under 16 years.

Even the home may not be a safe place for women. In a study on various forms of violence perpetrated against women, Suaram believes that a total of about 90 cases of wife battery take place per day nationwide.

The workplace has also become a more dangerous place for workers in Bolehland. There were 85,869 industrial accidents in the country in 2001 ( NST , Sept 8, 2002). This marks an alarming rise of more than 10,000 cases from the previous year's 75,386 cases. These accidents resulted in 958 deaths and permanent disability to 11,152 workers in that year.

Our roads and highways are also no longer safe. The country has become a world-beater in terms of road accidents. In 2001, an average of 16 people died every day as a result of road accidents. For every 10,000 registered motorists, an average of five people died in road accidents in the same year ( Star , Nov 11, 2002).

Of 11,302,545 registered vehicles, there were 265,175 road accidents which killed 5,849 people. For the first nine months of 2002, the number of registered vehicles came to 11,800,122 and there were 206,442 accidents and a total of 4,342 deaths.

Very unfortunately there has been no campaign in Malaysia to aspire to be the safest country in the world!

Other 'achievements'

The flag-flying obsession to celebrate Merdeka cannot erase the fact that after 45 years of Independence "racial polarisation and religious intolerance are becoming worrying trends in the country" a revelation made by National Unity and Social Development Minister Siti Zaharah Sulaiman, who added: "What is even more worrying is that such trends have taken root in our schools" ( the Star , March 20, 2003).

The scourge of drug addiction bites deeper into the fabric of our nation. One percent of our total population are drug addicts! A new drug addict emerges every 29 minutes in the country, i.e, some 50 new addicts a day and the majority of them are between 20 and 29 years old ( the Star , Sept 23, 2002). Drug addicts are now resorting to injecting drugs into their heads for faster effect ( the Star , Aug 24, 2003).

Seventy percent of the country's 50,000 HIV patients are drug addicts as many of them shared needles. ( Malaysiakini , Aug 27, 2003). More mothers are infecting their children with the HIV virus, a sign that the disease has crept into the general population.

The number of single mothers in the country has surpassed the 600,000 mark ( NST , Oct 28, 2002). This has been linked to the increasing number of divorce cases as well as abandoned families. There are about 3.4 million children cared for only by their mothers.

Malaysia has beaten the world standard in the prevalence of smoking (the world prevalence rate stands at 47 percent, while the rate in Malaysia is 2.2 percent higher). The habit is spreading among teenagers, with about 50 new smokers below the age of 18 emerging daily ( Star , March 24, 2003). Some 10,000 tobacco-related deaths are reported every year.

National "records" related to "lifestyle diseases" have it that every hour four Malaysians discover they suffer from cancer; 25 percent of the population are overweight and 4.4 percent are suffering from obesity problems; and cardiovascular-related deaths from the 1960s had risen by 8 percent to 30 percent in the 1990s ( NST , July 27, 2002). Malaysia Boleh!

Perhaps nothing rips away at Malaysia's social fabric so tragically than greed and corruption. Till this day, the present government who first made "Bersih, Cekap, dan Amanah" its rallying cry 21 years ago, continues to be plagued with one financial scandal after another. If one were to tally the amount this nation has lost through corruption, it would no doubt be a world record beater.

Close to corruption is the mismanagement of public funds. In spite of the life savings of 10.3 million contributors worth RM203 billion, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) could only offer a dividend of 4.25 percent for 2002 - the lowest ever in 40 years. A critique of the EPF in a recent World Bank conference by Dr R Thillainathan, who had served in the EPF for many years, suggests that something is very wrong with the management, investment and governance of the EPF Board.

The above are only some examples of the nation's social fabric being in tatters. Other sources of worry include the increasing rich-poor disparity, the digital divide, the growing crisis in our education policy and indiscipline in schools, the simmering discontent amongst marginalised groups, etc.

After 45 years of Independence, Malaysians find ourselves sitting on a time-bomb, with the government of the day expecting us to wave our troubles away with a flag and to show our gratitude for both its megalomaniac fancies which future generations would have to bear the burden of, and its fetish for foolish feats which fogs the naked realities that has beset us.

To top it all, the government has gone on a spending spree and acquired arms worth RM16 billion when the greatest irony of it all is that we could be our own greatest enemy.

Love may be blind but true patriotism makes us open our eyes. Merdeka is about freedom. A country is only free when its citizens have the inner freedom of being courageous enough to stand up and speak up for what is true and right and just. It would be a feat that we could be indeed very proud of.