On the occasion of any country’s premier leader, like the prime minister of a nation, people have cause to join in the well wishes for their leader. Today, July 23, marks Najib Abdul Razak’s 62nd birthday.

For a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and having grown up with all the nice things in life, surely he would have built a long coterie of friends around the world who would form the upper crust of society. They, too, would have probably tried to outdo one another in wishing our prime minister a ‘Happy Birthday’.

What more, given our very own patronising culture, there would be just as many who would have drunk and eaten from the gravy train of successes, and made it a point to grovel more as they also try to outdo one another given this auspicious 62nd birthday celebration of the prime minister of Malaysia.

But the vast majority of ordinary working class Malaysians, they, too, having the typical Malaysian mindset, would want to put aside their many thoughts and harboured feelings of suspicion and disappointment and step forward to say, “Selamat Hari Jadi Perdana Menteri’.

Yes, we may not be able to invite you to Hawaii to play golf; we may not take you on an exclusive yacht sail in the middle of beautiful seas; we not have the means to bring gifts of silk and gemstones.

But we have a genuine heart that believes in hopes and dreams that may not be familiar to someone who from the age of 23 took to politics for being the first-born of Malaysia’s second prime minister.

We hope you will enjoy good health. We dream that you, too, will be blessed with long life - not that you will want to take down a prime minister from his chair when you are a nonagenarian.

But we hope and dream that you will deliver on your many promises that you keep making. No, we do not harp on the RM1 chicken for all. We mean the transformation of Malaysia through your 1MDB sovereign wealth formation company that will make every Malaysian go to bed without a headache worrying where to find the next day’s ringgit for food and shelter.

We pray you will bring a moderate Malaysia - one that will be so far different from the race-based fanaticism that we have being drummed to uphold as fiercely as we can. We dream of a free and ‘1Malaysia’ that you promised.

We hope that your 62 birthday will also be the start of your political career that will be marked with almost zero political victimisation but taking criticisms as opportunities to win the battles.

For all that has been said or unsaid, we wish you Najib Abdul Razak “Happy Birthday and Many Happy Returns of the Day”.