If the government really wants to glorify the national language, why does it sideline Bahasa Malaysia?

The question was posed in a scathing poem read out today in the presence of Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin at Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka’s Hadiah Sastera Perdana Malaysia (Malaysian Premier Literary Awards).

NONE Organising committee chairperson Md Salleh Yaafar ( far right ) presented the poem, the story of a father and son, and sneered at what he sees as the glorification of the "coloniser's language".

Salleh picked on the naming of Putrajaya streets as 'presint, promenad and boulevard' as an example, and lampooned the renaming of the Kerinchi neighbourhood as ‘Bangsar South’ in the name of development.

"Why aren’t there any buildings with Malay names, the language of your grandfather and his father?" the father asks his son in the poem.

Towards the end, the son takes the father to a park to celebrate Independence Day.

After crying 'Merdeka!', the thousands of youth there sing "IM4U, IM4U, IM4U, yeah yeah yeah"- the theme song of the 1Malaysia For Youth government programme.

"Such is the song of a people who have lost their soul, on a prominent day 50 years after Merdeka," Salleh said to applause.

As if anticipating the lambast, Muhyiddin in his prepared opening speech had said the literati "need not be anxious about the future of literature and the national language".

"Continue to write and produce high quality work. I am sure our collective efforts will preserve the national language, be it locally or abroad," he said.

He also said the government appreciates the arts and has allocated RM6 million for this in the 2014 Budget - ironically, a minuscule amount from the total budget of RM264 billion.

Forty novels, short stories, poems, scripts, autobiographies and critiques were selected for the awards.

They include ‘Anatomi Sekeping Hati’, a short story by young writer Rebecca Ilham; ‘Penyeberang Sempadan’ by national laureate Anwar Ridhwan; and ‘Selamat Datang Ke Malaywood’, an anthology of short stories by Roslan Jomel.