Bapa 1 Malaysia?
I’ve always been an optimist. I tend to see things from a more positive perspective, more of a glass half-full instead of a glass half-empty kind of guy.
When it comes to Malaysian political matters, I can sometimes annoy a whole lot of people for still managing to remain optimistically sunny about our beloved country and where our ongoing journey might take us into the future.
Unlike a lot of people I know who will undoubtedly grumble and moan about Pak Lah’s short reign as our prime minister, I have fond memories of him as our Bapa Demokrasi (i.e. Father of Democracy), something which I’ve always insisted on calling him whenever his name arises during lepak sessions with my friends.
Yes, there are a lot of things that people were unhappy about during his stint as our prime minister, but I think a lot of people took for granted the very fact that they were mostly allowed to publicly grumble about it without much attempt to “shut them up”, which is something that our Bapa Pemodenan (i.e. Father of Modernisation), Tun Dr M, probably won’t even tolerate if it were to happen during his time.
As a result of all the noise we were all been allowed to make, the historic 8th of March 2008 general elections, better known as the “political tsunami” happened, proving to the world that democracy is still alive and well here in Malaysia, and proving to us Malaysians that change is possible if only we put our minds to it.
Of course, the decision to allow us all to make all that noise might not have been a conscious decision after all and probably was a mere accident, but that didn’t take away the fact that it actually happened.
A lot of historic and useful inventions happened by way of accident too, you know, but the inventor still got the credit for making possible the environment for that accident to happen.
With all this talk of a general election very likely happening this year, I thought it’d be fun to look at what our current prime minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak might be father of.
His whole 1 Malaysia concept has already been mocked to death by loads of Malaysians, first for being an alleged rip-off of 1srael (it does look better that way, doesn’t it?) and afterwards for allegedly still being pretty much an “all talk and no action” slogan so far.
So, before I go on, again I’d like to apologise to all you dear readers if what I’m about to write seems a wee bit too fanciful for your liking. Like I’ve said above, I’m a pretty cheerful guy.
We already have a Bapa Malaysia in our very first prime minister, the late great Tunku Abdul Rahman, and I’ve always heard and read about people nostalgically reminiscing about how “one” Malaysia was during our early days as a nation compared to where we have been headed for in the last 40 or so years.
Since those united early days, we have now totally retreated into our own separate shells, each one enthusiastically guarding their own “interests” (thanks to a political scene littered with race-based parties, not to mention scores of NGOs also with race-based interests).
Whatever you may think of the 1 Malaysia concept (let alone its implementation), I was just happy to see an actual, concerted, mainstream approach to try to recognise, understand and promote “variety” in Malaysia.
Of course, we still haven’t seen too much real change yet, but the fact that religious celebrations other than Hari Raya and other Islamic public holidays are already getting more ink in the mainstream press is to me already one further step forward in the right direction.
Yes, there have been some pretty embarrassing aberrations as well like the “Allah” issue, the increasing public profile of Perkasa and more, but the real difference now is that thanks to 1 Malaysia, more people have been made aware of the need to realise that we are 1 Malaysia and not 1 Melayu.
Change, however slow, is always a good thing, and I can even see some change happening in Malaysian movies too.
As some people say, the arts also reflect the state of the country producing it. Last year, 53 years after our independence, was the first time that Malaysia has seen a bona fide box-office hit in the form of a Malaysian-made Chinese language film.
Actually, there were two hits, the Chinese New Year film Tiger Woo Hoo and the sweet romance Ice Kacang Puppy Love, both grossing around RM4 million each. In fact, there were probably more Malaysian-made Chinese language films with a wide release last year than in our entire history as a nation.
Why only now? It’s a widely accepted fact that the Chinese make up quite a significant number of the Malaysian population, with significant purchasing powers too, so economically this could’ve happened a lot earlier.
The fanciful optimist in me can only think of one reason — for probably the first time in our history, the environment felt just right to do so. We’ve now come to a juncture where we recognise that even though Bahasa Malaysia is our national language, Chinese is also a Malaysian language and part of our national fabric.
And like it or not, we have 1 Malaysia to thank for that realisation, no matter how accidental it may be. So, Bapa 1 Malaysia then?
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
When it comes to Malaysian political matters, I can sometimes annoy a whole lot of people for still managing to remain optimistically sunny about our beloved country and where our ongoing journey might take us into the future.
Unlike a lot of people I know who will undoubtedly grumble and moan about Pak Lah’s short reign as our prime minister, I have fond memories of him as our Bapa Demokrasi (i.e. Father of Democracy), something which I’ve always insisted on calling him whenever his name arises during lepak sessions with my friends.
Yes, there are a lot of things that people were unhappy about during his stint as our prime minister, but I think a lot of people took for granted the very fact that they were mostly allowed to publicly grumble about it without much attempt to “shut them up”, which is something that our Bapa Pemodenan (i.e. Father of Modernisation), Tun Dr M, probably won’t even tolerate if it were to happen during his time.
As a result of all the noise we were all been allowed to make, the historic 8th of March 2008 general elections, better known as the “political tsunami” happened, proving to the world that democracy is still alive and well here in Malaysia, and proving to us Malaysians that change is possible if only we put our minds to it.
Of course, the decision to allow us all to make all that noise might not have been a conscious decision after all and probably was a mere accident, but that didn’t take away the fact that it actually happened.
A lot of historic and useful inventions happened by way of accident too, you know, but the inventor still got the credit for making possible the environment for that accident to happen.
With all this talk of a general election very likely happening this year, I thought it’d be fun to look at what our current prime minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak might be father of.
His whole 1 Malaysia concept has already been mocked to death by loads of Malaysians, first for being an alleged rip-off of 1srael (it does look better that way, doesn’t it?) and afterwards for allegedly still being pretty much an “all talk and no action” slogan so far.
So, before I go on, again I’d like to apologise to all you dear readers if what I’m about to write seems a wee bit too fanciful for your liking. Like I’ve said above, I’m a pretty cheerful guy.
We already have a Bapa Malaysia in our very first prime minister, the late great Tunku Abdul Rahman, and I’ve always heard and read about people nostalgically reminiscing about how “one” Malaysia was during our early days as a nation compared to where we have been headed for in the last 40 or so years.
Since those united early days, we have now totally retreated into our own separate shells, each one enthusiastically guarding their own “interests” (thanks to a political scene littered with race-based parties, not to mention scores of NGOs also with race-based interests).
Whatever you may think of the 1 Malaysia concept (let alone its implementation), I was just happy to see an actual, concerted, mainstream approach to try to recognise, understand and promote “variety” in Malaysia.
Of course, we still haven’t seen too much real change yet, but the fact that religious celebrations other than Hari Raya and other Islamic public holidays are already getting more ink in the mainstream press is to me already one further step forward in the right direction.
Yes, there have been some pretty embarrassing aberrations as well like the “Allah” issue, the increasing public profile of Perkasa and more, but the real difference now is that thanks to 1 Malaysia, more people have been made aware of the need to realise that we are 1 Malaysia and not 1 Melayu.
Change, however slow, is always a good thing, and I can even see some change happening in Malaysian movies too.
As some people say, the arts also reflect the state of the country producing it. Last year, 53 years after our independence, was the first time that Malaysia has seen a bona fide box-office hit in the form of a Malaysian-made Chinese language film.
Actually, there were two hits, the Chinese New Year film Tiger Woo Hoo and the sweet romance Ice Kacang Puppy Love, both grossing around RM4 million each. In fact, there were probably more Malaysian-made Chinese language films with a wide release last year than in our entire history as a nation.
Why only now? It’s a widely accepted fact that the Chinese make up quite a significant number of the Malaysian population, with significant purchasing powers too, so economically this could’ve happened a lot earlier.
The fanciful optimist in me can only think of one reason — for probably the first time in our history, the environment felt just right to do so. We’ve now come to a juncture where we recognise that even though Bahasa Malaysia is our national language, Chinese is also a Malaysian language and part of our national fabric.
And like it or not, we have 1 Malaysia to thank for that realisation, no matter how accidental it may be. So, Bapa 1 Malaysia then?
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
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