1Malaysia, 2Coalitions, 3Peoples

The prime minister singlehandedly espouses and seeks to execute the 1Malaysia agenda: People First, Performance Now.

But I say, in retort: it is still 1Malaysia with 2Coalitions and 3Peoples. Therefore, we are not yet a Bangsa Malaysia, or a Malaysian nation, or a Malaysian community.

Unfortunately for the PM, even Umno disregards his mantra for the way forward. More importantly, where the rubber meets the road, in the area of Key Performance Indicators there is still corruption, cronyism, and double standards, and the closing of one or sometimes both eyes.

Why else hasn’t the MAAC taken the Dr Mohd Khir Toyo to court or charged the former tourism minister?

Why else would the attorney-general (AG) choose to not prefer charges against the two Malay-Muslim journalists for a criminal offence, even if the Catholic church has accepted an apology from the Al-Islam magazine? The AG  has closed both eyes to a very serious criminal and seditious offence. He should be instructed to resign, if the PM wants Malaysians us to believe in his 1Malaysia agenda.

The best we have today, after almost 53 years of Independence, is a serious and severe national identity crisis. Someone at a recent workshop asked a very serious question: Are we an Islamic state? To my horror, most people waffled over the answer, all post-modern in their nuances, almost as if the answer is anything you want it to be.  After all, our reality is a socially constructed one, right? Wrong!

The federal constitution is very clear and articulate about itself; it is the ruling document in Malaysia, It says about itself: The constitution is the supreme law of the federation. Any doubt about what that means?

Do we really need English experts to say what it means? Do we need even lawyers to tell us what it means? Let us not become idiotic and take the nation on the road to idiocracy; a bureaucracy ruled by blind and unthinking idiots. The constitution is simple and our system of laws is not complicated to those who learn and seek to understand.

I have written before. There is only one hierarchy for the knowledge of truth we have worldwide. It is the hierarchy of wisdom, knowledge, information and data. Data is both numbers and words that can be used to communicate worth, values, and teleology or the hierarchy of purposes in life.

The knowledge of wisdom is restricted to those whom God gives wisdom. Knowledge can be acquired through learning and experience, when founded on specific information related to a specific field and a concurrent knowledge of truth systems.

Usually knowledge allows one to solve a specific problem with the application of related information from that specialised field. When one has a lot of information but cannot do anything meaningful with it in terms of problem solutions, one often instead chooses to share such information, as a professor in the same selected field.

One can be an excellent teacher without necessarily being knowledgeable in the relevant applied field. Or one can be an excellent problem-solver without any ability to teach someone else what is needed; people around simply have to learn by hanging around such experts or vide internships.

New way forward

To become a 1Malaysia, we need absolute clarity on the role and supremacy of the constitution under our system of governance. There cannot be any confusion or doubt as to whether we are an Islamic state. We are not and will never be an Islamic state until a two-third majority in Parliament changes and amends the Article that gives the constitution supremacy.

Currently, we are also two systems and visions of and for governance. At one extreme we have the Penang chief minister who has publicly declared his as a government of ‘Competence, Accountability, and Transparency’. At the other, we hear of federal ministries which spend in the billions without much competence, any accountability or too much transparency.

Obviously, we have two system of governance, not one.  Even the auditor-Ggneral and Transparency International-Malaysia have praised the Penang government. Somehow the federal government has yet to capture a similar vision or still see much light on this matter.

We have three people groups in Malaysia. All Sabahans are actually the indigenous peoples of Sabah and all Sarawakians are indigenous peoples of Sarawak, if framed and understood as per the original spirit of the agreements for the formation and foundation of Malaysia. But, today, Peninsular Malaysians treat and mistreat these co-equal brothers and sisters as second-class citizens or poor cousins.

How much of the government-allocated shares and pink forms have been allocated to the peoples of Sabah and Sarawak over the last 46 years? How many of the places and spaces in the Mara colleges are allocated to poor Orang Asli or Orang Asal of Sabah and Sarawak? How many of these are children of simple, poor and agricultural peoples of Sabah and Sarawak, as per the vision of Abdul Razak Hussein for Mara?

While Razak’s policies – through the institutions of Mara, Felda, and the Rural Development Ministry – have obviously focused on rural Peninsular Malaysia, how many of the policy intervention agencies make it a priority for the eradication of poverty among Sabahans and Sarawakians? If not, why not? Is 1Malaysia not really 3Malaysias; Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak?

1Malaysia: People First, Perforamce Now. Which people and what performance? Is ketuanan Melayu still the unstated first agenda? And, are Sabah and Sarawak still the 12th and 13th states of Malaysia?

In my heart and mind, we need a new way forward with a shared vision for a single community in the global community of nations.

There are three pre-conditions for such a single and shared vision of Malaysia:

1. All Malaysians must fight to kill the horrible disease of corruption; we need to become a ‘Malasyians4ABC Programme – or a ‘Malaysians Against Bribery and Corruption’ movement.

2. We must all stand against racism in any form; racism must be made illegal; we must transcend racism to celebrate our beautiful diversity. Do we understand and know that there are more than 100 ethnic groups in Malaysia? We are therefore of one human race but of many ethnic varieties.

3. We must get rid of religious extremism which adopts a one-up attitude. It is extremist religious-mindedness, when the Arabic word for ‘God’ seemingly becomes a Malay word; and, only in Malaysia.

My prayer is that we will all learn to move towards the new direction defined by the all people groups of Malaysia in voting as we did on March 8, 2008. May God truly bless Malaysia’s way forward.