2020 Thoughts Of A Blogger In A Still Developing Country Called Malaysia

---

Can we make it happen by 2030? Jan 1, 2020: When Dr Mahathir Mohamad launched his Vision 2020 in 1991, none of my kids were born yet. Heck, I wasn't even married. This morning, first day of 2020, one of the kids asked me: "Abah, adakah tercapai Wawasan 2020?" Me, man of few words, told my kiddo: "Terciput."[She was asking me if our nation had achieved the targets set for it to be a developed nation by 2020. My answer was, no].We are still a developing country, ladies and gentlemen.  In some departments, especially the ones involving our politicians and leaders, I'm not sure we're developing at all
Dr M, in 1991 (he was sweet 65 then), had outlined 9 challenges for the nation in order to be a developed nation by 2020: Source: Wikipedia Challenge 1: Establishing a united Malaysian nation made up of one Bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian Race).Challenge 2: Creating a psychologically liberated, secure and developed Malaysian society.Challenge 3: Fostering and developing a mature democratic society.Challenge 4: Establishing a fully moral and ethical society.Challenge 5: Establishing a matured liberal and tolerant society.Challenge 6: Establishing a scientific and progressive society.Challenge 7: Establishing a fully caring society.Challenge 8: Ensuring an economically just society, in which there is a fair and equitable distribution of the wealth of the nation.Challenge 9: Establishing a prosperous society with an economy that is fully competitive, dynamic, robust and resilient.
I don't think we can even claim to have passed Challenge 1, let alone all nine. But that's my opinion and you're welcome to disagree.  Dr M, in his New Year/s message yesterday, said he's now confident we can achieve the developed nation status by 2030. But the people must be united, he said. Read:  Stay untied for nation to continue developing, urges Dr M in New Year message. But is a decade long enough for Malaysians to overome those nine challenges? I would imagine that the odds are stacked heavily against us. If the people who today lead the nation continue to bicker over who among them will be the next Prime Minister and if they allow themselves to be obsessed with witch-hunting and blaming the previous government (funny, when you consider that many of them, including Dr M, were in previous administrations before), then our progress will be really slow because no work will get done (which was what happened in the last 18 months, basically)
Between Vellfire and vernacular schools, the third national car and that flying car, Jawi and Dong Zong, the doctors' critical allowance and minimum wages, Zakir Naik and Syed Saddiq, Ughyur and the KL Summit, and unfulfilled promises of their general election manifesto, and not forgetting this sodomy vs that sodomy, this government spends too much time solving problems that were created by itself, wittingly or unwittingly I won't waste my breath expanding on this topic (please read my recent posting One PM, Two Oppositions, which I re-imagined from 3 issues pulling down the nation). Suffice to say that it's not the people who must be united for this country to continue developing (and hopefully achieve the developed nation status by 2030) but the Government - ie our leaders from the PM and so-called PM-in-waiting to the ministers and deputy minister and their political appointees and officers - who must start working with one another so that everyone and everything else can start moving. Happy New Year and Good Luck to us. 

---