5 Steps To Realise The Malaysian First Dream

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Dr Mahathir Mohamad used chopsticks as an analogy to illustrate the challenges of non-Malay assimilation in Malaysia.
The nationalists treat ninth generation Malaysians with contempt and call them pendatang.
However, foreigners from Indonesia or Bangladesh who can speak fluent Malay and who wear baju Melayu are given Malaysian citizenship. This is the problem with politicians. Their definition of being Malaysian differs from ours.
Malaysians have been nurtured on an unhealthy diet of conducting our lives through race, and religious tinted spectacles. Have we forgotten how to be Malaysian?
The floods caused a lot of destruction and deaths last month. The authorities failed to act promptly. For most victims, government help arrived only after two days.
Contrast this response to the experience of others. As soon as the rains fell, what you saw was Malaysians helping other Malaysians. They did not care if the people whom they helped were of a different race or religion. Malaysians rescued them and gave them food and shelter.
So, if we can act Malaysian when feeding the poor during the White Flag movement, when supporting the national team during sporting events, and when saving lives during floods, why can’t we be treated like Malaysian the rest of the time?
To answer the question of how we can realise the “Malaysian first” dream, five things have to be addressed.
1. The Malay has lost his identity. He is confused and torn about his origins and, for political expediency, Umno and the ulama have “hijacked” Islam and used it to manipulate the Malay mind.
By restoring the cultural identity of the Malay, his sense of belonging as a Malaysian may return.
2. Another problem is that many Malays do not really know their religion, and so Umno and PAS took advantage of their ignorance and turned Islam into a so-called cult religion. As in any cult following, the politicians demanded absolute loyalty from the Malays, who blindly obeyed the leaders.
So, if we want to save Malaysia, we should stop the religious slide to extremism.
3. Our so-called leaders have huge egos. In our Asian culture, we treat our elders with deference, and that is one reason why we find ourselves stuck with the old guard – the politicians who are past their prime, in their seventies and older, and who possess outdated political ideas.
So, if we want to realise the “Malaysian first” dream, the young must be bold and seize the challenge to address the leadership vacuum.
4. Successive education ministers from the 1980s onwards were responsible for laying the foundations for dumbing down the quality of education.
The emphasis on religion stunted the minds of our children, removed the element of being curious, and segregated them so that proper integration among the different races and faiths was limited.
If we can sort out the education system, we are better equipped to fulfil the “Malaysian first” dream.
5. The government did not encourage much interaction among the different communities, and so we grew up in a “them” and “us” society, which was largely motivated by fear, especially from the religious people.
It is only through dialogue that barriers are removed. This is when people of different faiths and cultures are surprised to find that they share many common interests, like good health care, decent jobs, a safe environment to live in, effective infrastructure and good education for their children.
Trying to promote art and creative projects to open the mind to new ideas could be started at home, in school, in the community, in adult learning groups, on the playground and the sports field, and the internet.
Realising the “Malaysian first” dream does not require a huge injection of cash, like many government institutions.
Some of us may not realise it, but we are already practising the spirit of being ‘Malaysian first’, through sport and helping others in our community. Let’s widen the boundaries. - FMT
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

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