I met Penang para swimmer Zy Kher Lee for breakfast today and heard his story of grit and determination.
The sixteen year-old Chung Ling High School student and the youngest para climber of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and the fourth highest in the world, won two gold medals in the in the 2023 ASEAN Para Games (APG) in Phnom Penh
I hope Zy, who was born with a complete left arm, half a right arm, no right leg and a malformed left leg with only three toes, will be Malaysia’s Para Olympian in the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games and will go on to be a world champion.
In fact, I call on the youths of Penang to emulate Zy, and on August 12, to transform Malaysia into a world-class nation which is capable of producing world champions again.
Malaysians have been afforded an opportunity to pause, reset and return to the original nation-building principles for a plural Malaysia which the nation’s founding fathers (which included the first three Prime Ministers — Tunku Abdul Rahman, Razak Hussein, and Hussein Onn), have written into the Constitution and the Rukun Negara — constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, rule of law, an independent judiciary, Islam as the official religion of the country and freedom of religion for other faiths, Malay as the national language and the preservation and sustenance of the use and study of other languages, good governance, public integrity with minimum corruption, a clean and honest government, meritocracy, respect for human rights, an end to the various injustices and inequalities in the country, a world-class economic, educational, health and social system, and national unity, understanding, and harmony from our multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural diversity.
This may be the last chance for Malaysia to turn the corner and reverse the national decline in the last few decades and become a great world-class nation which is capable to producing world champions again.
We do not want to be world champions for the wrong reasons, like among the top nations in the world in having the most deaths in the Covid-19 pandemic.
A Malaysian recently won the Oscar, we want to win back the Thomas Cup and excel in Olympics and Paralympics, the various sports and games, have the world‘s best schools, best universities, best hospitals, best social and health systems.
We must dare to dream big dreams, and even more important, take steps to realise such big dreams.
Regardless of whether we are Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazan, Dayak or Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Sikhs or Taoist, we must be “Malaysian First”.
Nobody is asking a Malaysian to cease to be a Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan, Dayak or Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Taoist, but we must have a common overarching identity — that is as a Malaysian.
We want all Malaysians to unite as one, regardless of race, religion, region, age or gender as opposed to those who want to set race against race and religion against religion.
We must look to the future and not bogged down by the past, engrossed with race and religion.