The Anwar-Mahathir war will enthral all Malaysians but the most important question in Malaysia today is whether all political parties and Malaysians will compete to race Malaysia to the top as a successful world-class nation and not to compete to race Malaysia to the bottom as a failed, divided and kleptocratic state.
Under Vision 2020, Malaysia was to join 19 other nations to become a fully developed nation and we are supposed to have achieved per capita GDP of some US$16,000 by the end of the 30-year Vision 2020.
But in 2020, we failed to reach even 70 percent of this Vision 2020 goal for our per capita GDP.
It is tragic that the architect of Vision 2020, who had been the Prime Minister of the country for over 24 years should have declared the failure of Vision 2020 and its nine strategic objectives and relapsed to a “Malay Proclamation” instead of a “Malaysian Proclamation”.
After 30 years, the number of developed countries have doubled but Malaysia is not one of them.
The Malaysian Diaspora where some two million Malaysians are all over the world to make other nations great instead of Malaysia great, is a failure of Vision 2020, its nine strategic objectives and the Bangsa Malaysia concept..
Malaysians must have reason to be proud of being Malaysians, proud of their country and its achievements. They had to stand tall in the eyes of the world.
This is why we need to establish a single, united Malaysian nation. Though born of different races and religions, all Malaysians had to see themselves as nationals of one and the same country.
Different though we were in our origins, ours was a common destiny,. We might differ politically but our loyalty and dedication to the nation had to be unshakeable. We were all, without reservation or limitation, part of a Bangsa Malaysia – a single Malaysian people, united yet diverse.
Or as it was explained:
“Bangsa Malaysia basically means that people should regard themselves, first and above all, as Malaysians. As citizens you must identify with your country and to that extent, you cannot be totally Chinese or wholly Indian and still be Malaysian. Even the Malays will have to lose some of their Malayness.
“In time, there will be one common identity in our country and it will be a Malaysian identity, but for a long time there will be a number of different ways of being a Malaysian, including the Chinese, the Indian, the Iban, the Kadazan and others, and of course, the Malay way. The Malaysian identity will be inclusive enough to recognise and encompass all these differences. Our Malays, Chinese, Indians, Ibans and Kadazans and others may (and should be entitled to) express their own historical identities in their own distinct ways, but not in a separate form.”
The Perikatan Nasional (PN) and the Opposition do not have to support the Anwar unity government, but we must compete to make Malaysia race to the top of the world as a successful world-class nation instead of race to the bottom with Malaysia ending up as a divided, failed and kleptocratic state.