Thinking aloud:
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WE all get sick, and sometimes, very sick.
So, does the nation.
The first step towards recovering our health is to diagnose our sickness. We must want to do that unpleasant and time-consuming medical checkup and courageously accept the diagnosis. Having done so, we must then be willing to do a prognosis and then identify honestly the possible treatments available. Finally, we have to submit ourselves to the treatment chosen even if it is swallowing a bitter pill three times a day.
Most often, other than taking medication, it may involve a total change of our previous lifestyle. We cannot expect our health condition to change if we continue the same lifestyle we had that lead to our ill health. This process applies to a nation too.
A nation as old as 60 years, and is ailing, cannot continue in the same manner it has been living previously. It must vigorously and honestly identify all those policies, national behaviours and mainstream thinking that has brought it to the sorry state it is in today.
In the process of identifying what went wrong, we must caution ourselves to be free from the temptation of pointing fingers and trying to apportion blame to someone. Blaming the ‘culprits’ will not help the recovery process. Only workable and long term solutions will. Furthermore, the person or persons we now accuse as culprits may have had reasons for taking the path they did. Some policies may have been relevant in the past but no longer. Some other policies may have been purely political in nature and ought to be dismantled completely.
Hence, the Rakyat must now assist the political government of the day in identifying the core and fundamental matters that ail the nation – and we have to be courageously honest about it. To me, what affects the general rakyat are the fundamental matters that require our diagnosis and prognosis. We have to ascertain whether these fundamental areas have been infected with viruses or not.
The most fundamental matter to the rakyat, in my view, is the freedom and right to live as a dignified human being. All those policies and matters that prevent the rakyat from living a dignified life ought to be shredded as quickly as waste paper.
In the context of our country, I would propose that the priority of the government is to make Malaysians, regardless of ethnicity or religion, proud to be Malaysians. Admittedly this is a huge and challenging task and may not be done overnight.
However, overnight we can give confidence to the rakyat that this path is taken if the government takes a Malaysian approach and stance.
I believe every Malaysian will agree with me if I state that religious polarisation and bigotry, racism, negative discrimination and such divisive phenomena demeans the dignity of the general right-thinking members of the population. If I am right, then it is obvious that this ought to be urgently addressed so that we can move forward as one Malaysian family. We need a Malaysian dream.
Quality and relevant education, and the culture of thinking, are equally important to the dignity of a human being. One of the most undignifying experience for a human is not to be allowed to think and slavishly submit to what is crafted as mainstream or politically correct thinking. History has shown that societies that do not think and do not allow diversity of thought will perish in the long run.
Secondly, is the protection and the integrity of the key institutions in the country. This would include the executive, the legislature and the judiciary and the “non-political government”. By non-political government, I mean the agencies such as police, corruption agencies, customs, immigration, Bank Negara, Attorney General’s Chambers and the general civil service that deal with the ordinary people on a daily basis. All these require to pass the “integrity test” that should be set by the political government.
The integrity test should be stringent and should include factors such as transparency, accountability, efficiency, and honesty (as in not corrupt).
There are many reforms that are required to be done to allow this test to be applied for example, legislation akin to Access of Information Act. Such an Act can enable the ordinary citizen to access information and facts from a government agency, barring what is security-based information. Without such an Act, transparency and accountability are useless buzzwords and may be perceived as creative accounting and creative reporting.
As for the Executive, it would be ideal if we can also have some form of “efficiency test” designed to evaluate the performance of those in the executive. Those who are inefficient may be replaced, thus saving tremendous resources of the rakyat. It is done in the corporate sector as it is very objective driven.
As for the legislature, there need to be true parliamentary reforms where important draft bills are allowed to be discussed with the stakeholders and sufficient debate time is given.