Never ever forget that we the people make a nation

THE National Archives website has brief descriptions of the Aug 31 celebrations in certain years from 1958 to 2003. These have been extracted from newspaper reports and the idea for doing so is “to remind us all to always appreciate and be grateful for our independence”.

However, they are sedate and sterile accounts that do little to convey the sentiments of the day, which is a pity because how we feel about Merdeka today is built on the hopes and fears of the past.

One would imagine the first anniversary of the independence of Malaya to be a big deal. And it must have been.

According to the snippet, it was “celebrated with jubilation by all walks of life”. People began lining the streets of Kuala Lumpur in the early morning.

At Stadium Merdeka, schoolchildren performed dance routines, and policemen and soldiers marched past the VIPs.

Over 35,000 were there to share the joy. In the evening, 56 floats paraded through the city.

But what was going on in people’s heads?

Yes, it was a happy time, but how exactly did they feel about the one year since the Merdeka proclamation and about the years ahead?

Fast forward to 2003, the 46th year of independence.

After 22 years as Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad was due to retire in October that year.

The official celebration was in Putrajaya. And the crowd had grown much larger since 1958 – 350,000 spectators and almost 23,000 participants.

F18 fighter jets put on a show in the sky. The parade was touted as “extraordinary and the largest ever held since the country’s independence”.

But how did Malaysians generally feel at the time about the nation and about their relationships with it and their compatriots?

Unfortunately, the National Archives is not a repository of emotions. We cannot know Malaysia’s mood from fragments of dry information floating in cyberspace.

Some of us were around those years and perhaps we can try reminiscing.

Be warned though that time does funny things to our memory. It rearranges details, adds some and subtracts others.

But there are no excuses for not knowing how we feel today. It is important to really understand what it is that we have in our hearts and minds regarding our land and its people.

For many of us, National Day 2018 feels a lot different than in the past.

Plenty has been said about the new Malaysia or Malaysia 2.0. And much of it centres on Pakatan Harapan being in power instead of Barisan Nasional and on the reforms that have been promised. But we should not only focus on the government.

We should be looking at our selves first and foremost. As a result of GE14, we have changed, too.

We have realised that many of us – enough to make a difference – wanted the same things and were willing to vote for the unknown on May 9.

We were ready to chart a new course for the nation and we did what was previously thought to be virtually impossible.

The truth is, we have always known that we share a fundamental desire – to have a better future for ourselves, our children and our children’s children.

But before this, we had not quite believed that we could achieve this together because over the years, we had allowed the erosion of our faith in democracy, rule of law, the strength and role of institutions, and good governance.

There has been an awakening to the fact that we have the power to reject leaders if they let us down.

We have more selfbelief and togetherness, and we have taken back ownership of the country.

It is our Malaysia and it is certainly not the government’s.

“If this government doesn’t perform well, we’ll vote it out just like how we did with the previous one,” we tell ourselves with the confidence and empowerment we once lacked.

Some people say the GE14 outcome is like a second independence for us because Malaysia is no longer run by a coalition that had been ruling for more than six decades. But that is not correct. What we enjoy now is independence from the notion that we are powerless to free ourselves from a bad situation.

And like any other sort of independence, it is valuable and must be fiercely protected.

If we take things for granted and accept easy compromises, it will surely slip through our fingers.

Parades and aerial displays are colourful and exciting ways to commemorate Merdeka, but what we need most is to keep trusting each other and to not forget that people, not governments, make a nation.