A Merdeka wish-list

LETTER | Pondering on the future of this country based on the happenings over last few months, I can't help but worry for the country that a small spark would turn this country into a civil war due to the hardworking politicians that are dividing the nation using race and religion. Their aligned NGO's are working at full steam to ensure the politicians succeed in achieving their goals at the expense of the people. Let us not live in denial any more. In the last 62 years as a nation, the fault lines are getting wider, people have been divided along the racial and religious lines and we are about to be swallowed by the earth. Are we a united nation? Hell no, we are not, courtesy of the politicians and their goons.

For this year's Merdeka Day, I appeal to all political leaders from all sides to put the country first by doing the most unpopular thing. We need a long-term unusual solution for the sake of the nation. I called upon the authorities to force all mono-ethnic and mono-religious political and non-political associations to be multiracial and multi-religion where all members have equal parity. Force the people that love politics to fight and play among themselves behind closed doors within their organisations. There is a need to do this by amending the Societies Act. It is not without any challenge but my view is that it has to be done if we love Malaysia. This British creation must be killed and buried deep enough that it can't resurface.

Like many others, I can proudly say that I am a Malaysian as I was born on the very day Malaysia was formed. I have the birth certificate to prove it. In the first part of my career, I served the country by being a doctor in the Army Medical Corps. After a very short border posting in a "hot" communist area, I was plucked and transferred to Labuan on the eve of Malaysian Armed Forces operations to get rid of the Vietnamese soldiers that had attacked and occupied our island in the Spratlys. Over the next 12 months, I probably did over a thousand medical evacuation and rescue missions from the interior of Sabah and Sarawak to bring out the sick and needy to an appropriate medical facility. Sadly, I failed once where I reluctantly took a newborn with a very poor prognosis on a mercy flight on the plea of the parents. On another flight, I almost lost my life when the Nuri that we were flying had an engine failure and it was only the pilot's skill that saved us albeit with a very rough landing in the interior of Sabah.

Never ever did I treat the Sabahans and Sarawakians differently from the people in Semenanjung. They are my family. I help people irrespective of race, religion and where they come from. Today, politicians and their supporters are fanning the fire for separation and yet the government has chosen not to take stern action against these people. Their continuous insistence of maintaining immigration control under the Point 18/20 Agreement is preventing Malaysians from free movement and integration. It does not help domestic business development between people of West and East Malaysia. Hundreds of thousands of people from Sabah and Sarawak are here working and living in the West and yet the East Malaysian state government is controlling the movement and setting rules for employment passes for the movement of West Malaysians.

We need to sow and nurture unity by removing this immigration clause from being applied to those who were born after Sept 16, 1963. It is only fair as we were born as Malaysians. Therefore, I ask the government to do a legal review to decide whether the two states have the right to restrict the movement of people who were born after that date. We cannot be treated the same of people born before then as they became Malaysians by virtue of unionisation of the states. The two states are unlikely to remove this clause on their own therefore a proper legal review needs to be taken to the highest court in the land to decide.

As for education - and in the spirit of nation-building again - school hours need to be reduced to focus more on core skills and human development. All religious education must be done immediately after school hours and must not be part of mandatory education. Religion is an important subject that actually nurtures the correct values and no religion teaches the wrong things. Hence all national schools must allow all key religions to be taught to the students if there is a demand for it by parents. The vernacular schools must increase their Bahasa Malaysia content especially for Standard 5 and 6 and it must reserve a minimum 30 percent of their seats for Malay students. This will reduce mistrust and improve bonding in the long run.

There will be skeptics out there that will make fun of my propositions but it is my firm belief that we have to do this now for the sake of the nation.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.