The recent 14th General Elections (GE14) has taught us many useful
lessons, some painful too, especially for
the political parties. Now the political parties in the country needs to take
stock after looking at the results of the historic election ever held in the
nation. Time has come now to rethink about the stand of all political parties.
The colonial masters practiced the principle of ‘divide and rule’ during
their reign of our nation. Of course, this rule is now outdated, yet a few
political parties still adhere to this outmoded principle. We see parties that are
only open to a certain race and in that way it is only championing one race.
This trend does not augur well for our nation which is multiracial,
multicultural, multi-religious, and multilingual.
Today, we need political parties that speak for the rakyat, be it a Malay, Chinese, Indian, Iban, Kadazan, Eurasian, or
even a Punjabi. As, all of them belong to this nation of ours, it is important
the political parties speak for all of them. Although we are divided by own ethnic,
language, religion, and culture, but all us belong to the family of one nation,
Malaysia.
We are Malaysians first, then comes our ethnicity. Look at the Americans,
they constitute a population from different ethnic groups, but they are proud
to call themselves as Americans, and wish to be known as Americans, not as an African,
a Spaniard, a German, or a British.
Likewise, we should forget our ethnicity and feel honoured of being a
Malaysian first, as aptly said by our present Finance Minister YB Lim Guan Eng
at a press conference recently. We want this noble concept ‘I am a Malaysian
first, then my ethnicity’ to be practiced by all Malaysian, be it young or old.
Of course, this will be not easy going. We have to cross the ethnicity loop which
actually divides us. We need to accept wholeheartedly the concept of a
Malaysian, a patriotic feeling or a sense of togetherness among the peoples of
Malaysia.
Let our future generations to be known as Malaysian and no more on based
on our ethnicity, please.
