SEPTEMBER 15 — Selamat Hari Malaysia. I’ve some ideas.

I’ll tell you later why the ideas are crucial.

For the last 10 years, a miracle of sorts transpired. Most Malaysians began to question their government. It has hit overdrive in the last few years, wearing down the ruling class. They are not used to being asked to explain.

This should go on in perpetuity, this culture of confronting those who rule you. For it is a good government only when it is a government assailed by its people.

Which requires a few loud hurrahs.

However, in our relatively newfound zeal for accountability and transparency, we have perhaps ignored our other obligation.

To ask more of ourselves as Malaysians.

How so?

Usual news cycles informs us.

Various media outlets as they do during this season seek ratings by playing up patriotism. They asked the old and young on what it means to be Malaysian. The answers usually orbit around food, weather and our outward multicultural makeup.

I love our food, lie by the beach and see the various colours around me, but a country has to be more. Because to rely on recipes being passed down right, global warming to cool down and retaining demographical data without championing diversity is a slippery slope.

Things should not define countries, ideas and people should.

That is why countries are largely assessed by either their aspiration or the character of its people.

In Malaysia, with a struggling government in place lacking the inspiration to lift us above the bickering and to the eagles — not unlike the eagle in Langkawi — it is left to Malaysians to show character. To display, that despite our government we will thrive as a people.

For this Malaysia Day I would ask Malaysians to discuss their country with each other. That’s right, just talk about it with the caveat that these conversations have to be with those they are unlikely to share these opinions with usually, and even in languages they are weak in or contexts they are ignorant of.

This is how a nation progresses. By diversity within its conversations.

The thing about food, weather and demographical facts is that every person would agree with each about them.  

That’s probably why they are the popular social chat between relative strangers. They are safe.

However, if unconsciously our opinions are clouded by fears of discord then the pleasantness will deny us the chance to talk about what matters to us as individuals when it comes to discussing Malaysia. We can even begin with the three items above — food, weather and skin colour — by analysing their clash-points.

We love our food, but that love is not equal. While the Tourism Ministry in Putrajaya’s Precinct 5 plasters Chinese stall dishes in its brochures to draw the world’s tourist dollar, a massive revenue generator, it has no qualms in shutting out these shops from the nation’s administrative capital.

There are no Chinese pork-serving restaurants in Putrajaya. Which is baffling.

I mean, one in four persons in the country is Chinese and they can’t have a proper pork-serving restaurant in the township?

"Good enough for foreigners but way too offensive to be within the vicinity of civil servants,” why not have that discussion?

We have great weather, for now. It’s getting ugly. There are global affections and then there are local causes like rampant deforestation, unplanned developments and incompetent local governance. While pockets of communities come together to fight potential environmental hazards impacting them directly there is a dearth of broad discussions about the long-term socio-economic decisions about the environment.

Language is a key divider in this issue. Those most interested about environmental policies are conversing in English, while the low take up rate of the issues are those conversing in Malay primarily.

The environmental lobby in Malaysia has to up its language credentials as much as its scientific credentials if it wants to traction which can bear results. A large tract of Malaysia is not in the environment conversation.

Multiculturalism as a Malaysian birth-right is under scrutiny now. The TV ads and clichés bandied about assume a permanence in the population balance. Indeed, one of the key reasons Malaysia was formed as it was initially was to retain a tenable Bumiputera population.

Yet migration is corroding the cultural wealth of the country. The discussion is always about how the government has failed some of us more than the rest of us through the lens of race, but there is inadequate discussion about what is diversity.

If a country has fewer Chinese people over time but no less an appreciation for Chinese cultural contributions, does the country still lose its diversity?

But must diversity be about a fixed quota of people and opportunities rather than a celebration of all which makes us, small and big?

These discussions do not provide answers, not the difficult ones for sure. Why bother if they don’t? Because they provide to tools for internalisation of the shared challenge. Nothing builds the capacity to confront ambiguity than the experience of discoursing difficult abstractions.

So far, the state has insisted that multiculturalism is what Malaysians must possess without dissecting. That is a mistaken view and currently obsolete.

It is a long weekend ahead which is excellent for conversations.

Conversations about the country cannot just be about safe bases spoken politely. There is no better way to celebrate Malaysia Day than to have many of its children speaking about how much they disagree with each other about the country and feel comfortable being in disagreement.

I believe we have the character to do so.

Plus having one person after another wax lyrically about how wonderful everything is in Malaysia gives me a firm reminder that not everything is wonderful in Malaysia.

That’s why we have to talk about them.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.