AUGUST 27 — More sugar than usual, so watch that glucose count.
It’s the Merdeka season! It justifies the overenthusiasm — not an obesity death march.
Therefore, time for over-the-top patriotism and flag-draping. Tinged with unhealthy clicks of selfies.
Today, the objectives are transparent like the embellishments which accompany. That Malaysia is fine, and it’s wonderful, being Malaysian.
And no, I’ve not lost my marbles riding the night bus home from the train station.
We have our problems, some intractable with morbid possibilities, but I started this column with a clear intention, to celebrate the country as it kicks off its annual festival which carries on to Malaysia Day.
I’ve made a mental note to mentally sledgehammer myself if I turn inexplicably into Melancholy Street. My ward said I’m prone to do so. He has a point, rah-rah Malaysia then.
There is a huge point, a critical distance being crossed without us caring enough about it.
It’s now 69 years and needs no apology. Malaysia has been an experiment for 69 years. I understand my brothers and sisters from across the pond beg to differ and point to MA63.
Can we not worry about the terminologies and philosophical preponderances about the six years differential and leave it for another day?
To agree at least a test was initiated and we’ve been bound to it ever since, and our collective futures are at stake dependent on durability. So yes, each year means more.
Sixty-nine matters because it is 31 years closer to a hundred, which is a gargantuan milestone, therefore converts further a concept into a constant. Malaysia as a constant.
When we are 100 years old, Malaysia ceases to be a fanciful idea but a nation with identity and facts, whether it likes it or not. In age parlance, no more a teenager or young adult but clearly ensconced as an adult.
Adulthood is difficult to attain for countries in the modern world.
The Soviet Union was artificial and ended after 74 years — dead tsars’ fiefs rolled into a centrally planned economy powered by military might.
The weight of scale and global overreach eventually undid it. Europe’s Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia met similar disentanglements for different reasons.
But if dissecting former Western colonies is more instructive, in Africa, The Mali Federation split into Senegal and, well, Mali, and Sudan and Somalia lost parts transformed into South Sudan and Somaliland.
Or even closer, Pakistan lost East Pakistan (Bangladesh) inside 25 years, and the closest and most poignant, Malaysia lost — dumped/severed/mutually split/painfully exited — Singapore within two unified years in 1965.
Countries are constructs, if I am allowed to meander into the grey zone. They take work.
They also are rewarded by staying together longer. How, over time, a country despite itself, its contradictions, demographic lopsidedness or its geopolitical impossibilities takes root.
That a seed in an orchard appears unimpressive, but as time passes begins to tower over all, eventually offers cover and protection from the elements, and provides nourishment to its people.
While wealth, a manageable population and culture contribute immensely, time is indispensable.
A country then forms an identity and without realisation finds itself distinct from other countries.
An excellent example of developed identity through nationhood dwarfing geography and culture, is that Malaysians are glad to be different from Indonesians.
We are happy they are Indonesians, our neighbours, and us Malaysians.
While some academics speak about the people of the archipelago being indistinguishable, a clear consciousness has developed over time and separates the respective sides of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty (1824) line, in our hearts and minds.
Nations are permanently imperfect and require time to come to terms with being a nation.
The United States still had slavery four score and seven years after declaring certain truths to be self-evident, such as that all men are created equal.
The gains of reconstruction did not remind the government it was wrong to intern more than a hundred thousand ethnic Japanese with American citizenship 72 years later.
If nations are judged by their mistakes only, few escape judgement.
The strange present
When the British departed, a collection of migrants with natives kept apart by colonial practices read as a precursor to disaster. Not to mention a communist insurgency manned primarily by one ethnicity was still in play.
It could have easily unravelled.
But here we are. All of us. You and I.
Yet more remains, in the tasks to be accomplished.
Observing the current climate, social and physical, it invites more suspicion than faith, to decide the country’s prognosis.
The last two state elections were a cry for race unity to overwhelm a shrinking minority population’s threat. The alarmists scream about every election being one closer to the country’s ethnic majority being dispossessed
To casual external onlookers, it does not reassure.
But, consider the wider cultural separation among the people, all 33 races, stretched and separated by the world’s largest sea, the sheer lack of prolonged discord is a testament to the people.
That allowed the space, they live amicably with each other, and often thrive together.
If only the politicians left the people alone for a bit to get on with being with each other. They do it seamlessly without antagonists lurking.
They do not need agents to remind them about the prevailing differences. The citizens need a different type of reminder that we’ve successfully kept going for 69 years, and next year, 70.
This Merdeka
To remind people that the more festive they are, the more they contribute to Malaysia.
The US was not announced here by accident. Being a younger nation and scant culture and history, it focussed on outward expressions of patriotism.
From 4th of July to Superbowl, whether a school drum camp or just another professional sports match, the national anthem along with flag displays are synonymous. There’s no such thing as too much America in the daily lives of Americans.
Imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery and Malaysia needs the colours out. Cheesy and overdone are not rebuttals but tributes.
Malaysia inches with every Merdeka to a stronger identity despite the best efforts of agitators.
Sixty-nine and counting. Count with me.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
