My fellow Malaysians it is Business As Usual after the Victory. Can someone tell me what has changed? Yes maybe some different actors but the script is pretty much the same. Where are the actions against corrupted politicians? Police reforms? Work with me not for me? Reforms in the judiciary? Rising Crime? Special Protection for the VIPS? NS to foster unity? How can we ever get out of this quagmire we are in?
Just the other day a friend of mine remarked that the government is to blame for most of the problems we faced, the rot in the education system, the racial schism, the inefficient civil service, the widespread corruption and a whole lot of other undesirable stuff. I told him that the government is not to be blamed, in fact the government is doing exactly what the people wanted since it is the people who put them there in the first place. They sold us an idea and we bought it, never mind the rhetorics, they tell us stories and lies all the time but when we are given that one possibility to start a new order, our minds deny us the courage and belief to breakfree. It is us, the people who do not have a good understanding of how they can get the establishment to change for the better. However, before we go into that it is imperative that we establish one fact.
Do we Malaysians desire change in the first place? I am afraid that sadly, most people I meet are just contented with being critical just for the sake of being seen as critical and wanting a better Malaysia. The lives they live, the way riches are accumulated are sadly linked to weaknesses and corrupted system. I wonder how it is possible for people to want change, a better country when their very own value systems and worldviews are in question? These people are forever stuck at giving great comments, armchair assessments, ideal views and ideas from the comfort of their little personal kingdom that was built from the spoils gathered from this venal system we knowingly or unknowingly nurture and preserve. How can change be forthcoming when people are sitting in comfort completely detached from evils that is going on? It is sad but people are more often than not motivated by the 'feel good' factor. Their actions are based not on visions of the future but rather by what they feel now. Feelings, emotion and sensations that lull them into a state of high, so high they can no longer see how low they have descended into darkness... We are like the frogs being boiled alive in the pot, temperature is rising slowly but the warmth we feel is so nice and comfortable we do not know that eventually we would be good enough to eat.
It is sad that in our quest for development, the better life in the past few decades, we have lost our bearings of what is means to live a better life. Now everything is measured by material wealth, greed takes a firm hold over us, it dictates how we should conduct ourselves. We look with contempt at those who are not so well off while we admire with envy those who are richer, more powerful, more well connected... we speak ill of the rich and powerful but secretly wished that we are in the same league. We spend a large part of our conscious life in search of material riches but rarely have time for our children, our parents, our sibblings and friends. We unwittingly pass on all the wrong values to our offsprings. Our conversation lacks depth, our minds preoccupied, our hands tied, we do what the system bids us to, we are trapped, we are tricked, we remain slaves...
I call upon all to seek change, change not in the system but change in each individual starting with us. We need to shed the chains and shackles that binds us, before we could find the strength, courage and tenacity to change what needs to be changed. How can Malaysia change for the better when we Malaysians does not desire or want change?
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