Sunday, June 22, 2008

Introduction to what I have to say about Malaysia

For those of you who don't know me, I'm Malaysian born and... I was going to say 'bred', but I'm not quite so sure that's true. Anyway, I was born in a wee town adorned with a 6 foot tall concrete cat. In the course of writing what I write in this blog, I will have a few things to say about Malaysia. And like nearly everything else I write about anything, I will have vicious, scathing remarks against Malaysia. Nothing personal.

No, I'm not proud to be Malaysian, for the same reason that I'm not proud to be Chinese. Why should one be proud of an accident of birth? Pride strikes me as something you should feel for some achievement bought in one's own sweat, blood and tears, NOT someone else's. In any case, patriotism, at its very heart, means favouring one group (those who salute a particular flag) over another group (those who salute a different flag). High time people outgrew that kind of primitive tribalism, I think.

But this is not to say I'm an anarchist! Governments are most certainly necessary to get groups of mostly simple people over large geographical areas to behave themselves. And despite all the political dicking about going on these days, in retrospect, it can actually be said that, in the larger scheme of things, Malaysia ain't doing so bad! When the ruling party cronies' corruption started to get really ugly, the opposition made its move and, surprise, surprise, suddenly the opposition has a voice! And that's a hell of a lot more than can be said for many developing nations under a dictatorship cunningly disguised as a democracy.

So long story short, I will be fairly ruthless and unrelenting in my criticism of Malaysia, not out of spite or anything like that, but for the same reason that I criticise everything else* - because we can do better.

* Besides religion, which I criticise because it's plain wrong.

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