THE three-week May/June Dewan Rakyat proceedings will be a make-and-break session for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government.
Will Malaysians enhance the hope for a national renaissance from the Anwar unity government after the May/June meeting of Parliament or will they feel that nothing great could be expected of the Anwar unity government?
Will Malaysia be capable of world-class standards and be a role model for the world for inter-ethnic, inter-religious, inter-cultural and inter-civilisational dialogue, understanding, tolerance and harmony or is Malaysia fated to end up as a divided, failed and kleptocratic state in the next few decades?
Can we halt the national decline which saw the failure of Vision 2020 and its nine strategic objectives to build a Bangsa Malaysia from 1991-2020 which resulted in Malaysia growing at a lower pace economically than China, India and Indonesia to the extent that we have now lost out to China in per capita GDP (gross domestic product) and will lose out to India and Indonesia in the next few decades?
In 1991, when propounding the Vision 2020 and Bangsa Malaysia concepts, the then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said: “Hopefully the Malaysian who is today and the years to come will be the last generation of our citizens who will be living in a country that is called ‘developing’. The ultimate objective that we should aim for is a Malaysia that is a fully developed country by the year 2020.”
In 1990, there were 19 countries generally regarded as ‘developed countries’. Now this number of developed countries have more doubled but Malaysia is not one of them.
Can we reset and return to the original nation-building principles of a plural Malaysia as agreed to by the nation’s founding fathers who included the first three PMs who were also UMNO presidents and prove that Malaysia is less corrupt than China, India and Indonesia?
Can Malaysia be a nation of world-standard achievers and performers or is Malaysia a nation of mediocre people?
These are the questions about the future of Malaysia.
At stake is not just the reputation of individual personalities but the fate of Malaysia as a nation – whether we are to become a first-rate world-class nation or we are to remain a second-class mediocre nation or worse still, we are to end up as a divided, failed and kleptocratic state in the future.
For this reason, the Cabinet should give special attention to the May/June meeting of Parliament to make sure that it could inspire and elevate the national hopes and the Malaysian Dream for Malaysia to become a first-rate world-class nation, especially in the areas of restoring judicial independence, good governance and the fight against corruption and start the process to have a world-class economic, educational, health and social system.
The three-week parliamentary meeting in May/June should be one of the high-water marks of the Anwar unity government. – April 23, 2023
Veteran lawmaker and retired DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang is the incumbent MP for Iskandar Puteri.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
