FEBRUARY 19 — Is it possible to group together some 200-300 public intellectuals to save Malaysia by a reset and a return to the original nation-building principles to unite a plural nation and to become a first-rate world-class nation?

I thank my family, friends and comrade-at-arms in the pursuit of the Malaysian Dream.

It has been a long journey and I don’t expect to be here still forging forward for a better Malaysia.

I have retired from front-line politics but I have not retired from politics which is only possible if you leave this world.

I have been wrestling with the problem of a new role in Malaysian national affairs.

I will let you into a secret of what I have been thinking recently, whether it is possible to group together some 200 to 300 public intellectuals to save Malaysia by a reset and a return to the original nation-building principles to unite a plural nation and to become a first-rate world-class nation.

An academician told me that the number of public intellectuals in Malaysia can be counted on the fingers of one’s hand.

I will not take such a narrow view of “public intellectuals” but at its widest sense – any Malaysian, whether graduate or non-graduate, who is prepared to participate in the public affairs discourse of society. Regardless of academic field or professional expertise, the public intellectual addresses the problems of society and engages with the global issues of truth, right and wrong and the judgement of the time.

It will be bigger than G25 but not confined to former public servants. It will be Aliran on a Malaysian stage.

Is this possible? I will like to hear your views.

Very soon, we will be having two “100 Days”.

In two weeks’ time, it will be the first 100 days of the Anwar Unity government.

For the past over two months, Malaysians live on hopes for a better Malaysia.

I told Azalina Othman Said, the Minister for in the Prime Minister’s Department for Law and Institutional Reform in Penang yesterday that the current seven-week Parliament is very important, for at its end on March 30, Malaysians must feel vindicated that they were hopeful that Malaysia is resetting, returning to the original nation-building principles and rising again to become an united world-class nation.

There will be another 100 days when the general election in six states of Penang, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu will be held in June or July to determine whether there will be continued political stability and whether the wishes of Yang di Pertuan Agong will be fulfilled that he will not have to swear in the 11th Prime Minister before his five-year reign ends in January next year.

We are in challenging times.

We must ensure that the Anwar unity government can last five years, but even more important, we must ensure that Malaysia’s “masyarakat madani” under the Anwar unity government is one that will make Malaysia a first-rate world-class nation guided by democracy, the rule of law, good governance, anti-corruption, and a global economic. education and social system.

I have been in the DAP for 58 years, starting when I was a young man, with dreams for a fair, just, and united plural Malaysia.

When I was in school in the fifties, we were educated to be Malayans and then Malaysians, and not just to be Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, and Dayaks.

We will continue to be Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans, and Dayaks, which is our ethnic identity. We will also continue to be Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or Christians, which is our religious identity. But we have a common national identity as Malaysians.

Malaysia can only be great if we can unite as Malaysians, combining the strength of our diverse ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural identities to make Malaysia a world-class nation for the good of the people and the world.

There was a time when it was an embarrassment to be a Malaysian in the world. We must make sure that this belong to the past, and such an embarrassing situation will never return in the future.

We want all Malaysians, with diverse ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural identities, to be Malaysian First, rather than Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan, Dayak or Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian first.

This is what the Constitution and the Rukun Negara taught us. We must reset and return to these nation-building principles.

I was pleasantly surprised that former Cabinet Minister, Rafidah Aziz, entitled her autobiography “Malaysian First”.

I thank Kee Thuan Chye for his biography Volume One with the title: “Lim Kit Siang – Malaysian First.”

Let me conclude by wishing all Malaysians to be Malaysian First, while preserving their separate ethnic, religious and cultural identities. 

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