A NATION DIVIDED.

We are today a Nation divided not by physical boundaries between the different states that make up our Nation, not by any great cause championed by the Malays against the non-Malays or vice versa nor by any crusade against any external or internal threat that does not find popular support amongst our people. What defines our society today is avarice when there should be generosity, arrogance when there should be humility and hate when they should be tolerance. What divide our people today are the hearts and minds of individuals that make up the very fabric of our society! Today the common values that should unite us are subjected to constant debates and coloured by race, religion and the vested interests of politicians!

What we have today is more sinister, more debilitating and more pervasive because it weakens our people individually. How do you combat corruption when corruption is done between consenting conspirators? How do you combat arrogance when arrogance is found within individuals. And how do you combat hate when hate can be so easily concealed?

The thing that ails our nation today are its people. Not the Malays or the non-Malays  - not the ethnicity of our nation but the life choices that each and every one of us makes everyday. 

It is for a Malay to decide if he will like or dislike those who are not Malays. It is for the individual if he will be corrupt or give a bribe. It is for the individual to decide if he feels threatened or not by the religion of others. Our government choses to manipulate us according to their vested interest but still the final decision to do so is really up to the individual alone.

Thoughts control…divide and rule…these are the weapons of choice used by politicians to maintain power. These are truly despicable methods used by governments that we associate with third world countries, communists and countries ruled by despots and dictators. That UMNO has increasingly resorted to these means is a sign of their desperation to maintain political control of a people who are tiring of an overbearing, corrupt and arrogant government totally out of touch with the reality of openness and personal freedom that our people now demands. Our salvation lies in ourselves and our ability to change what we do not want.

This is what this 13th general election will be all about.

We accept that in any nation, amongst any people and within any society there will be conflicts of race, religion and the push and pull of life as we try to live with each other. What we cannot, would not and should not accept is any government that seeks to exploits these areas of potential conflict for its own political gains! Such a government is this UMNO led Barisan Nasional! Its policies and deeds are meant to wreck asunder whatever goodwill and harmony that has been built between the various and diverse race and religion that exists in our country because only in the resulting conflict can UMNO rule.

Not satisfied with what they have already done to divide and rule our people in the last five decades UMNO have encouraged the coming of immigrants – legal and illegal – and then seek to assimilate these pendatangs into the very fabric of our society in the mistaken belief that their presence will provide UMNO with a ‘vote bank’ of grateful immigrants who have been granted citizenship and will vote UMNO in any election.

UMNO may have got their ‘vote bank’ but the costs to our society has been social upheaval and disintegration of law and order as these large numbers of legal and illegal immigrants with little education and minimal social skills do little to integrate themselves into our society. Instead they have caused the disintegration of the very fabric of Malaysian society, as we have known it since Merdeka.

Now not only do we have this UMNO led Barisan Nasional government divide and rule us by their deeds and policies but we have the added burden of having these uneducated and largely unskilled pendatangs numbering in the millions, imposing their way of life upon us! How much more can our people endure in the name of keeping UMNO in power?

Today we are indeed a people divided. Divided by an irresponsible and despicable government that will stop at nothing to keep political power. Political power that they then use not for the common good of our nation or its people but political power to perpetuate a corrupt and self serving regime that is now bankrupt of any decency and no longer deserves the honour of government.

It is time for change. Time for us finish what we started in the 12th general election –a changing of the guards! A changing of leaders that have grown too prosperous, too self absorb, too arrogant and too remote from the people they are meant to serve. ABU!