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TOMORROW, we celebrate Merdeka.
Sixty-nine years since the Federation of Malaya gained independence.
And perhaps this year, more than for a very long time, we should stop for a moment and look around us.
Not at the noise. At the reality.
Because while a small collection of political hacks, racial and religious opportunists, wannabe supremacists and self-important intellectual elites spend their days telling us that Malaysia is somehow falling apart, Malaysia has quietly been doing something rather inconvenient to their narrative.
We have been flying.
Look at Malaysia from outside Malaysia - but with clarity and shutting out the noise for a moment.
The world increasingly sees a country that matters.
A country sitting confidently at the heart of ASEAN. A country trusted by East and West. A country that can talk to China, America, India, Europe and the Islamic world without becoming anybody’s satellite.
Investment is flowing in. Trade is breaking records. Our semiconductor and technology ecosystem is becoming increasingly important to the global economy. Malaysia is emerging as one of the great beneficiaries of the restructuring of global supply chains.
And during our chairmanship of ASEAN, Malaysia did not simply occupy the chair.
We led.
We helped give ASEAN a vision for the next twenty years. Kuala Lumpur once again became a place where nations that do not always agree could sit at the same table.
In a world becoming increasingly fractured, Malaysia is becoming increasingly relevant.
That should make every Malaysian proud.
But apparently not everyone.
Because while Malaysia moves forward, there are still those desperately trying to drag us backwards.
They have no economic vision. No compelling idea for Malaysia’s future.
No answer to artificial intelligence, climate change, technological disruption, education reform, inequality or the changing global economy.
So, what do they have? Race. Religion. Fear. Anger. Suspicion. Hate.
The oldest political tricks in the cheapest political handbook. When you have no ideas, find somebody to blame.
When you cannot inspire people, frighten them.
When you cannot build anything, divide what already exists.
And when you cannot persuade Malaysians to follow you into the future, convince them that somebody else is trying to steal their past.
That is not leadership. That is intellectual bankruptcy.
And I am tired of pretending otherwise.
Some of these people are weak. Some are stupid. Some are greedy. Some are simply hungry for power.
And some have achieved the impressive feat of being all four.
But they are dangerous only if the rest of us allow them to be.
Because here is the great secret they desperately do not want Malaysians to understand:
They are not the majority. We are.
The ordinary Malaysians who work together, eat together, laugh together, build businesses together, study together and look after one another.
Malay. Chinese. Indian. Dayak. Kadazan-Dusun. Iban. Bidayuh. Orang Asli. Sikh. Eurasian. Muslim. Buddhist. Hindu. Christian. Taoist. Atheist.
And every magnificent combination in between.
We are messy. We argue. God knows we complain.
But when it matters, something deeper connects us. We are Malaysian.
I have written before that we are singularly plural. I believe it more strongly today than ever.
Our diversity is not the price we pay for being Malaysia.
Our diversity is the reason Malaysia works.
And perhaps that is what frightens the extremists most.
Because every successful Malaysia proves them wrong.
Every Malay and Chinese Malaysian building a company together proves them wrong.
Every Muslim protecting a church, every Christian respecting a mosque, every Hindu celebrating Hari Raya with his friends, every Malaysian family containing three cultures around one dinner table proves them wrong.
Malaysia itself is the rebuttal to their ideology.
So perhaps the time has come for the moderate majority to stop being so damned polite.
There are barbarians at the gate.
Not barbarians because of their race, religion or political party.
Barbarians because they would happily burn down the Malaysian house simply to become king of the ashes.
We must push them back.
Not with violence. Not with censorship. And certainly not with the hatred they themselves trade in.
We defeat them with courage. With ideas. With economic progress. With education.
With opportunity. With constitutional government.
And above all, with the overwhelming voice of Malaysians saying:
Enough!
You will not divide my country.
You will not tell me that my neighbour is my enemy.
You will not weaponise my God for your political career.
You will not decide who is Malaysian enough.
You will not make my children inherit your prejudices.
And you will not drag Malaysia backwards because you have nothing intelligent to offer its future.
This is my country. This is my Malaysia.
And you cannot — you will not — win.
Because we are too strong. We are too connected.
We are too stubborn. We are too united.
We are too Malaysian. Change. Go back. Or history will simply walk over you on its way forward.
And there is something else we must remember tomorrow.
August 31 is profoundly important. It is the day the Federation of Malaya achieved independence.
But our Malaysian story was not complete.
Our real national family came together on September 16, 1963, when Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak formed the Federation of Malaysia.
Not as master and subjects. Not as centre and periphery. As partners in a shared destiny.
I have written before that Malaysia Day should occupy a much greater place in our national consciousness.
I believe that even more strongly today. L
Because we in Malaya must have the humility to admit something.
We have let Sabah and Sarawak down more than a few times.
We have sometimes treated partnership as entitlement. We have taken resources, political support and loyalty while failing to give the respect, development and equality that the Malaysian covenant demanded.
That must continue to change. And something extraordinary has happened along the way.
Sabah and Sarawak, despite everything, have begun reminding the rest of us what being Malaysian actually looks like.
Look at the instinctive coexistence. Look at the comfort with difference.
Look at communities where religion does not automatically become a political weapon and ethnicity does not have to determine friendship.
Perhaps Malaysia’s centre of gravity is changing.
Perhaps the people we once thought needed to learn from Kuala Lumpur have something far more important to teach Kuala Lumpur.
How to be Malaysian.
To my brothers and sisters in Sabah and Sarawak: Thank you.
Thank you for keeping faith with Malaysia. Thank you for reminding us what this federation was supposed to be.
And thank you for showing us that our future does not have to resemble the ugliest parts of our politics.
In just over two weeks, on September 16, we celebrate that partnership.
And I hope one day Malaysia Day becomes the great national celebration it deserves to be — the celebration of the moment all of us truly became Malaysia.
Tomorrow, however, we honour Merdeka.
We honour those who gave us freedom.
But freedom is never inherited permanently.
Every generation has to defend it.
Our generation’s struggle is different.
We do not have a colonial power standing before us. Our battle is against smaller minds.
Against corruption. Against racism. Against religious extremism.
Against those who profit from keeping Malaysians frightened of one another.
Against the idea that loving your own community somehow requires distrusting somebody else’s.
And against the silence of good people.
That last one may be the most important.
Because extremists rarely win because they are the majority.
They win because the majority gets tired.
So don’t get tired. Stand up. Speak. Challenge the nonsense. Defend your neighbour.
Defend our Constitution. Defend the extraordinary experiment called Malaysia.
Because while the merchants of doom have been shouting, something remarkable has been happening.
Malaysia has kept moving. The economy kept moving. Investment kept coming.
Our international standing kept growing.
ASEAN looked to Malaysia for leadership.
And the Malaysian people simply kept getting on with building Malaysia.
There is still so much wrong. There is poverty we must eradicate. Education we must fix.
Institutions we must strengthen. Corruption we must continue to fight.
Young Malaysians we must convince that their greatest future can be here, at home.
Patriotism does not require blindness to any of this.
I have always believed the opposite.
You criticise your country because you love it enough to demand better.
But never confuse criticism of Malaysia’s failures with surrendering faith in Malaysia.
I will not. I have travelled the world.
I have seen nations richer than ours, bigger than ours and more powerful than ours.
And I still believe this: There is no country quite like Malaysia.
There is something extraordinary here.
It is the Malaysian soul. And it belongs to all of us. Those born into it.
Those who inherited it. Those adopted into it.
Every true child of this soil who looks at this country and says: Mine.
Not mine instead of yours. Mine together with yours. That is Malaysia.
That is the country worth fighting for.
So tomorrow let the moderate majority no longer be silent.
Let our voices ring from Perlis to Johor, from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu, from Penang to Kuching.
This is our country. This is our Malaysia.
And we are not surrendering one inch of her soul to the merchants of fear.
We are moving forward. Come with us.
Or move aside. Because Malaysia’s greatest days are not behind her.
They are coming. And nothing — certainly not a handful of frightened men selling yesterday’s hatred — is going to stop us.
We are singularly plural. We are the majority. We are Malaysia.
Selamat Hari Merdeka, my brothers and sisters.
And on September 16, we celebrate the day our whole Malaysian family came together.
May the Almighty bless us all. God bless Malaysia.
Datuk Dr Vinod Sekhar is the publisher of The Vibes and Chairman of the Petra Group
