PMX: Sekarang masa selamatkan negara, jangan kira slogan parti.

Perdana Menteri Anwar Ibrahim mengingatkan Malaysia mempunyai pilihan sama ada kekal pada tahap yang lama atau bergerak maju sebagai bangsa berdaulat. "Jangan kiralah slogan Melayu ke slogan Islam ke, itu slogan parti, itu kita gunakan ketika pilihan raya, sekarang ini masa untuk kita bertindak sebagai satu pasukan untuk menyelamatkan negara kita," katanya.

Those are the words I want my leader to say..."bergerak maju sebagai bangsa berdaulat." These are words that unite us all, words that tell us to be proud that we are Malaysians, words that tell us that together we are strong, together we will take care of each other and together we are one people.

Those words, spoken by a Malaysian leader, have been a long time coming.

When I was growing up, those words need not be spoken by anyone. We did not need anyone to tell us that we are all Malaysians. We did not need any reminding to be nice to one another. We did not have to be reminded that we should celebrate unity in diversity. There was no need to be reminded of these things because we lived that life then.

In Kampong Kassipilay where I spend a good many years growing up, I can remember growing up as a Malay who had Chinese and Indian friends, and those Chinese and Indian friends had Malay friends like me. And you know who is different from us? The Sikhs with their turbans...or Bais as we used to call them....are different from us! They are not better or worse than us...they were just different.

There were a few Seranis or Eurasians who are also different from us because they are neither here nor there...they are not Indians, not Chinese and not even Malays...they were somewhere in between. Whether that was good or bad was not our concern. They were just...... "different"....and if they want to mix with us, we said ok...but we know they are different. Not better not worse...just different...though if any of our friends had a Eurasian girlfriend, we know he is a lucky devil because more often than not, those Serani girls boleh tahan lah.

In those days, everywhere we look we see someone who is different from us in many ways. We know the Chinese ate Pork, we know the Indians prayed in Temples with Idols and were ringing bells all the time...and they know that all Malay boys were circumcised. They know, but we never talked about it, nor do they ask to see if we Malays have been circumcised. We know all these things, but we never made a big deal out of it all. We Malays don't tell the Chinese not to eat pork, the Indians did not tell the Malays to not get circumcised, and and the Chinese do what we know the Chinese are good at..... study hard at school, get good grades, and then go on to live life better prepared than us Malays or the Indians. That was just how things are then.

We need to bring back those days so that our people can be themselves again. Yes, I am a Malaysian but if truth be told, why can't I just be a Malay who has Indian and Chinese friends? And if there are Sikhs, Dayaks, Kadazans or anyone else whom I want to be friends with...let that be my decision to make. I do not want any NGO to tell me to do this and to do that to promote racial harmony, and I certainly do not want the government of the day meddling with whom I can be friends and with whom I cannot be friends.

If I do not like Raju it is because I think he is not my type and if I do not like Tan because he supports Manchester United...it is my choice to make. I am not being racist. The same with them...if they do not want Hussein as their friend - they can make that decision without being called a racist by anyone. Hell, there are also Malays that I do not like!

But things are different these days.

We need to have leaders like PMX to tell us to "bergerak maju sebagai bangsa berdaulat." We must heed his call to be one nation and one people again and once we are maybe we can go back to the good old days when what we do, what we say, and what we even think in our head is our own business and no one else's.... and certainly all those things that we do will be our own business and not considered a threat to our nation's security. Free country ma!