This is the first time ever in 47 years that Malaysia gets to celebrate its own day - in the proper fashion.
A few hours ago, I went to collect a package that I ordered from a shop near home. As I was waiting for the package, a girl asked the shopkeeper, what is Malaysia Day? And the assistant said, "1 Malaysia". The girl went to ask another shopkeeper next door to get the answer. No one was able to answer exactly.
That's the problem. People in the Peninsular can hardly know what is Malaysia Day, except those in Sabah and Sarawak. In fact, it is the day where these two states joined the peninsular to form Malaysia. If you remember history, the original date was supposedly to be on 31 August 1963 but was delayed pending ratification by the United Nations before its declaration today.
In fact it just come too late to have Malaysia Day declared as a national holiday. If you ask this question during Madey's time, he'd say there's too many public holidays already in the annual calendar!
Here's one problem. In the past 47 years, Sabah and Sarawak are just starting to realize that Federal government is forgetting about honoring the 20 point agreement that was made prior to the joining of the federation. And where has both states grown from 1963 onwards? Not much really. Poverty level in both states are still in poor. Sarawak, despite having vast natural resources, remains poor because those were robbed by the wealthy barons including the state's first family. Sarcastically, I'd say that it's nice to see an anti-Taib or Taib Must Go campaign to tell the CM that 30 years plus is enough and the plundering has gone to the peak point already.
The one common myth that we're told is that the struggle to form Malaysia is done without bloodshed. That is not true. In fact, there are some left-wing parties, even including KMM, AWAS, API that started the struggle of forming Malaysia way earlier than United Malays National Organisation. In fact "Merdeka" slogan was first uttered by KMM (notable figure was Ibrahim Yaacob) Read more here.
Malaysia is already 47 years in formation, almost half of my age. And to commemorate this, read the join statement here.
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