Come on Malaysia, let’s start over

AFTER reading a commentary by a politician saying terrible things about non-Muslims, I feel that we need to begin again and restart this country from the bottom, that is, from the rakyat.

Most politicians have failed us and our many academic institutions, as well as salaried religious guardians, are not the conscience of society that they should be.

After discussions with a few good Malaysians, I have decided to suggest to the unity government a few important and doable things that could kickstart our path to freedom from the toxic narratives of political parties bent on using race and religion to win votes.

My short-term strategy is to rebuild our people from the ground up in an organic way by nurturing the brotherhood of humanity and the spirit of a real Keluarga Malaysia (not that fake concept that was only paid lip service before).

We need to build teams of Malaysians of equal representation so that they will live and breathe Malaysia and the brotherhood of humankind.

A long-term strategy is to reinvent the religious and secular curriculum in our education system so that the humanity of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals take centre stage while the spirit of human brotherhood complements our human development capital.

(The Sustainable Development Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked objectives that form a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet”.)

That is a difficult and long journey. Till then, we need to implement the following strategic doables.

Firstly, I hope Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek will get at least 50 secondary schools started on forming “Brotherhood of Malaysia” teams.

Schools have their own sports teams selected in the usual way, of course; however, in addition to those, I propose other football, basketball, sepak takraw, etc, teams be formed comprising 50% Malay and 50% non-Malay students. These teams will be monitored by a special group of 20 teachers at the ministry level, and that committee must also be a 50-50 group.

A special budget should be allocated for these 50 pilot teams to train together, to spend two to four weeks at camps where they will be sleeping, eating, working, and practising together.

Team members should be selected from among Form Three students so that they can be together for three years, till the end of their secondary school years. I hope these students will also spend holidays and festive occasions at each other’s houses to break the false race and religious taboos created by politicians with an agenda.

At the public universities, I hope that Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin can get 17 of our 20 institutions to start teams of 50 students comprising, again, of 50% Malays and 50% non-Malays.

Beginning with second-year students, these teams will undergo a leadership programme that includes spending one or two months undergoing military-like training in Malaysia and another five months overseas in a country that has a balanced racial composition.

During their overseas sojourn, the students will take courses that can be accredited to their majors back home.

These will be our future leaders who will respect each other as brothers of the same nation.

As a third doable strategy, I propose the formation of the first Bangsa Malaysia regiment comprising 500 military cadets in the army – and, yes, once again comprising 50% Malays and 50% non-Malays.

These cadets should be housed in a special compound so that they will mostly interact with each other. In this way, non-Malays would have less fear of being bullied by their military seniors.

Those seniors, too, must be carefully selected to represent the 50-50 make-up, and with the right religious and nation-building attitude.

This group will train together in the country and also overseas for six months. Together with the students at secondary and tertiary level, these groups will be our new army of leaders who will help to change this country from the ground up.

Finally, I feel that we need to add more diversity in civil institutions. All ministries dealing directly with the public should have a 50-50 make-up with the hiring of part-time staff comprising both active pensioners and older adults – I would say 10,000 part-timers who can man counters and do middle management office work.

These doables must be taken in all seriousness. Change in any society is a big word and faces almost insurmountable obstacles caused by bigotry, stubbornness, and plain laziness to change. But change we must.

We cannot hope for one Unity Ministry to solve the problems we have with treating each other with dignity and respect.

All these suggestions are doable. It is simply a matter of wanting to change or not. Come on lah, let’s start the changes, before some bigoted politician decides what to change for us.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.