It is with a big sigh of relief that I completed a small assignment on how Malaysia had managed a multiracial society, its successes and failures. I nearly gave up half way through because it is not something easy to write about. How do you measure unity? What criteria to use to measure success? While there may not have been incidents of racial violence for the last 40 years and while there is little doubt that specific socioeconomic targets of development programs have been largely achieved, it is not clear whether such achievement has led to national unity.
Fifty years after independence, are we moving in the right direction? Are we becoming truly ‘one nation’ with a "common social will" , or are we living increasingly separate lives? The answer is only too obvious, don't you think? Just take a quick look around...look at our schools...our universities...our offices...what do you see? Integration ? Separation? Just open the newspapers...instead of debates on how to overcome the economic recession, the news are full of mudslingings between the rival political camps. Is this unity? I feel extremely saddened.
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