It is always difficult to know with all certainty what we really want. Our needs and expectations are forever in a state of flux and we battle our minds and our hearts to tell us what are the priority things for us today, tomorrow and the future.
Part of the problem is that we are never too sure of our values. Consequently we are pressed for choices that we can never make at any one time. We then react by passing blame on to the system and the environment. The other half of the problem is when we think we have made a choice but actually we are merely making a shopping-list of our wants at a particular time. We are trying to make up our minds and it is not easy to do so in the midst of all the other distractions in our life.
If the last General Elections results (12th GE, Mar.8) in Malaysia were any help we can try to make out what Malaysians really want. In sum their desires include the following: the present system of National Coalition Government (Barisan Nasional), BN, is due for change, the new media must be given more space for growth, the size of the economic cake cannot be further enlarged unless it moves in tandem with the world economy, and educational opportunities need to be more widely opened up to Malaysians and not only to the foreigners.
But the underlying trends that have been brought up by the 12th GE are more interesting and these include the following: the new assertiveness of the Monarchy, the call for change within all the component parties of the BN, the beginning of the "rattling" in Sarawak and Sabah owing to their new-found power and hence their eagerness to exercise them and finally the psychologically-disturbing reversal of roles for the "once-opposition" and the "hitherto ruling" parties.
Ultimately all these will impact on Malaysian society and polity. The message that has been sent to the wide world out there is that Malaysians really do not know what they really want. The 12 GE results are not indicative of the general needs and expectations of Malaysia either now or for the future. After fifty years we are only now seeing a glimpse of the spectrum of Malaysian needs and even then they are not publicly articulated. More is required of whomever and of whichever Government that holds power in the country. For the moment at least the picture created has been one where Malaysians are really only staying in the world of the periphery, the shadows of their real self and living in half-hopes and half-dreams.
Examples are many as for instance, let us look at economics: What is new in the New Economic Policy? What actually is growing in the Growth Triangles? Why must the Outline Perspective Plan (OPP) remain as an outline and in whose perspective? And in terms of the Economic Corridors, why should not development take place in the real zones instead of the corridors? In short all these smack of action only to be seen in the outer areas of reality but never the reality itself. Has Malaysians lost the ability to distinguish the real from the unreal?
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