Let’s cry out Merdeka!

Aug 31 will always be a special day as is Sept 16 and it's time for all of us to celebrate.

TODAY is our National Day, even for Sarawak although it actually gained independence from the British on July 22, 1963.

But somehow calling Aug 31 just our National Day belies the importance of that date since it is, for all intents and purposes, our Independence Day.

While the peninsula or Malaya obtained independence from the British on that day in 1957, Sabah also gained independence on the same date but six years later.

Anyhow, as an independent nation, we are celebrating our 55th anniversary today and on Sept 16 we will celebrate our 49th anniversary of the formation of Malaysia when Sabah and Sarawak joined the federation.

This means we have 15 days to celebrate the formation of Malaysia.

It cannot be denied that this year's run-up to Hari Merdeka seemed rather muted and not as grand as previous times. It could be because it comes so soon after Hari Raya Aidil Fitri with most of us still recovering from the long holidays.

"It's celebration fatigue," said a colleague when asked about the rather quiet Merdeka.

However, I suspect, and many of you will agree, that this year's anniversary is deafeningly silent because we have become so divided and everything has become so politicised that we have nothing to celebrate.

Or worse, many of us have become afraid to celebrate.

Have we become afraid to show our patriotism because we are afraid to be criticised? Have we become afraid to show our pride and joy in being Malaysian because we are constantly told that there's nothing to celebrate?

Or could it be that we have become so disillusioned about being a Malaysian?

I believe that the country is now at a serious crossroads and this is a situation we have never been in before, not even in the dark days of the Emergency or May 13.

In 1969, we were 12 years old as an independent nation and less than six as a country.

History will show that the country came to its own after those dark days because most people wanted to recover from the hatred and distrust sown by the clashes after the general election.

Many people would like to draw parallels between what happened in 1969 to what happened in 2008 and in both times the ruling coalition did very badly for the dull feeling over the National Day.

There are also those trying to use what happened in the May 13 incident to cast fear among the masses with the coming of GE 13.

But this can't be further from the truth as we are nowhere as hungry as our fathers and grandfathers were in 1969 in wanting to be Malaysians.

Yes, some left the country for Australia and England, citing discrimination, but many more stayed back to fight for their place under the Malaysian sun and when the boom time of the country came in the 1980s and 1990s, most of them reaped the rewards of being Malaysians.

Many of the present day millionaires, and even some billionaires, owe their fortunes to that boom time.

Yes, some of these people did not deserve the money they have, but no one can deny that all of us worked very hard in those two decades.

We are not only a young country (55 is just a toddler as far as nations go) but also a rather small one. All it takes for us to prosper is for slightly more than half of us to work hard. In the same vein, all it will take for us to fail is for slightly more than half of us to be slackers.

But sadly, now in 2012, we have become a nation of moaners and groaners. Instead of being proactive, we enjoy taking to the Internet to grumble and complain about everything – from our mothers, fathers, siblings, bosses and colleagues to our whole country.

Of course, we can now complain very loudly because we have the tools to do so but that does not mean that we do not want to work hard at making our nation work.

We should not allow all the complaining to distract us from the fact that we still need to work very hard to make Malaysia progress.

And we should also not be clouded by our complaints until we do not celebrate ALL our achievements. The right to complain does not mean there are no reasons to celebrate.

We should celebrate that we are still Malaysians.

We should celebrate that we like each other's food.

We should celebrate that we have done well in the past 55 years.

We should celebrate that we can do even better in the next 55 years.

We should celebrate that we have the right in the coming general election to choose who we want to represent us.

We should celebrate because we can.

> Executive editor Wong Sai Wan would also like to celebrate his parents' 55th wedding anniversary on this very day although his father passed away 11 years ago.

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