There is a cloud of apathy hanging over Malaysia as we ready ourselves for the third decade of the 21st century.
This is not the way to do it. Weren’t we supposed to be a developed nation in 2020? True, the timeline shifted to 2030.
But we had time to get rid of apathy and a million other maladies. Yet we surrendered this beautiful nation to a hundred indecisions.
To those who hold power, we ask: when will you act? And to the errant Malaysians: when will you ever care?
Take the case of our water woes. It is not solely Selangor’s slumber we are dealing with. It is a national nap. We can forgive an occasional snooze, but to be in the Land of the Nod for long is taking it to the limits.
It wasn’t long ago that we had chemicals dumped in the southern end of our peninsula. Not once, but twice. The last was this year too. Sungai Kim Kim is lodged in our memory for all the wrong reasons. Some 6,000 people in Pasir Gudang, Johor, were affected and close to 3,000 were hospitalised. Do we need deaths on this scale before we put an end to such a despicable act.
Previously, we could have blamed a 62-year-old lethargy-ridden government for the apathy. And we would have been right on many occasions.
But batons have passed in Putrajaya, yet why the same agony? No, do not tell us it is in our DNA. New Malaysia shouldn’t inherit old problems. The wages of euphoria shouldn’t be paid in the currency of apathy.
We call on the authorities to come down hard on the despicable perpetrators. Hold them in national shame before throwing them in jail. Go after the companies if they hide behind the corporate veil. Pierce the veil if you have to and make the directors and companies pay.
If there aren’t laws with such hard bite, enact them. Paper tigers won’t do. Enforce them. Barking and biting are two different things. Hardcore criminals have learned to tell when we cry wolf. Let no corrupt officials walk the corridor of enforcement agencies. They will make bribery a Malaysian malady. Go after the drivers of vehicles who allow passengers to litter the highways and byways with plastic bottles and other trash.
Impose hefty fines so that each time their hands attempt to make our public spaces a garbage bin, they will feel the pain of fast-emptying wallets.
It may be a little late in the day to teach such errant adults about litter pollution through poems such as My Name Is Litter as the British Council does to teens. Big fines are lesson enough for what this aberrant adults missed in school.
We do not like to do this, but compare we must ourselves to Singapore. In some ways, many of us are like many of them. The moment the Singaporeans drive into Malaysia, they leave behind their law-enforced good habits. They litter and break all the traffic rules in the book. For they know that they can get away with their errant habits.
Most of the time. Like them, a vast many of us need laws to enforce good habits. Sadly, that is the only way we can rid ourselves of an apathy of old.
It may be an Asian languor. But we hypothesise. Wake up, Malaysia.