Hi. This is my first essay in 2013. We were often asked to write an essay during Bahasa Melayu, Chinese or English classes since our primary and secondary education. Title were always set by out teacher, for an example: "My family" , "If I am a pencil", "A trip to the zoo" etc. These titles fulfilled the 5W1H. Today my title is expression, it does sounds abstract. Every time when we were asked to write an essay during language subject sessions, I will give up and do some other things. Until the deadline reaches, last minute homework would be done. I was surprised once because my English essay was selected by my teacher to read in front of my classmates and it was when I'm in Form 5. I would like to say a big THANK YOU to Miss Lee Lian See who is my mum's colleague and friend and went to my house every Sunday morning to teach us in writing English essay. She taught my sister and I and her niece without accepting any tuition fees. Thank you teacher.
Well, the first that I'm going to express is about the General Election of Malaysia on 5th May 2013. I used to be not caring stuffs related to politics and race, I rather to be the silent one and to be a listener and observer. That's my roll before this election. I often confuse myself with those parties and their objectives in ruling Malaysia, so I prefer not to know and not to ask. We can only vote when we reach 21 years old, and I'm still under age, so no doubt I don't even care about voting. Until when Facebook become the must in our lives, my homepage was full with news related to the 0505 election, my friends and some pages sharing their opinions and voiced out about the doubt and unfairness of this election. From then on, my curiosity raised up, I realized that it's important to execute the civic duty to be one of the citizen.
I get live information from facebook about how the election results were, about how BN use the citizen's money, about some details that BN raised up the racism issues, about how the PM trick us with a brilliant black out magic. I'm not clear with any of these issues because these information were all from page sharing either from media or some personal fans page. This urge me to be even more curious in understand what happened? How will my hometown/ my country be? How our future will be? Although I look like I don't really care, but I do care from now on. It's not that I will do a research about this election and find out the facts but I just want to express how I feel about the MEDIA, the TRICK and the RACIST problem.
I'm a student studying Media studies, I used to believe what the Media said and what they reported. We were taught to be objective(客觀) while writing a news report, and we shouldn't add in any subjective(主觀) opinions in our report. Every time when a media men/women giving their speech about their experiences working in the media industry, 99% will say that this is a tiring industry, do not put high hope on it, do not think that what you learn in university can be applied in the industry etc. At first I got scared, later on I told myself that "if they can survive until now, why can't I?" Well, back to this 13th election, the first thing which triggered me to write this post is because I saw a Malaysia newpaper UTUSAN MELAYU headlines writing "Apa lagi Cina mahu?". This is so disappointing and sad. The media is no longer Objective, they are supported by different parties. How can a headline written "Apa lagi Cina mahu?", it's so obvious that they are trying to raise the racism issues again. I'm unhappy that Najib the Prime Minister describe this 13th election as "Chinese Tsunami". I'm not studying psychology yet this is so obvious that he's trying to raise racism issues AGAIN! If you are a Prime Minister, please make things neutral, do things that is related to the country's future but not making the internal to be in a mess!
Second, there are three main races in Malaysia: Malay, Chinese and Indian. After the independence of Malaysia on the 31st Aug 1957, these three races live together and survive in the same country. We Malaysian were taught about Malaysia's history since primary school without classifying whether you are Malay, Chinese or Indian. We studied the same history of Malaysia, yet now the racist issues arose everytime. Why? Who started it? We were taught every seconds to live peacefully with other races, and studied and understood each others' cultures. Why? because we live together in the same land. To reach peace we must first understand each other and work together. I knew it, so I kept my mind to be neutral towards race. I have Malay friends, Indian friends, yes, we are the same - Malaysian. I'm currently studying in Taiwan, everytime when my Taiwan friends asking that whether I'm a Malay, I will correct them saying that I'm a Malaysian Chinese. I will explain much about the specialty of Malaysia (3 main races) to make them understand how wonderful Malaysia is to have 3 different races living together. Differentiating Malaysian Chinese, Malaysian Malay, Malaysian Indian is just to make it clear because of the skin colour. US for an example, they differentiate their race by using black and white as an adjective only. To me, it's the fact. If you have a hard feeling of being differentiated or perhaps classified by the colour, it's your problem. Well, these are very very subjective opinions of me. No offense.
Third will be the Magic Trick from Najib discussed by almost everyone. I will not give much opinion about this trick because it's still a mystery, I guess. Najib said that it was a fair and clean election, but another party said they couldn't accept the result. I'll stay neutral in this case. Let the police to settle, perhaps they are neutral too? perhaps they do care for justice? or perhaps they don't even care those money but the safety of Malaysia? Anyways, from my opinion if this trick is real, what I can say is that DEMOCRACY IS DEAD. In contrast, Taiwan is a democratic country, I learned a lot here and the culture here is totally different from Malaysia. We can speak to express anything you want to say, we can do anything without any monitoring (well in this case maybe it's because I'm alone here, so I do think so).
As a conclusion, I have a blue IC, and I'm a MALAYSIAN. I care and love my own country. I do not hope that my country to be like this, my wish is just to live peacefully. I remember the year 2020 said by Mahathir , 2020 is a special year as Malaysia will be an advance country. But then, 7 years left, I'm just too curious whether Malaysia will reach this target or not? 加油.
