By TK Chua

National unity is a much tossed about subject nowadays. We use every opportunity to emphasise the importance of different communities staying together, urging them to practise “give and take” and be moderate and reasonable in their demands. Yet incendiary remarks and extreme demands on the community have never been more prevalent than in recent years. In fact, it is getting bolder by the day.

This brings me to the baloney I observe each day on how our leaders try to promote “national unity” – a fake unity that is transient and skin deep.

When Malaysians cheer our Olympians, we claim national pride and unity. When we make videos/movies depicting different races living in harmony, we confuse the videos with reality. When we celebrate Merdeka and Malaysia Day, we forget it is only a state-sponsored event, not our daily life.

The baloney goes further. When a person marries a spouse or adopts a child of a different race, he is hailed as a true blue Malaysian. When a leader makes a thoughtless remark on the demise of another, we think it is cute. When a leader helps us secure the release of two Malaysians detained in a foreign country, he is instantly labelled “non-racist”, despite his less than illustrious record.

Indeed, I must say our national unity is fragile and in a somewhat helpless state.

We spend millions on superficial efforts, leaving the real problems of disunity, marginalisation and deprivation to fester among us.

I think the greatest factor in furthering disunity is to disenfranchise people, giving them “no say” in almost every aspect of their lives.

Promoting national unity requires a real and sincere effort. We could parade our Merdeka celebrations every month, our sportsmen and sportswomen could win even more medals, our leaders could marry more spouses of different races, our GLCs could make even more “feel good” videos and our evergreen Adenan Satem could sing ‘The Young Ones’ a hundred times a month, but all these efforts are not going to make an iota of difference when fundamental problems that prevent real national unity from taking hold, go unresolved.

When there are sincere efforts to promote national unity, the ripple effects are instantaneous. People will live in harmony and show courtesy to each other without being urged to do so or coerced into it. Like imitation goods, fake and pretentious efforts are repulsive.

TK Chua is an FMT reader.

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