By C C Pung
Justice of Peace
Sept 16. It’s Malaysia Day.
It happened in 1963.
But until not so many years ago, the disguised colonisers from across the South China Sea were mostly ambivalent to historic day on which the Federation of Malaysia, my country, was born.
I was 11 years old. Though it is a gid day, Sept 16 was not even a national holiday until a few years ago.
Today, Happy Malaysia Day messages are exchanged between Malaysians.
I wonder if our Malayan friends, who mostly only knew erroneously that Aug 31, 1957 ‘Merdeka’ (independence day’ of the Federated Malay States) as the day of the birth of Malaysia.
With a colonisers attitude, Malayans would like a Sabahan like me to assume their birthday as mine as well.
They twisted history, writing that Sabah ‘joined’ Malaysia.
No, you morons, we were one of the four parties (with Sarawak and Singapire) that formed Malaysia.
You, Malaya, was the 4th.
I’m generally at peace with the fact that Sept 16 is increasingly being recognised in the Malaysian conscience as the accurate date historically as well as in many other sense.
But it is not all happy, especially with the flooding disasters around Sabah in the last few days.
To me, it is the manifestation of decades of unfair development fund distribution and outright neglect of the Malaya-controlled Federal government which controlled the national purse strings.
Sabah has always been treated as an incidental after-thought.
Budget allocations were raised in recent years and politicians in government blew their trumpets to tout their ‘generosity’.
But given the accumulated neglect over the decades, the token addition of funds has at best the effects of band aid, especially in big ticket items such as infrastructure, health and education.
It would make this Malaysia Day a happy one for Sabahans if a major flood mitigation project is to take place in Sabah.
A multi-milliin statewide effort to mitigate persistent flooding in Sabahs major towns in the late 70s and early 80s.
It was effective at least in my City of Kota Kinabalu.
Areas notorious for bad flash floods such as the Dah Yeh villa area, the satellite LiDO township, Penampang, Putatan were greatly helped.
But I think the use-by date of the mitigation scheme has expired, if the devastating flooding chaos of the last few days were any indication.
Happy Malaysia Day, and ‘f’ you if you’re one of those Malaysians who still think Malaysia was born in 1957 and celebrate that Sudirman Arshad’s song meant for Malaya’s Merdeka
Editor: The views expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of the talantang.com
