This year is a the 50th Merdeka Anniversary for the nation.

There are two ways to celebrate the half-century of nationhood – in a lavish expenditure of public funds in fireworks, extravaganzas and pageantry or to celebrate it in a meaningful manner to instill greater national solidarity and sense of purpose in the nation’s journey to achieve a Bangsa Malaysia and a fully developed nation status.

Parliament, as the highest political forum in the land, should set the national example to celebrate the half-century of our nationhood in a meaningful manner, with Malaysians regardless of race, religion, class or political beliefs standing up for fair, just and progressive nation-building policies to create towering Malaysians and to stop Malaysia’s loss of international competitiveness.

The most meaningful way to celebrate the country’s half-century of nationhood is to seek a national consensus as to what had gone wrong with nation-building and how we can learn from the mistakes and failures of the past decades so that we can be more successful in the next 50 years, in particular on the following issues:

Firstly, National unity — why after nearly five decades of nationhood, race relations in Malaysia is “not good, fragile and brittle”, as publicly admitted by the Prime Minister recently. Racial and religious polarization have never been more serious today than in the past five decades.

The introduction of the national service training programme in 2004 is testimony of the failure of the national education system to create national unity in the country — and this is no surprise when the Education Minister, Datuk Seri Hishamuddin Hussein is the very symbol and cause of such polarization with his racist keris-wielding histrionics at Umno general assemblies.

The national service training programme is a misnomer it has nothing to do with national defence or fighting a war but to instill national unity, patriotism and discipline.

But even for the limited objective of the national youth service training programme to inculcate national unity, patriotism and discipline, a comprehensive review and even suspension is warranted as it is highly debatable whether such limited goals are being achieved and whether such a programme should be organized for all students during their school years instead of have a very costly and most dubious one affecting only one-fifth of school-leavers.

There are two other reasons why the national service training programme has not inspired general confidence of the parents and the public:

• Firstly, the defects, flaws, mishaps, sub-standard camp conditions, crimes and tragedies of the national service training programme since its inception, with 12 trainee deaths with four in the last two months, i.e.Ili Ameera binti Azlan (18.1.07), Teng Siau Shean (30.1.07), Zul Hadi bin Basir (20.2.07) and Prema Elenchelian (28.2.07) and the most recent case of paralysis of Asilalatin Abdul Basir from Pasir Mas. With three trainee deaths in 2004, three in 2005, two in 2006, and four alone in the first two months of this year, how can parents feel safe to have their children selected for the programme?
• Secondly, the programme’s failure to be a model of integrity, accountability and transparency without a whiff of scandal to dispel all suspicion that the refusal to suspend the troubled national service training programme was prompted more by vested crony interests in the annual expenditures of some RM500-RM600 million for the programme, which would total some RM2 billion at the end of this year’s programme.

As the Defence Minister in direct charge of the national service training programme, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak should give a detailed breakdown of the RM500 — RM600 million million expenditure a year since 2004 for the national service training programme, showing what, how, where, who and when expenditures under the programme were made, whether open tender had been called, and if so, the respective bids for the different contracts under the programme.

[Speech (11) on Royal Address debate in Parliament 22.3.07]