Parti Pribumi Youth chief, Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman gave a very passionate speech just now calling on Malaysians, particularly the youths, to be in the forefront of the political battle for change in the country.

I am reminded that I also started my political journey when I was 24 years old, like Syed Saddiq, but that was some 52 years ago.

This year, the nation will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of our attainment of Merdeka on August 31, 1957 when I was in Form Three in Batu Pahat High School.

I remember that the students in the school were assembled at the school padang, where the Merdeka Proclamation was read out.

We have failed in our Merdeka Dream and Vision to be a world-class nation as a parliamentary democracy; a successful and developed economy; a centre of educational excellence and a united, harmonious and progressive nation despite the diverse races, religions, cultures, languages in the country.

Malaysia has become a joke of a parliamentary democracy, where Members of Parliament are virtually prohibited from posing questions or debating the biggest financial scandal in the nation’s history – the 1MDB scandal.

Economically, we have lost out to other countries which had lagged behind us when we achieved Merdeka 60 years ago, in particular South Korea and Taiwan; in danger of being overtaken by Vietnam and Thailand, while other countries are swiftly closing the economic gap with us like Indonesia.

Educationally, whether at university, or secondary and primary education, we have lost our international eminence, while in recent years, the voices of extremism, intolerance and bigotry have caused the worst racial and religious polarization in the nation’s history.

What is worse, we have overnight been transformed into a global kleptocracry, with the Prime Minister as the lead actor in a Malaysian cast involving Cabinet Ministers, Parliament, top public officials and national institutions like the Attorney-General, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, Bank Negara, Police pretending that the 1MDB scandal does not exist although it continues to dominate world headlines with the latest developments in the multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal in various part of the world in the past few years.

Only political change in the forthcoming 14th General Election, with a change of the occupants of Putrajaya with a new Federal Government, can halt Malaysia’s decline and save the country from the trajectory of a failed and a rogue state.

Let us start a political hurricane from Kluang tonight to user in political changes in the next general elections.

The 13th General Election did not overcome the electoral hurdles to a political change in Putrajaya because there was only one political tsunami – in the urban areas where Chinese, Indians and Malay voters united as one solid bloc.

But there was no political tsunami in the rural areas.

This is a shortfall we must overcome in the forthcoming general election, as there can only be political change in Putrajaya if there are two political tsunamis – both in the urban as well as the rural areas.

I call on Malaysian youths regardless of race, religion or region to be the vanguard of a political hurricane of change, backed by two political tsunamis, urban and rural, in the 14th General Election.

(Speech at the Kluang DAP’s 14th General Election Preparations Dinner held in Kluang on Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 8.30 pm)