Today is the first day of the new year 2023.

2023 will be tough and challenging year for Malaysia, for we want to compete with the world by becoming a world-class nation and not destroy ourselves by fighting among Malaysians through the use of toxic and divisive politics of lies, fear, hate, race, and religion.

We have spent two-thirds of our first Centennial of 100 years.

In the first one third of our Centennial from 1957, we kept to the national compass for a plural nation and the original nation-building principles as spelt out by the nation’s founding fathers in the Constitution and Rukun Negara — constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, rule of law, an independent judiciary, Islam as the official religion of the country, good governance, public integrity with minimum corruption, a clean and honest government, meritocracy, respect for human rights, an end to the various injustices and inequalities in the country, a world-class economic, educational, health and social system, and national unity, understanding and harmony from our multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural diversity.

But in the second third of our Centennial, we increasingly forgot about the national compass for a plural society, with abuses of power and corruption became rampant, until people who do not accept the five principles of Rukun Negara as the national moral compass could become Cabinet Ministers and Malaysia became associated in the world with kleptocracy.

Malaysia must re-set and return to the original national compass or we will end up in the first Centennial in 2057 as a divided, failed, and kleptocratic state.

This is the challenge before Malaysians — to bravely move forward to compete with the rest of the world or to allow the toxic and divisive politics of lies, fear, hate, race and religion to cause Malaysia to degenerate into a failed, divided and kleptocratic state in another three-and-a-half decades, losing Malaysian talents especially in the STEM sectors to the rest of the world.

DAP wants Malaysia to spend the last third of Malaysia’s Centennial to make the nation great again and not again lose the national compass as entrenched in the Malaysian Constitution and Rukun Negara as happened in the second third of the Centennial.

(Speech by DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang at the opening of DAP Bagan Parliamentary Service Centre on Sunday, 1st January 2023 at 12.30 p.m.)