Malaysia : Past, Present and Future

by: LOW JUN WEN (L21)

Malaysia is a multiracial country. Malaysia has a population of 23.27 million consisting of 61 per cent Malays, 30 per cent Chinese, 8 per cent Indians and 1 per cent of other ethnic groups. Malaysia is unique because of its diversity of races, religions and cultures, the stability of the country and many places of interests. Besides, there are many international achievements which are the pride of our nation. Malaysia has its origins in the Malay Kingdoms present in the area which, from the 18th century, became subject to the British Empire. The first British territories were known as the Straits Settlements, whose establishment was followed by the Malay kingdoms becoming British protectorates. The territories on Peninsular Malaysia were first unified as the Malayan Union in 1946. Malaya was restructured as the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and achieved independence on 31 August 1957. Few years later, Singapore, Sabah, and Sarawak has joined Federation of Malaya and renamed as Malaysia. Due to the racial strife, Singapore was later eventual exit in 1965. Due to the imbalance of wealth contribution within all the races, finally the racial conflict had become a tragedy which is known as the 13 May, 1969 Incident. After the incident, National Operations Council (NOC) was established by proclamation of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (King of Malaysia) Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah, headed by Tun Abdul Razak. In February 1971 parliamentary rule was re-established. Many policies such as New Economic Policy (NEP), had been implemented since then. All these policies are to reduce the social gap and income per capita among all the races in Malaysia. Today, after few decades after those policies that had implemented, generally, the general income of the country has increases a lot compared to the past. Most of the citizen of this country are now more united and could be more understanding towards other culture and religion. For example, during Hari Raya Aidifitri, the are many non-Muslim also celebrating it by visiting their Muslims friend or crew house. Recently, to enhance more integration among them citizen, the current Prime Minister of Malaysia had introduced 1 Malaysia concept to the nation. 1 Malaysia is a concept which can unified all the people towards one objectives, to become the highly income country by the year of 2020 regardless the race and religions. In the future, the citizen will more depending with one and another regardless the race and religion. Malaysia will become the heavy industry producer and many other countries will depending on Malaysia to supply the high technology products to all over the world. The rate of unemployment will also be at the lowest and the country will be in full production. With that, our beloved country will become the high income country in the future. Compared to the past, present and future, Malaysia will getting better and better and all in terms of to be monolithic solidarity, economic, social, politics, etc. Therefore, to ensure that, start from now, there are many efforts that are needed to be done from time from time regardless the race and religion. Until then, our ideal future of Malaysia will be surely exist in the future.