The Malaysian prime minister indeed has someone truly capable that would bring a progressively hushed '1Malaysia' to spotlight once again.

'1Malaysia' has been given a new definition: "Indians came to Malaysia as beggars and Chinese especially the women came to sell their bodies”.

This reminds me of of the Grammy hit Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) by R&B queen Beyoncé Knowles.

If I can modify the lyric, it should perhaps go like this:

1Malaysia could have many different interpretations,
He said you came from India as beggers;
Swindled into the rubber estate,
You cried your tears to the trees;
They put the shackles on you,
So you'd never run away.

Then the women from faraway China,
Came to this 1Malaysia;
They sold their bodies to this land,
And someone put the masks on them;
So they couldn't see others,
And'd never run away.

[Chorus]
Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it,
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it;
And if you didn't like me,
Then I was that pendatang...

1Malaysia could have many different interpretations,
So long as I liked it,
Any interpretation would do...

If Beyoncé were to sing it this way, the song would have been much more captivating. Listeners would start shedding their tears, and Beyoncé would gain tremendously in her stature, and could possibly be appointed the humanitarian ambassador of UN.

Frankly speaking, I do pity our prime minister.

All he needs is an assistant like Nasir Safar, and he would need no more foes.

Anwar Ibrahim, Lim Kit Siang and Hadi Awang put together would not deal a blow as lethal as Nasi's.

Don't believe it?

Simple. Since when have the criticisms of Anwar, Kit Siang and Hadi on '1Malaysia' made newspaper headlines? And since when have we seen such heated discussions on them online?

Not the least.

To be frank, even the '1Malaysia' talks by PM Najib himself have not attracted too much attention save for his very first time.

The Nasir incident has exposed the whole lot of problems of '1Malaysia'.

while the slogan could be gaudy, it is nothing more than a marketing tool.

If we were to really make it into a national policy, we must first have a strong will to change.

The roots of the country's decades-old racial policy and our political parties' formidable racist mentality have been deeply and firmly planted on the ground.

Will this tree give out the aroma of lavender if we name it 'Lavender'?

If we don't change our mindset, even if we force the name of National Unity Bureau into the National Civics Bureau (BTN), and want it to preach '1Malaysia', the effects would not be any different, and its contents would not differ much from what Nasir said.

The dreadful thing is that we have way too many weird-thinking folks around, and it wouldn't come as a surprise that one or two are standing by the PM's side.

If we tune our mind towards the positive aspects, at least Nasir's resignation shows some slight improvements on the part of the mainstream thinking.

Compared to Ahmad Ismail, Nasir is perhaps the less fortunate one.

But there is still a very long way ahead of us. Translated by Dominic Loh