Let's Talk About Democracy

Isn't this cheesy? It's strange that I'm somewhat a nationalist. I don't even share the same skin colour as the majority of Malaysians but I believe in it.

Westerners often criticise Malaysia for not having freedom of speech and democracy. Malaysia IS a democratic country , perhaps not the kind of democracy deemed acceptable by the majority of the western world but again, the majority of the western world does not understand the Asian(in general) society .

Malaysia holds elections every 4 years. No one forces anyone to vote for the ruling party. Perhaps the only problem is that none of the opposition parties seem to be able to rival the ruling party (i.e. no good plans, nothing) and this means that Malaysians don't have much of a choice. Except in Kelantan (the only state where the opposition is the ruling party; the opposition being a hardcore Islamic party).

Malaysia does practice freedom of speech -to a certain extend. To understand why it doesn't, you have to first understand the racial and cultural make-up of Malaysia. Malays and other natives currently make up 65% of the population. 25% of the population are Chinese Malaysians, 5% are Indian Malaysians and the remaining 5% are classified as "Other". At the time of independance, immigrant races (Chinese and Indian) made up 50% of the entire population. You can well imagine what a difficult situation this was. What country decides to give citizenship to such a large number of immigrants? Especially when the immigrants were (are) better off economically and socially.

I can't be arsed to type more. To be continued... one day.