Happy New Year

To all Malaysians and all other Chinese everywhere,

Happy New Year!

I do not know what to write as of now, but I like to quote a passage from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's writing:

"If I had to choose the place of my birth, I would have chosen a society of which the dimensions were limited by the extent of human faculties, that is to say, by the possibility of being well governed; a society where everyone was equal to his job so that no one was obliged to commit to others the functions which belonged to him; a state where, every individual being acquainted with every other, neither the dark manoeuvres of vice nor the modesty of virtue was concealed from public gaze and judgment, a state where the delectable habit of meeting and knowing one another made love of country a love for fellow citizens rather a love for the land."

We can only hope that the sovereign and the people could have only a single identical interest, so that the civil machines always tended to promote the common happiness for everyone, irrespective of color, creed or religion.

This is something that cannot happen unless the sovereign and the people are one and the same identity, that is, we citizens are treated as the one and same class of citizens, the one and only Bangsa Malaysia, that every citizen will be subjected to the same law in such a way that neither I nor anyone else could shake off the honorable yoke, that soft and salutary yoke which the proudest heads bear with all the more docility because they are made to bear none other.

I would have wished that no one within the state could claim to be above the law, and no one from outside could dictate any law that the state was bound to recognize. For whatever might be the formal constitution of a government, if there is one man who is not subject to the law, all the others will necessarily be at his discretion.

I would have chosen a country where the right to legislate was common to all the citizens - for who could know better than they what laws would most suit their living together in the same country?

But I would not have approved of plebiscites, whereby the rulers of the state and those most interested in its preservation were excluded from deliberations on which the safety of the state often depended and whereby the magistrates, by an absurd inconsistency, were deprived of rights which ordinary citizens enjoyed.

On the contrary, we have what we had not desired, those succulent ill-conceived projects and all such hazardous innovations, and that those with such power and influence should have such liberty to introduce such laws according to their fancy, such iniquity of laws which makes them sacred and venerable, that the ordinary people soon come to despise such interpretations of laws which can be changed every day to suit the pseudo-philosophers, in the name of improvement, where great evils are often introduced in the endeavor to correct lesser ones.

For there is in our current form of freedom, as there is in heavy and succulent food or in the rich wine, something which fortifies robust constituents used to it, but which overwhelms, ruins and intoxicates the weak and delicate people unused to it. Where such people try to shake off the yoke, they actually remove themselves even further from liberty; for they had mistaken that liberty which is an unbridled license which is the opposite of freedom, and which delivers them into the hands of seducers who multiply their chains.

Our history was lost, so to speak, in this darkness of time, where we were once a commonwealth of citizens who were long accustomed to a wise independence, which was fought and won together, of which were to set us free and was fit to be free.

In such a case, the sovereign and his magistrates had bred unhappy misunderstandings, disturbing the civil harmony which we once had enjoyed.

My dear fellow citizens - or rather my brothers and sisters - for ties of blood as well as the laws unite almost all of us - I am please to say that I cannot think of you without at the same time remembering all the blessings which you enjoy and of which you may not have appreciated the value which I, and many others have lost them.

None of you is so little enlightened as to be unaware that when the force of the laws and the authority of their defenders is lost, there can be no security or liberty for anyone.

It is the hope of this new year that equity, moderation, and the most respectful firmness of purpose continue to regulate all our enterprises and display us to the whole world as a model of a valiant and modest people as jealous of its glory as of its freedom.

So, let us elect only those men capable of governing others in order to govern themselves.