Vision 2020?

More than a decade ago our "beloved" ex-dictator... i mean ex-Prime Minister Tun Mahathir had targeted the year 2020 to be the year where Malaysia will enter First World status. More then a decade later we are still going no where near Second and a half World. Here are the few of the many problems plaguing Malaysia from entering First World:

1. Dirty drinking water - Admit it all the water which are process by Malaysia are either too muddy (sometimes the water taken from the well is way much clearer then the water from my tap) or the chlorine smell is way too strong. There is no guarantee of survival if any of you drink straight from the tap without any filter.

2. Racial polarisation - The races in Malaysia had never been anymore seperated since 1965. In some schools for example the English College in Johor Bahru, there are a special class for the Malays. Some newspaper carry racial remarks. In my ex-secondary school, only the Chinese are called over for the gangsterism talk. It is as if that only Chinese are gangsters.

3. Government control over the mainstream media - Some issues which will "harm the tourism industry" are all censored from the newspaper. During year 2000 there was a dengue outbreak, hospitals everywhere are full of dengue patients and yet there aren't even a single news report about the outbreak. When the newspaper report the rise of snatch thefts in Malaysia the tourism minister tried to censor it by condemning the newspaper of dramatising the news. Any editorials criticising the government are all censored off. If the editorials ever get into the newspaper by chance the writer of that editorial will get the boot.

4. Corruption aplenty - Every government department, are guilty of corruption. When our new Prime Minister first entered the office he promise to clean out the system. Before the elections news about ministers or CEOs being caught by police because of corruption is in headlines everyday. Right after the elections there are not even a single news regarding their trial. Out of a sudden Malaysia seems "clean".

5. Pirates heaven - Where else in this world can you find original softwares much more expensive than buying a computer? The government blame us for supporting piracy but little did they realise about the cost of one original copy of MS Office. In 2003, our government said they will wipe out every single pirates until they are gone BUT right after 2003 it seems that the police suddenly had forgotten about this issue.

6. Backward thinking - Instead of moving forward, the government is moving backwards. They had implemented snoop squads to snoop at couples. Couples are caught for holding hands. Cyber cafes are raided frequently by the police for no obvious reasons. Malays are being caught for "indecent clothings". To think that back in the 1950s Malaysia is much more open-minded than today.

7. Kampung mindset - Let's admit it, Malaysian are still kampung people. They can't maintain anything. Today the government gave them a beautiful park, after a year the park is vandalise, rubbish is everywhere and the fishes in the pond are all dead because of the things the people throw in it. Another thing that really bothers me is people spitting everywhere. Go to any shopping centre and you might come upon a few lumps of spit everywhere in the carpark or worse in the shopping centres itself.

8. Road safety minimal - It seems to me that we Malaysians are pretty proud of having one of the most dangerous roads in the world. The way Malaysians drive, even Michael Shumacher will be afraid to drive in our roads. Click here for more details.

9. Censorship - We just love to censor things. Even kissing scenes are cut off from movies. The worse being movies being cancelled of because of their movie titles. Austin Powers : The Spy Who Shagged Me was banned because of its name because of the word "Shagged". Daredevil was banned because the movie title have the name "Devil" in it and HellBoy is forced to change its title because of, what else? The word "Hell". Prince of Egypt was banned too and the reasons given by the local censorship board is the movie consists of Jewish elements. Moses was mention in the Quran for God's sake!!!!

So there you have it. Unfortunately these 9 things are just only the tip of the iceberg of problems plaguing Malaysia.