Friday, September 12, 2008

speaking in public

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Good morning to Miss Nurzihan and to all.

If I were a philosophical extremist, I would hand pick several hundreds of people of the best features and attributes and keep them in an underground safe place. Then I will have everything blown up and destroyed to dust. I will build up everything from scratch with the utmost proper planning. But as we have learned through history, even when Noah brought onto his arc with him the believers, whom can be considered as a morally elite group at that time, while God drowned everyone else, the troubles of the world did not end, but instead it was reborn and carried forward to this day. Being an extremist is not the ultimate answer. That is why we humans have been scratching our heads figuring out how to manage all this madness.

So, I am standing here in front of you today with my proposal I made from a lot of head-scratching.

If I were prime minister...I would opt to practice secularism with a twist. What is secularism you ask? It is a principle of promoting secular ideas or values. I would adapt the secular ideology but with significant differences from an overall secular country to best suit Malaysia.

A secular state is a state or country that is officially neutral in matters of religion, neither supporting nor opposing any particular religious beliefs or practices. A secular state also treats all its citizens equally regardless of religion, and does not give preferential treatment for a citizen from a particular religion over other religions. Most often it has no state religion or equivalent. If there is a state religion, this should have only a symbolic meaning, not affecting the ordinary life of its citizens, and especially not making any distinction based on some one's religion.

It is also described to be a state that prevents religion from interfering with state affairs, and prevents religion from controlling government or exercising political power. Laws protect each individual including religious minorities from discrimination on the basis of religion.

If I were prime minister, we will have religious bodies for each faith to act as an advisory and consultancy institution for the parliament when it comes to matters regarding the respective faiths. I will have religious laws that concern only those within a particular faith and make these laws strong enough for that particular religion's religious officials to observe the believers' morals. Furthermore, I would have the parliament set up inter-faith laws, such that even atheists can not disrupt the inter-faith harmony without being brought up to the inter-faith court. I would have also a general religious court, where all religious matters of any faith will be dealt with, with the judges being well trained in their respective faith's laws, as for the inter-faith court, religious conversions fall under it including the changing on identification card details, inheritance policies and management of the dead. With the inter-faith court comes a body to deal with complications regarding conversions and to advise the parliament on matters concerning the inter-faith harmony i.e forming of laws.

Other than that, if I were prime minister, I would recognize all the potential art we have budding in this nation. This includes music, cinematography, various forms of visual art and more other categories you would have in an art community. If you really open your eyes to all this, you will see that we have the tools and we have the talents. What we do not have is the support from the government. If the government were to give funding and support to these people, there is great potential for us to be recognized as a country for its creative juices. We can have local stations air a significant amount of local acts, pushing foreign acts to second in priority. We already have certain rules governing the media, so we have the means to achieve this at minimal cost. In addition to that, airing more local acts would keep the royalty money flowing internally and that in turn would help our economy. While it is accepted that art should not be forced to a certain direction, the government should give a hand in exposure. Since we would set quotas on our broadcast stations, we can utilize this to support the local art scene by giving advertising discounts for art-related events.

As for the development of the country, in short, if I were prime minister, I would improve the planning of cities. If you have noticed we have really bad city planning. Everything is topsy-turvy. Several general amenities are not well kept or not in existence at all in some places. Which is a big turn-off for foreigners. How are we to generate foreign investors in this condition? Take Kuala Lumpur for instance, it was not formed with much planning in mind, but it can be fixed with careful planning. This is one way to give jobs to those many unemployed graduates! We will not go around destroying buildings which is not in the right spot, we would instead try to plan around it. Improve anything that needs improving, build what needs to be built and destroy things that serve no purpose but shall do so in caution so that buildings that hold a significant heritage value will be preserved. We have so few of those heritage buildings, it is important that we save them for the future generation to have as a symbol that there was a time when buildings did not look like a glass tube in the sky. A special branch would be formed under all the city hall to identify, restore and preserve historical areas and buildings. This in turn can be used as recreational and tourism purposes. I hope to see each town have their own historical spot(s) so that no matter where one goes in this country there is always an interesting place to visit. However, attention on preserving the past shall not affect the focus on the future. We shall build from our historical foundations and sprint forward to compete in the global economy. While the heritage sites will boost the tourism economy we will also continue with industrial and business developments. We will see to it that we do not waste taxpayers money by initiating more development corridors. Instead we will focus on further improving the existing ones to gain investors confidence and to expand these corridors if necessary. This will not only elevate the nation's economy, it also creates more jobs for the people.

I have more plans for this nation of ours if I were prime minister, but let me just stop here and end with a note of hope.

Malaysians, as a nation, need to know that nation building is their responsibility and that they are empowered through national policy formulated and approved in Parliament to do this. The laws of this nation cannot be amended or changed without a regard for its citizens. They also need to know support and resources are offered equitably to all Malaysians from the treasury of Malaysia's wealth. Then all Malaysians will take ownership and be accountable for rise or fall of this nation.

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had to give a speech on "if i were president..."

15% marks!

you know i had full attention when i was giving my speech. haha

it was prolly cause they were trying to figure out what i was talking about.

later when i was done. Miss Z asked me how old i was and i said 21.

she replied "i think your speech was a bit too mature for the class" "i understood and liked it though~"

LOL!!

(fyi: most of my class are 18 year olds)

come on~

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