Sept 16 A Public Holiday?

Anwar Ibrahim turned on the pressure on Barisan Nasional with his Putrajaya crusade by announcing that Pakatan Rakyat-held states plan to observe the annual Malaysia Day on Sept 16 a public holiday and celebrate the day like their East Malaysian counterparts.

The opposition leader said the public holiday would strengthen the solidarity between Malaysians in the Peninsular and those in Sabah and Sarawak.

While Aug 31 signifies then Peninsular Malaya’s freedom from British colonial masters, he pointed out that the Malaysia Day marks the birth of this country with the merger of Malaya with Sabah and Sarawak.

Anwar said, “We will show that no one would be sidelined, isolated or discriminated under Pakatan Rakyat rule,” the PKR de facto leader told some 2,000 people at the Seberang Jaya agricultural expo site, Penang.

He later said that he would bring the Sept 16 public holiday proposal to Pakatan-held states.

However, when Pakatan takes over the federal government, the coalition plans to make Sept 16 a national holiday, but this will only take place next year.

Anwar has set Sept 16 as the dateline for him to take over the federal government with a help from more than 30 defecting BN parliamentarians, especially from Sabah and Sarawak.

Currently, BN now has 140 MPs against Pakatan’s 81 MPs.

Anwar announcement on the unprecedented Malaysia Day celebrations in the Peninsular is likely to further undermine the credibility of BN federal government and lure East Malaysian MPs to hop over to Pakatan Rakyat. The announcement expressly implied that the federal government had ignored and neglected the importance of Sabah and Sarawak since states in the Peninsular do not mark the day with a public holiday.

This has exposed the deeply-rooted grouses among Sabahans and Sarawakians of “being treated like stepchildren in the nation-building process by BN”.

Anwar is certainly capitalising on it to show to East Malaysian political leaders that a Pakatan federal government would treat them equally.

The way forward now is for Anwar to be the next Prime Minister to realise the Malaysian dream of a just Malaysia, without recourse to racial politics, where every Malaysian citizen, irrespective of race or religion is treated equally under the Malaysian sun.

(Adapted from source: Malaysiakini)