We have nothing left. Nothing but our young to save us.Of this, I am sure!

Anwar Ibrahim will be remembered for awakening us to the need for Reformasi. Hindraf and Makkal Sakti awakened the Indians to political activism. Tun Mahathir will be remembered as the one who slew the mighty BN in PRU14. KIt Siang is the man who will always have our respect and admiration, for he did what he had to do to enable Tun Mahathir to slay the mighty BN. Mat Sabu, Hannah Yeoh, Yeo Bee Yin, Nurul Izzah, Rafizi and Invoke, Fahmi Fadzil, Syed Saddiq, Lim Guan Eng, Tony Pua, Anthony Loke and a few others were the jentera that made PRU14 a watershed for politics in Malaysia for they made the impossible, possible. BN can be defeated.

Now for PRU15, we need to somehow find a reason to believe that ‘ini kali’, and soon, there will be a coming together of all of the above ingredients to ensure that the Opposition will, once again, slay the mighty BN.

In the time since PRU14, there have only been failures. Seismic failures!

Our nation has failed its people. Our nation today is more corrupt, more inept, and in free fall towards hell. In the parlance of war, all is lost. We must sue for peace. To continue as we are now, will certainly invite total annihilation of whatever we still have left. But who do we sue for peace?

Maybe like Japan after Hiroshima and Germany after being obliterated by large-scale bombing and its defeat by Russia, surrender is the only option, and then from the ashes, in time, the new Japan and a resurging Germany rose again. But who do Malaysia and Malaysian surrender to in order that we can rise from the ashes of corruption, kleptocracy, arrogance, and hubris?

We in Malaysia, have no such choices. Our enemy is from within, not without. The rebuilding of our nation must be done by ourselves, not by anybody else. Everything that is needed to rebuild our nation must come from within us. Through our own efforts, from our own strengths. We need to find our own resources. We must depend on our own people for all that we need for that renewal. The frightening reality is that there is not much left within our nation, within our people, to do that. We really are now without the things that we must have if our nation and our people are to rise again from the ravages of corruption, kleptocracy, arrogance, and hubris that over six decades of BN rule has inflicted upon us.

We have nothing left but our young to do this.

Unprepared as they are to take the mantle of responsibility, we must ask them to do so. If they refuse, we have no one else. If they fail, our nation will fail. If they fail, our people fail. For the young, this is the time for leading, not for learning. Only the young have the resilience, the fiber to take on the challenge that awaits them in government and anywhere else they are needed….only the young are now our hope for the future.

What do we do with the old? I am 75. I am old. What do we do with me? Anwar is my age, what do we do with Anwar. What do we do with Kit Siang and with Tun Mahathir….all much older than me or Anwar? I will tell you what we old people must do. We the old will guide the young if asked to do so. And when asked to do so, we will help the young to do what they must. And we, the old, must know when to fade gracefully into the shadows of life when that is done.

It is now 7.30 am on the first Tuesday in March 2022. There is no time like the present for the young to take their rightful and needed place in the short history of our beloved nation. The old and the adults have failed to live up to their responsibility of making ready this nation of ours for the next generations of Malaysians. We have failed miserably and the reasons for our failure no longer matter, for there is no time for recriminations, no time for blaming, and certainly no time for punishment - though that time will certainly come sometime in the future.

The young must take the lead now. Lead with the enthusiasm and vim of the young. Lead with the fearlessness and vigor of the young who knows only that in the future there is hope, and in the future, there is the promise of great, and much-needed change and renewal. The young must lead because the young have yet to be tainted or burdened by corruption or arrogance. Lead because if they do not, we might as well, now, give up on PRU 15 and ready ourselves for more corruption, more kleptocracy, and surrender our future generations to the pathetic life that we are now already living. And believe me, I do not want the future generations to look back in anger at us for leaving them the nation that we are now living in.

Enough said.

Hussein Hamid

1st March 2022

Melbourne.