Malaysian ABC = Anwar, Bala and Chua

The typical Ali, Bala and Chong are a poor abandoned lot indeed. And we are not talking of just the poor rural Chinese or Indians.

For all races in modern Malaysia, there are fewer and fewer opportunity to get ahead. If you are in business, business opportunities can be found only at the margins. In the old days, one can find opportunity in mining, timber, rubber or construction but now they are run by conglomerates or given to cronies.

Well-paying jobs are becoming rare in the factories because of competition from China. Elsewhere they require higher and higher qualifications and skills. On the other hand, the quality of education appears to be deteriorating. Government schools are of poor quality and the same can be said for higher education. So much for affirmative action when the prize is sub-standard education. Even as parents flock to send their children to Chinese medium schools, they too are not moving ahead with the times - lets just say the education is not the equal of what children get in Singapore or in Australia. Even then I hear that in smaller towns children drop out of school because they simply lose hope in the value of education. One cannot really blame them for thinking that when they see parents leave their jobs in the bank to be hawkers to earn more money. And good teachers stop teaching to open tuition centers because they need to make more money.

For the middle class, the road ahead just gets steeper and steeper. Malaysia is becoming a 2-tier society; there are 2 standards to almost everything one that is for everyone and the other you pay for. Roads, schools, hospitals, sports facilities, public transport, law and order, media etc. there is one set for the public at large (which is getting worse and worse and trending towards 3rd world level) or the one you pay good money for (which is trending towards first world).

If you are middle class and wanting to maintain your living standards, you pay and pay. First its the car (because the public transport is unacceptable quality), then its private schools, private hospitals, universities, social security/retirement or even to use sports facilities or a swimming pool - all of which you need to pay because the government version is in shambles - toll roads (partly because public roads have been taken away and given to cronies to toll), gated communities (because security outside is in shambles), even to watch TV you need to buy Astro . So the middle class see more and more of their quality of life taken away and turned into something that they have to pay for, and usually that means paying some cronies.

It saddens me to see many middle class (often, Chinese) parents who were managers and professionals but for whom the total sum of their entire life's savings went to pay for higher education for their children (plus a house if lucky). And then those same children now work twice as many hours only to (effectively) make less money their parents once did because they need to spend so much more just to stay alive. I wonder what is the real meaning of life in modern M'sia and if that's much of a life. And we are talking about the lucky ones. Almost everyone I know has an exit plan - Australia, Singapore, Canada, USA or New Zealand.

You would agree something is not right. Perhaps even more than racial politics, loss of civil rights and crony capitalism, the past 25 years has debased the whole notion of the meaning of life in Malaysia. That is the real and everyday tragedy of corruption.

The political system is just another symptom of how Malaysia is missing so much of the sense of common purpose and common decency. Its the comfortable, forgiving and friendly Malaysia where there was a sense of principle, humour, fairness and community.

So while we are rivetted with Anwar, Bala and Chua for good reasons, the level of debate can - and need to be - elevated to a higher level. One wonders who has the moral authority to unite the people provide leadership to fix what really matters.