by Choh Wah Ye

There is no doubt that our BN government is good at coming up with catchy slogans.

From ‘1Malaysia’, ‘Rakyat Diutamakan’ (People First), ‘Bersih. Cekap. Amanah’ (Clean, Efficient and Trustworthy), to countless beautiful slogans over the years that painted rosy pictures of the country.

Unfortunately many of these slogans are missing the mark.

From recent news, looks like another new slogan ‘Endless Possibilities’ will be hitting the airwaves, TV and newspapers soon.

It is most likely the slogan is to be accompanied with some easy to follow sing-along tunes on TV, with our Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak waving little flags and backed up by his cabinet ministers, lip-syncing to the tune.

We have seen that all too often, like reruns of some old Cantonese TV series.

However, while it is a good idea to have these slogans, but without action to justify them, they just wouldn’t cut it. What good are the slogans then?

With so many major issues like corruption, cronyism, national debt, high crime rate, low pay, high inflation, rising housing prices, sensitive race relations, and education woes, just to name a few, most rakyat would rather see real action in tackling these problems instead of seeing another slogan.

In other words, action speaks louder than words. Nothing gets done no matter how beautiful the slogan is, if there is no action.

Unfortunately, our BN government seems to miss the point. They dance around all these problems, sweeping them under the rug, and bombard us with ads and slogans to paint us a false picture of how great the country is doing.

We are living through the problems. We know how the country is doing.

We know when we walk down the street, it is not safe. We know our meagre salary and rising house price will soon deny us owning a home. We know our kids can’t get jobs after graduating from local colleges.

We know major projects are still awarded without transparency. We worry our country will go bankrupt soon due to poor management. We know some racists are making issues to segregate the people further.

None of these problems can be solved with slogans alone, we need real action. We need long-term plans to make the country prosper and move forward.

Every second or minute we delay in doing something about the problems, they get worse, just like any untreated disease. At the end, they become so unmanagable we may lose it all.

Yes, give us the beautiful slogans, but at the same time, back it up with real action. No actions, no results, it’s as simple as that.

* The views expressed in this article are the personal opinion of the columnist and this article first appeared in Malaysiakini