Our constitution is AWESOME, our forefathers COOL!

Anas Zubedy 

Our Merdeka Constitution is awesome - inclusive, moderate, accommodating, compassionate, and yet pragmatic.

It is our social contract. It is our promise to live together orderly, happily, and with empathy. Our Constitution is the glue that keeps us together - a society of diverse cultural, historical, geographical and religious backgrounds. It serves as our footing as well as our compass.

Our Constitution was prepared and written by learned forefathers who breathed into it the spirit of inclusiveness, moderation, accommodation, and compassion. Choosing to be pragmatic - balancing idealism with realism and rejecting absolutism: focusing on what will work and how to make things happen. It does not try to be perfect but seeks to be functional.

It is these foundations set by our Merdeka Constitution that we have endured the clefts of race and religious politics and challenges to many political and economic crises. The Merdeka Constitution believes that in this land there is a place for everyone and each has a stake. Everyone must get something and no one must get everything. Both the rich and the poor are safely guarded.

It recognises that Malaya was historically the land of the Malays yet the Malay-Muslim features are balanced with provisions for a multi-racial and multi-religious society. Secularism and Religion co-exist preserving the best of religious, moral, and cultural traditions while staying open to everything new. It sets our nation a way to blend our past, present, and our future.

Such a well-thought social contract must have demanded our forefathers to bring out the best in them; inclusiveness, courage, sacrifice, moderation, compromises, and the fearlessness to say no to the radicals within their own group. We need to do the same.

Let us go back to basics. Let us go back to The Spirit of the Merdeka Constitution.