Kuala Lampur, Aug. 29 -- Every Merdeka and Malaysia Day, many in my and the older generation look back with pride at the founders of our nation. But August 31 and September 16 must be more than annual remembrances of 1957 and 1963. They should be moments when we ask ourselves a harder question: what kind of Malaysia do we want to build?

Nearly seven decades after Merdeka, and six decades after Malaysia Day, our nation - with her 34-million population - has become an industrialised, trading nation, a major part of global semiconductor supply chains, with millions of professionals. DOSM estimates that Malaysia had almost six million university graduates in 2024. Graduate unemployment had fallen to around 3.2 per cent.

Our forefathers buil...