COMMENT | We were kampung kids, relatively poor but naively happy with our lot. We absorbed each other’s social expressions and traits. We were cultural hybrids. Race, religion and class didn’t matter – until May 1969 when we lost our innocence.

The kampung kinship I knew may still exist today. Drive through the old country, drop by the kedai, graze at the medan selera, you’ll see we get along very well indeed.

But burrow deeper, you’d feel a vacuum in how we understand our respective life priorities and the means to achieve our goals.

The sense that all is not well lingers as politicians, past and present, continue to divide and spawn demagoguery with impunity.

Such is our weakened kinship that the 16th Yang Di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah (above) feels apprehensive Malaysians will ever gather as one people, at least not during his five-year term...