For the first time in my life, I don't really feel like celebrating our Merdeka (Independence) Day.

If independence for a country is similar to a human reaching adulthood, moving out from the comfort of his parents' house and starting his own life, then I think the country has failed miserably.

We have a government in constant denial, bringing out beautiful and catchy but meaningless slogan after slogan, making promise after promise, but failing to fulfill many of them.

All these so called 'transformation' plans are merely feel good covers for our BN government to mislead us into thinking that the government is doing a good job.

Numbers and statistics were made up to show jobs well done. However, in actual fact there were no long term plans or monitoring system on how to achieve any of them.

Take for example the slogan of 1Malaysia.

After fifty five years, Malays are still Malays (or bumiputera), Chinese are still Chinese and Indians are still Indians.

We all hold the citizenship of this once great country. Unfortunately if we still have to tag ourselves based on our ethnicity after so many years, I really don't have any idea what 1Malaysia means.

Then we have the corruption problem.

MACC was set up promising to weed out the black sheep, but it turns out it is just a front for the BN government to enhance their image without actually doing the dirty work.

Supposedly operating better rather than the ACA, we found out no matter what acronyms the government use, it does not make a difference.

The mysterious death of Teoh Beng Hock while under the custody of MACC because of some alleged misuse of funds to purchase, incidentally, national flags for the national day celebration, led to his tragic death. No wrongdoing was found.

So we set up RCI to investigate further. Eventually the result was the same, no guilty party found.

Notice how RCIs are popping up left and right nowadays?

The Teoh Beng Hock case, police brutality towards civilians during Bersih 3.0 rally, and the illegal migrants in Sabah, are all under the RCI review, just to name a few.

Why do we need all these RCIs? Is our judiciary system so flawed that we can't trust it anymore?

If the system is fair and just, no RCI will be required. It is in my opinion it is a show of no confidence in our judiciary system, which is unable to come to independent conclusions without the influence of ruling parties.

To be fair, we do catch a few big fish along the way. The former Selangor Menteri Besar and those involved in the PKFZ cases are some of them.

However, we all know how the cases will end up as usual, with probably just a slap of the wrist for the wrongdoers and that will be it. Meanwhile, the hard earned taxpayers' money goes down the drain to cover the losses especially for PKFZ.

When bringing up the PKFZ scandal, inevitably we have to look at other failed government run businesses.

MAS, Proton and now defunct Perwaja Steel are some of the current or once big name government owned entities that needed constant bail outs. We pump billions of ringgits yet there is no guarantee that they will be profitable.

The funny thing is when government has to run businesses in the real world, we usually don't measure up.

So the solution is privatise them all. But do these privatisations actually benefit the citizens in general?

We have privatised highways that charges exorbitant rates comparing to our meagre income, water companies that constantly threatens us, and LRT contracts awarded to some dubious contractors without any track record.

Worst of them all is of course the NFC case where government funds were blatantly misused for inappropriate dealings akin to daylight robbery in my opinion.

All these privatisation projects were set up just to benefit a few cronies, spending billions of taxpayers' money, at the end still the citizens are left holding the short end of the stick for sure.

Even our education system is not spared.

Flip flopping between teaching in English or Malay for Science and Math, or having to pass History in order to get the SPM, these are the things our education minister talk about, instead of seriously looking at our education system that is so outdated that most of our graduates can hardly land any job after graduation.

The current push for more private Chinese secondary schools is a clear sign that the Malaysian Chinese are losing their faith in the education system. They would rather pay to get better education than sending their kids to national schools where they are not learning anything.

Finally there is the crime issue.

Thugs run rampant and burglars commit murders just for some small change. But our police say it's all a matter of perception. Only when things really got out of hand do we realise that the government has never really seriously looked into improving policing the country since our independence, fifty five years ago.

So, what is there to celebrate?

After fifty five years, the country instead of moving forward, it has regressed. It has regressed to the point that if we are not careful, it will fall into anarchy and lawlessness. Then it will be too late.

Janji Ditepati? (Promises kept) Rakyat diutamakan (People first)?

Remember the tale ‘The Emperor's new clothes' that we read when we were kids? That's the way our government is running the country, but it wants us to believe otherwise, just like the emperor in the tale.

It is time to point out the emperor is not wearing any clothes and it's time to get real to save our country.

Happy Merdeka Day!