Today, Malaysia, the nation we collectively embrace as the representative of our dreams and visions will marks its 50th anniversary of independence. In previous years, we read news of the government reprimanding various parties for their lack of patriotism and failure to fly the national flag.

Every year during the Merdeka month, nearly all the mainstream media publications bore the entire nation with repetitive, sweeping arguments of the ignorant youth of today on how they fail to appreciate the spirit of Merdeka and the struggle of the past leaders plus how they are not thankful to the independence that we now enjoy.

Without fail, we also witness the enforcement officials’ contribution to the festivities with a number of road blocks, raids and arrest of citizens and non-citizens for various reasons. And, most importantly, no Merdeka celebration is complete without a national controversy. There are no shortages of that this year.

At the right time, the mainstream media broke and exposed the story Namewee and his masterpiece ‘Negarakuku’. The video that made waves in YouTube.com many months ago suddenly made surprise August headlines here and kick-started another controversy for this year’s Merdeka celebration.

	Many controversies
	We are not ‘items’