Sometimes I wonder whether our education system has gone so rotten that our (meaning Malaysian) knowledge of English has gone to the dogs. Writers after writers have not addressed what I wrote about. They did not think before they write; they just felt and then tried to 'hantam' me.

I wrote to Malaysiakini to try and stop this annual whining among East Malaysians about the date of independence and nationhood. The operative phrase I use throughout my dissertation was "substance over form".

Yes, the form of the merger of certain British territories in the Far East was like what many thought was a negotiation between equals. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Singapore was a desperado case where Lee Kuan Yew's PAP was in danger of being wiped out. Internal split plus two consecutive losses in by-elections in Hong Lim and Anson (won by Ong Eng Guan and David Marshall) saw LKY practically begging Tunku to come to his rescue. The Tunku's May 1961 speech at the Press Club in Singapore was actually a British-inspired

thingee and LKY grasped tightly and said "Hallelujah!"

LKY's Singapore, a British Crown Colony an equal? Come off it! Tunku was arm-twisted to take Singapore under its wings; otherwise the communist forces were just too great for LKY and the PAP to handle.

Are North Borneo and Sarawak, the British colonies whose national anthem was 'God Save the Queen', considered as an equal to the Federation of Malaya. Come on, what are you smoking?

But the British had their ways. They arm-twisted Tunku and his Alliance to "take over" the three other British colonies on the promises of military protection. The British were astute people who thus ensured that their commercial possessions (like all the big plantation groups, the large tin minesand) were vested in friendly hands. (Brunei is yet another subject which I will omit so as not to make this subject even more convoluted)

So Tunku 'cho-hay' (Chinese for play-act) for the face of the North Borneons and Sarawakians and today, the latter-day people are so gullible and simple-minded as to believe that their leaders then were negotiating as equals. Come on. Stop smoking whatever you are smoking and face the substance of the truth. How can the leaders of colonial possessions be treated as equals to the prime minister of an independent nation and member of the United Nations?

And the thingee with the dates. You all must be sleeping. All the necessary legislations in the British House of Commons, the Malaysian Parliament, the Singapore Legislative Assembly, the North Borneo and Sarawak whatever were worded so as to effect Malaysia co-terminusly on Aug 31, 1963.

Sukarno's strident charges of "neo-colonialism" had to be answered and U Thant (then the UN secretary-general) had sent a task force to "ascertain the wishes of the people of North Borneo and Sarawak" (Singapore people having made their intentions clear through a referendum).

Alas, they could not get their work done in time and the whole shebang had to be postponed to Sept 16, 1963. A well-meant move to ensure we all celebrate national day on Aug 31 went awry and astray, and certain people in Sabah and Sarawak use this to bolster their desperate position that North Borneo and Sarawak negotiated with the Federation of Malaya as independent states and equals. Carry on, take another puff of whatever you are smoking

Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak were British colonies rescued from imperialism by Tunku (so please give thanks to him as a liberator) and each of the three was absorbed as additional states to the 11 already in place as the Federation of Malaya.

Anyone who still sees otherwise, carry on smoking whatever you are smoking and delude yourself.