kami warga negara Singapura
sebagai rakyat yang bersatu padu
tidak kira apa bangsa, bahasa, atau ugama
berikrar untuk membina suata masyarakat yang demokratik
berdasarkan kepada keadilan dan persamaan
untuk mencapai kebahagian, kemakmuran, dan kemajuan bagi negara kami

I’m Chinese, not Malay. But does it matter? I am Singaporean, and despite the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies which I stand against, this is my country, and this is my pledge. Our pledge. Ikrar kita. For a reason unbeknownst to even myself, I have preferred to recite the pledge in its Malay form for a couple of years already. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Perhaps it’s the way my favourite phrase in the pledge invokes a strong wave of emotion – “kepada keadilan dan persamaan” (based on justice and equality). Maybe it’s the powerful visions of hope it contains – a hope that the nation we live in can yet be so much better. I’m no constitutional law expert, but I know what my pledge means, and I believe in it.

I wasn’t surprised then to find out that I’m not the only one who views the pledge as more than the words of a mind-numbing ritual conducted daily in public schools across the country.

The Singapore of our National Pledge ( theonlinecitizen.com )

… As the ranks of patriotic Singaporeans who share these ideals swell, the fear will fade, as it is beginning to. All that is missing now, readers, is you. Do you share that vision?

If you do, then I promise you, surely change will come. Change will come from those citizens of our country who put their hands to their chest and mean every word of our National Pledge, not from those who deride it as impractical aspiration.

Change will come despite those who deride the impracticality of a “democratic society, based on justice and equality”. The day has come, a line has been drawn in the sand, between those who believe in living Rajaratnam’s vision, and the men who see it as empty rhetoric…

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