This haze has got on our final nerve after eighteen years of excuses by an irresponsible nation which has caused its neighbouring countries to suffer.
Like a Swiss clock in precision, we can predict every year when the haze would come. It is like a fixed season in our calender year. It has turned from haze to smog to smoke.
To date the "smoke" from one member country has reached four others of the original 5 nations that formed ASEAN forty eight years ago in Bangkok.
Among the purpose of the formation of this most successful Union in the developing world was to cooperate in the economic, educational, cultural, technical and social fields.
One of the five signatories on the two page document was that of the late Tun Abdul Razak, father of the current Prime Minister of Malaysia whose country holds the Chair of ASEAN for this year.
The Founding Fathers Of Asean
Though it may not have been specifically mentioned in the original document known as the "ASEAN Declaration" but what has today most affected us is in the environment and health sector followed by the economic and education fields.
What we experience as the worst transgression on our environment has caused the people's health to suffer, and being a nation that heavily subsidises its Rakyat in that aspect, the nationwide increase in the clinics and hospital patients will definitely affect our balances.
Vapored By Thy Neighbour
Schools have had to be closed for many days in several spells affecting the flow of tutorials as the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) has averaged well above 150 for the past six weeks.
Needless to say that businesses have taken hard hits, flight schedules have been severely messed up, and sports and tourism events have been cancelled accumulatively totalling billions of ringgit to date.
The country needs to tabulate the total and continual losses incurred caused by this haze and have it published on a monthly basis so that even though we can't bill the profiting culprits for our losses, we can damn well substantiate a serious cause to effect some form of action towards them.
Indeed if those in Indonesia who are guilty of the crime are Malaysians either in entity or otherwise, put them behind bars, lash and / or even execute them in accordance to the law, but don't give them leniency just to use them as an excuse for the locals to commit the bigger crime.
It is time the affected senior member countries of ASEAN present their strongest argument to the main body for affirmative action to be taken against Indonesia for their careless attitude towards the wellbeing of their own people and most importantly their neighbouring countries.
Eighteen years is too long for us to be dancing to their same pathetic tune. Clearly international responsibility is not high on the list of importance to Indonesia and therefore diplomacy should no longer be the mode of engagement with them.
Just because their people are also victims of their own doing, it doesn't absolve the government from their crime towards their neighbours.
More importantly, it is a crime against humanity.
Besides at home, two million of their own people suffer along with us here. Even more for them as they have no off days due to the haze at constructions sites.
If there is one thing that our Prime Minister can champion that will bring all Malaysians together in his support, it is to successfully penalise the country that has given us respiratory problems for the last 18 years.
Leadership in ASEAN to afford citizens of this region fresh air to breathe and sunshine to bask in will prove his mettle among his fellow man.
Let this initiation be the last but most memorable act in his capacity representing Malaysia as chairman of ASEAN for 2015.
Malaysia Is The Worst Hit Among The Four Affected Nations And Being Chair-Country Of Asean, It Is Imperative That We Use All Necessary Resources To Implore Our Allies To Impose An Effective Sanction To Train This Perpetrator Nation On How To Be A Good Neighbour.
By All Means, Send Aid To Help Arrest The Situation If We Must, But Penalise Them Just The Same To Teach Them Some Manners In International Etiquette.
