THE last day of the year on the Gregorian calendar carries with it a universal symbolic meaning.

It does not merely signify a break in external objective linear time, marking off the end of one solar year and the beginning of another. In the internal river of existence of man, it is also a grave psychological milestone, a reflective closure of what has been, pregnant with the possibilities of what is yet to come.

The media will be saturated with such reflective insights on that year that was, the most important comic-tragedies that have happened on the world stage and in the nation, the ten personalities of the year in various fields, and a peek into the crystal ball to speculate on what would happen in the next 12 months.

On the personal level, this day is also a pass-over of sort, and a transition from the past to the future in a living process of inner evolution and metamorphosis. There lies the significance of New Year resolutions, to mark one's private determination at self-renewal.

By now, mature people would have known that New Year resolutions are seldom fulfilled. They would be forgotten a week into the new year. Submerged in the daily survival for existence, the tedium of running around in a vicious circle of conforming to the dictate of others soon corrodes that glimmer of personal freedom to choose possibilities.

More often than not, the past has crept stealthily upon us, like the biblical thief in the night, and so one's stultifying deadening life continues with rigid boredom, like an old scratching gramophone record.

Mass hysteria

That would be in the future. Meanwhile, on the eve of a New Year, the present is celebrated with a rite of passage. What with globalised digital television coverage, the whole world is trying to emulate the welcoming of any New Year at Times Square in New York, replete with the massive hysterical countdown.

In Malaysia, the mass hysteria will be aplenty around the Bukit Bintang area in Kuala Lumpur. The entire block will be awash with young people mostly. Traffic would have been closed in the late afternoon. By evening, the wide and empty roadways will be fully packed with scarcely elbow room to spare.

Armed with all kinds of NYE paraphernalia for merry making, such as noise makers, party hats, crackers, and hand-held blinking lights, the revellers will immerse themselves in the sound and fury of a jam-packed street party until the small hours of the morning.

There would be the usual jostling, mutual teasing, and the odd commotions when some silly drunken souls cause a commotion and have to be removed by the policemen on duty.

When the magic mid-night hour approaches, the collective mood of the unruly mob reaches a crescendo. Somebody at the loud speaker will start to alert the crowd to the dying seconds of the diminishing year. Then from tens of thousands of young Malaysian throats, a roar will burst out the countdown: "five, four, three, two, and one!" This would be followed by a loud cheer rising to the KL sky, a burst of fire-crackers and the booming of fireworks overhead.

The scene of uninhibited excitement is repeated many times over in restaurants and night-spots all over the city. These dinning and entertainment outlets charge an exorbitant fee for people to participate in the New Year festivities. Only the well-wheeled Yuppies in KL can fork out what the working class would consider a fortune to dine in style, drink themselves silly, dance to deafening music until they drop, and shout themselves hoarse.

Reality kicks in

All these revellers will disperse and return home somehow, leaving tons of garbage, and perhaps a piece of wreckage or two from drunken driving. They will wake up late on New Year day, with a giant headache and a big hole in their pocket no doubt. Fortunately for them, the two working days following the New Year would still be public holidays. How we Malaysians love our abundance of public holidays!

Like all good things in life, this series of year-end holidays too must end.

Reality check quickly kicks in at the beginning of the new year of 2007, as motorists curse beneath their breath and pay for higher toll rates that dot the landscape around the Klang Valley. Meanwhile, the potholes remain forever unrepaired, while new roads are dug up again and again by unknown parties laying unknown cables.

As the new school year begins, the traffic hell on KL roads is back with a vengeance. Over a million vehicles again nudge one another bumper to bumper in and out of this suffocating city.

The new KL mayor, whose name has escaped everyone's tattered attention, has proposed charging a levy for cars entering the city centre at peak hours, in the hope that motorists will turn to car-pooling or the public transport system instead. We know that it will probably not work. Car-pooling will require an improbable reorientation of space and time on the part of an entire population of city dwellers. The public transport system is not public-friendly, transports badly, and is certainly not systematic.

Many will prefer the new KL mayor to clean up corruption in his own house, and improve efficiency. But new brooms do not always sweep clean, so we will not indulge in wishful thinking. In any case, mayors are completely irrelevant to the life of common folk like you and me.

What is relevant in a negative manner is the prospect of another year of shrinking pocket and rising inflation. We know instinctively that something is seriously wrong with the state of our economy, despite all sorts of optimistic forecasts of growth and inflation.

Listed corporations like banks and utility companies may be reporting huge profits, but the small and medium enterprises are groaning under the yoke of tight credit control and spiralling costs. Small businesses in the retail and service sectors are probably the worst hit. Thanks to the few millions of legal and illegal migrant workers, business can still keep the cost down somewhat, even if these 'aliens' are under constant harassment by the 'authorities' and subject to exploitation by their agents and their employers.

PM needs extra time

I get this feeling that the long suffering 'masses' in the new year of 2007 harbour their seething rage and festering resentment in the silence of their heart in typically Malaysian fashion. They are waiting for an opening to let loose their explosive steam of unhappiness. That will come in the next general election.

The PM must have been receiving very negative reports from those people in the Special Branch. They are the next best thing to a credible public opinion poll in gauging the mood on the street. Unfortunately, their usually accurate information on the pulse of the nation is only available to the top political leadership.

That is why the PM has announced that there will be no general election in 2007. He will need time to cheer up Malaysians with this Visit Malaysia Year business, and hope that the billions of public funds poured into the private sector for projects under the 9th Malaysian Plan will bear fruit to appease the twin beasts of greed and envy.

If the ruling coalition suffers significant losses at the poll, and loses their two-third majority in what is the worst case scenario, then the PM will be in trouble from his own party. His legitimacy as the top gun in Umno, and therefore in the BN government, will be hugely compromised. It would certainly give his detractors within Umno plenty of ammunition, reminding one of the fall of our nation's first PM after 1969.

Will the stability of the country be adversely affected in the event of big losses by the ruling coalition?

I seriously do not think so, even if politicians from the BN would go all out to create that kind of perception. The conditions in 2007 and beyond would be vastly different from that in 1969. All those young and not-so-young Malaysians born after 1969 have no personal memory of those early dark days in our nation's history. The Malay community has grown and has become very stratified. There are now far more political and religious variables within the Malay community than the homogeneity that existed in the 60s.

I am being a party pooper of course, speculating far into the future in my usual morose fashion. It has been a challenging journey so far, trying my best to be a good Malaysian citizen from the fringes of the political mainstream.

I know from long experience that the new year will probably be business as usual. Ours is a conservative society and change will largely be evolutionary at a snail pace. Of all the virtues in life, patience must rate as one of the highest. That is the wisdom of old age speaking.

On New Year's Eve, I think I will stay in with a book.

Happy New Year! May you tighten your belt and be prosperous!