The farce that is the BN's power-sharing system

TALKING ALONE WOULD NOT SOLVE ANYTHING. CHANGE THE PRESENT 'UNCARING & CORRUPT' BARISAN NASIONAL GOVERNMENT, THEN YOU CAN SEE A DIFFERENCE. THIS IS IN YOUR HANDS - BE UNITED AND VOTE FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT.

Kenny Gan, Malaysia Chronicle

I cannot recall when the law requiring developers to give 7%-10% discount for houses to bumiputra purchasers irrespective of financial status was implemented. It has been there as long as I can remember and may pre-date Mahathir’s ascension to prime minister.

But the concept of streaming bumiputra and non-bumiputra students into matriculation and STPM was certainly implemented during Mahathir’s time. With this ruling non-Malays were forced to take a longer and more difficult path to public universities save for a token 10% given the opportunity to do matriculation.

During Mahathir’s reign no new Chinese and Tamil schools were allowed to be built despite the expanding population. If a new Chinese school was built one had to close down. This so-called relocation was widely trumped by MCA as a grand achievement that they had managed to wrangle a bigger Chinese school from the authorities. During this period places in public universities for non-Malays were very limited and private colleges had yet to exist so many parents disadvantaged by race scrimped and save to send their children to overseas universities. A proposal by Chinese businessmen to build a privately funded Merdeka University to overcome the shortage was vehemently disallowed. As recently as before the 2008 general election scholarships were allocated between bumiputra and non-bumiputra in a 90%:10% ratio.

How did these blatantly racist policies come about? Cheaper houses based on race as the sole criteria smacks of apartheid and denying fair educational opportunities to the minority citizens is shameful and damaging to the nation. They are probably illegal under the Constitution which promises fair treatment for all races save that reasonable allocation be made for Malays in the civil service, university places and scholarships.

One should note that during the implementation of these racist policies BN’s hold on Malaysia was at its strongest while the opposition was weak and fragmented. But didn’t the Chinese and Indians have their own parties to protect their rights in a race based political system? What has happened to their watch that such unfair policies could be pushed through without as much as a whimper of protest?

But the component parties had become subservient to Umno. A towering example of how useless they had become surfaced during Abdullah Badawi’s first term which incidentally represented the best ever electoral performance of BN with unprecedented numbers of MCA, MIC and Gerakan representatives elected to Parliament. All the non-Malay Ministers wanted to submit a collective memo to the prime minister to respectfully request that Umno tone down its racial rhetoric which was hurting their parties’ standing. When Umno Youth learned of this it launched a verbal assault and the memo was promptly withdrawn.

Notwithstanding the fact that sending a pleading memo to one’s own colleagues in government shows up painfully that they are not really part of the government, this incident serves to underscore how powerless MCA, MIC and Gerakan are when their leaders could be bullied into submission by Umno’s youth wing. To drive home the point further an MIC MP who expressed disappointment in parliament over the rough treatment meted out to Hindraf was forced to apologize and withdraw his remarks by his own party under dire threats of disciplinary action.

Hence we come to the inescapable conclusion that representation does not mean power sharing. Power sharing had become a farce under the BN system. The component parties were castrated despite their numbers in Parliament and the appointment of their leaders to various less important Ministries. They had become a rubber stamp for Umno and their impotence gave Umno a free hand to institute racist policies which sideline their communities. As a twist to the phony line that a vote for DAP is a vote for PAS, a vote for MCA, MIC or Gerakan is truly a vote for Umno.

Fast forward to the post 2008 general election we can see that Umno would not dare to push through any blatantly racist policies now due to a strong opposition in parliament and their fear of losing minority votes to a united opposition. What is keeping Umno in check is not the castrated component parties but the rise of Pakatan Rakyat.

There are fewer elected representatives from MCA, MIC and Gerakan in parliament or state assemblies now but lo and behold, the treatment of minority races has improved. New Chinese and Tamil schools are allowed to be built and they are given grants left and right, the ratio of scholarships for minority races has been increased and study loans for non-Malays are easier to obtain. New non-Muslim places of worship which were previously almost impossible to get approval are now permitted. Wonder of wonders, a Chinese senior citizen friend of mine even managed to get a taxi license. Of course there is still a long way to go with respect to fair treatment of all races but it is clear that the electoral success of Chinese and Indian race based parties in BN has nothing to do with it.

BN’s power sharing farce is the inevitable result of the structural flaws of a race based coalition. A coalition of race based parties is a delicate balancing act in which the strong must limit its strength in order not to appear to be too dominant. When voters see that the parties which represent their ethnic groups have been neutered they will desert the coalition in droves. But Umno has lost the art of maintaining this delicate balance after the real power sharing days of Tunku Abdul Rahman. As of now we still hear of Umno warlords declaring that the solution to their electoral woes is to strengthen Umno, blissfully unaware that Umno’s strength is the problem.

But Umno has never been strong enough to rule alone and needs the support of the minority races including the natives in Sabah and Sarawak to maintain its power. Ironically it was the minority races which Umno marginalized which has kept it in power for so long. But why did the minority races support BN for so long despite the unfair treatment?

The answer is that racial and religious fears were played up and exploited in the Peninsula to secure their voting loyalty. At every election the specter of May 13 would be trotted out and PAS was branded as extreme Islamists. Now that these fears have subsided as they do not cut any ice with the younger generation, Umno has a big headache on its hands.

The way ahead is not the propagation of race based parties but the rise of multi-racial parties which have a national agenda instead of an outdated racial agenda. Every race for itself does not work in a multi-racial country like Malaysia and only serves to retard the nation’s progress.

The system of race based parties rewards the strong and penalizes the weak. Not unexpectedly the Indians have largely fallen behind the mainstream as a casualty of race based politics. Ironically Indian based groups like Hindraf and Human Rights Party unwittingly serve to propagate the very system which has disadvantaged them by sticking to a rabidly racial agenda .