Stateless in Malaysia: How low can Najib go?

Sometimes, numbers do not matter. What's shocking is that Indian Malaysians are stateless in their own homeland. So let's not fight about whether there are 9,000 or 300,000 of them who are without personal identification documents.

And since Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has admitted, by default I must say, that there are thousands of stateless Indian Malaysians, he must mobilise a special team to ensure they are registered immediately.

Making promises to look into the problem cannot be accepted any more.

And this is more so when Indonesians hold Malaysian papers and are able to obtain them easily.

Indians came to this country a century ago to work the tin mines and rubber plantations and have contributed greatly to the building of Malaysia.

They were instrumental in the clearing of land for infrastructure. They helped establish rubber plantations, built roads, set up transmission lines and managed early Malayan railways, ports and airports.

Fast-forward to 2012 - thousands of Indian Malaysians are to take to the streets of Putrajaya tomorrow to demand government recognition for their inherent rights as citizens.

And all Najib did was to hold out an olive branch at MIC's annual general meeting over the weekend, and then insult the community by referring to them as BN’s “fixed deposit”.

New underclass

Najib has clearly got it wrong. If he thinks that Indian Malaysians are going to unthinkingly throw their support behind him and his coalition, he had better think again.

It may be true that with Malaysia's politics firmly divided along racial lines and Indians not having a majority in any parliamentary seat, many had once resigned themselves to their plight. But that has changed in recent years.

In 2007, tens of thousands of Indian Malaysians took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur to demand reforms. That call has not disappeared.

They have been vocally airing their dissatisfaction with the federal government, which has been too complacent to look into their rightful demands.

So I would not be wrong if I conclude that the permanent smile plastered on Najib's face at the MIC meeting, and his sweet words, were just a ploy to further hoodwink a marginalised community.  I wonder if he can stoop lower than this to hold on to power.

Despite most Indians having been in Malaysia for three or four generations, they are emerging as the new underclass with relatively high levels of hardcore poverty.

A large section of the community shares less than 1.6 percent of the country's wealth. And that too after having made this country their home since the 19th century.

Therefore Najib shouldn't be offering false promises of citizenship to the Indians. He must instead walk the talk as it is the only fair thing to do.

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CHARLES SANTIAGO is DAP’s member of parliament for Klang.