Do Malays really want to be united?

 

"This is our culture. We do not know what hardship is; we only want things to be easy."

– Dr Mahathir Mohamad on who he thinks the Malays are (2002)

Recently, twice former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad again blamed the Malays for losing this country to whoever because “… they prioritise the fate of their leaders rather than race, country and religion.”

At this point, without any awareness of the irony in muttering something like this, the old maverick demonstrates he is either deep in denial or he doesn’t recognise that his creation, a Frankenstein creature composed of various bits of fascist ideology, racism and self-serving imperatives, defines the mainstream Malay political landscape.

Of course, when you consider that DAP’s head honcho Anthony Loke said, “I told Anwar Ibrahim, as long as you can be prime minister, DAP is willing to sacrifice anything, that is my commitment to Anwar Ibrahim”, rational people realise that the main thing this country has going for it is that every community is complicit in the destruction of the country’s democratic future.

I noticed the former prime minister replaced “royalty” with “country”, and this fits his pattern because if there is one institution that Mahathir has shown more contempt for than any other, it is the royal institution, which over the decades he has battled not for any populist agendas but rather because he chafed at his power being shared.

While Mahathir attempted to curtail the royal institution for self-serving reasons, the resurgence of the institution under the current prime minister, which issues diktats that the federal government assimilates, demonstrates how weak the political apparatus is when dealing with incursions into its constitutional powers.

Threat to status quo

Keep in mind, back in the Najib Abdul Razak era, Mahathir acknowledged that the royal institution and he were in the same camp because both viewed Najib as a threat to the status quo.

“So what they are doing is not because of me or supporting me, it is because they know that the future is bad. I won’t be around for very long, but their future, their children’s future, new sultans will be under the thumb of Najib and also under the thumb of future prime ministers. So they worry about that.”

Najib Abdul Razak

Mahathir was adamant that he did not know of Najib’s malfeasances, dismissing allegations as rumours, which, strangely enough, is something that Madani does when confronted with evidence of corruption within the ranks of Madani.

This, of course, does not take into account the various discharges not amounting to acquittals which have been granted to fellow travellers on the Madani road.

Then again, corruption allegations always seem to be swirling around the prime minister’s men in this country. Mahathir claimed that he only ever heard rumours about Najib’s corruption.

Now, of course, with the corporate mafia, allegations against various aides and an assortment of holdovers from previous Umno regimes, the current prime minister hears no corruption but, more importantly, sees no corruption, while the state goes after individuals deemed a threat to the natural Madani order of things.

Selective prosecutions, even if those targeted are corrupt, do not detract from the very obvious failings of the graft-busting agency and the political apparatus.

ADS

Hand in gravy train

Anwar was recently crowing about Madani’s strong bumiputera agenda. As reported in the press, ”… Anwar added that the responsibility of advancing the bumiputera agenda has also been entrusted to the deputy prime minister…” which raises two points.

The first is that Umno still has its hand on the direction of the gravy train, which would make it easier to sustain the political party. The second is that all these state-sponsored programmes, which are supposed to benefit the bumiputera community, will not have the desired effect because of incompetence and leakages.

Former prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob has admitted that the vast bureaucracy had carried out all those poverty alleviation programmes and nobody had any idea about their effectiveness – “… that hitherto many ministries had programmes on poverty alleviation but there was no specific monitoring on their effectiveness.”

Not because monitoring these programmes would mean transparency, but because many of these programmes were part of the gravy train driven by bureaucrats, political operatives and their various proxies.

Umno was never really for the Malays, but rather, they were for Umno. Memories of some are short, but I remember when former Kota Raja Umno chief Amzah Umar revealed: “We give a seven percent discount for bumiputera buyers and 12 percent for Umno members, if I am not mistaken.”

Enslaving, not emancipating

Every “Malay” politician is acutely aware that championing the “Malay” cause does not mean emancipating the Malay community but rather enslaving them.

Of course, nobody thinks they are enslaving their community but carrying out so-called favourable policies meant to protect their community from the “others”.

Why do you think that Madani wanted something like the failed Urban Renewal Act? Instead of local council elections, which act as a check and balance to a whole range of issues and where communities determine what is needed in the places they live, we get the URA, which concentrates power in the government and where back channelling, backroom deals and corporate malfeasance get a fig leaf of legality.

This is why PSM wants the focus back on holding local council polls.

Do you know why Malay uber alles politicians play the race card when it comes to local council polls? They want to destroy democratic opportunities where the Malays, especially if they are a minority in certain areas, understand that their welfare is safeguarded by a non-Malay majority.

And that right there is the problem. The establishment is defined by how it wants to destroy democratic opportunities for the Malay community, not to mention curtail independent thought, because such freedoms would jeopardise the political elites.

By mainstreaming a racial supremacist policy, the majority community has trapped itself in a Gordian knot.

It is not about uniting the Malays. It is about keeping them under your boot. - Mkini

---

S THAYAPARAN is commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.