KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 11 - Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed claimed today there are signs Malays could lose their voice in government, and issued a warning that the Kampung Baru Malay community here could suffer the fate of their ethnic cousins in Singapore who are scattered around the republic.
The former prime minister wrote in his blog that while Malaysia is being governed by a Malay majority government that cares for the fate of Malays, “let us not be so sure that there will never be a government where the voice of Malay representatives is removed.”
Dr Mahathir, who is still influential in Umno, was replying to suggestions on how to develop Kampung Baru while retaining its Malay ownership.
He had written about the subject in his blog yesterday, admitting that he had failed to develop the Malay enclave in Kuala Lumpur.
Today, he warned against dispersing Kampung Baru’s Malay residents in the same way Singapore had scattered the Malay community and diluted its voice.
He claimed Singapore had a policy of integrating all races and had eliminated Malay villages to relocate Malays to flats so that they were no longer surrounded by their own race and relatives.
“The clear fact is that all evidence of Singapore’s origins as a Malay land has disappeared altogether,” he wrote.
In his blog post, he said he was uneasy at the suggestion of developing modern Malay villages with wooden Malay houses as a tourist attraction.
“We have stopped bringing tourists to observe the life of Orang Aslis because we respect them as human beings and not museum exhibits,” he wrote.
However, he said that the suggestion should be considered but whatever the case, the “poverty of Malays in their rundown homes” that now exists in the capital should not be exhibited.
He also rejected outright the suggestion that the government offer a 99.9 per cent subsidy to Malays as the subsidy mentality would weaken them.
Dr Mahathir’s latest remarks mark a continuation of a more strident right-wing tone adopted by the former prime minister in recent years in his push for a siege mentality among Malays.
Last year, he argued that the community’s political leaders are now under the thumb of “the others” and need to be united again for the sake of its future. - Malaysian Insider
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