Bopim: Red Shirts mark failure of Umno Gov’t

The dignity of Malays does not hinge on keeping Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak in power and sweeping the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal and the RM2.6 billion controversy under the carpet.

KOTA KINABALU: The people in Sabah and Sarawak, warned a Borneo rights activist, are upset that the Red Shirts Rally converged at Padang Merbok in Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Day to claim among others that the Federation was Tanah Melayu and that others in the country were outsiders. “They also made much of regaining Malay dignity and made many other claims which have no basis in fact and reality. For example, one claim is that the Malays are tired of being stepped on by others. Who is stepping on the Malays if not for Umno itself for nearly 60 years?”

“We hope that our Malay brothers and sisters in the peninsula do not see myths and superstition and distortion of history and the political realities as the way forward for them. Rhetoric and polemics would not help them.”

The truth is the truth, said Daniel John Jambun who heads the UK-based Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (Bopim). “History is history. The political reality is political reality.”

“No one can argue that the dignity of the Malays hinges on keeping Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak in power and sweeping the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal and the RM2.6 billion controversy under the carpet. There’s no reason for the Red Shirts to support Najib just because Bersih 4 asked him to step down.”

Nevertheless, said Daniel, if there’s one over-riding theme that emerges from the Himpunan Maruah Melayu of the Red Shirts, it’s that the Umno Government of the last 60 years in Putrajaya has failed the Malays as well. “Why would an estimated 35,000 Malays converge on Padang Merbok and moan and wail about the loss of their dignity and the need to regain it?”

“Where does the fault lie, if not with Umno? It had more than half of a century to place the Malays on a self-sustaining footing but it clearly failed them.”

Daniel, who’s Bopim President, agrees with Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah who told a public forum in conjunction with Malaysia Day that the Malays were scared and lack confidence. “They should be scared. How can they be not scared when the system of party politics, dominated by Umno as the predominant Malay party, has failed them?”

“They lack confidence as a people because they are scared.”

Addressing the Tanah Melayu claim of the Red Shirts, Daniel noted it was different from the call during the last Umno General Assembly to restore lost Malay reservation land (tanah Melayu) in the peninsula. “It’s not possible to restore lost tanah Melayu as these were untitled land created by the British by gazette on Orang Asli land,” pointed out Daniel. “The government can degazette such land to return them to the Orang Asli or turn them into other uses for development.”

“No new Malay reservations can be created by the government in the peninsula. In Sabah and Sarawak, we have reservation land as well created by gazette and these are different from the NCR land owned by the Orang Asal.”

Daniel was inclined to dismiss the reference by the Red Shirts to Malaysia as Tanah Melayu as having been made in the heat of the moment. “There’s no dispute that the Orang Asal in Sabah and Sarawak and the Orang Asli in the peninsula are the owners of Malaysia.”

The Malays must get out into the private sector and join the rest of the people and/or return to the land in search of agricultural pursuits to find their own way in the world like the Orang Asal in Sabah and Sarawak and the Orang Asli in the peninsula, he added.

The re-constitution of the government sector and GLCs, predicts Daniel, would be carried out by a new government within the context of downsizing to balance the Budget, rein in the national debt burden and do away with the gravy train of the politics of patronage. “The Malays cannot continue to rely on the government sector and GLCs to provide them with a womb to tomb welfare state system for infinity. The Orang Asal have learnt this only too well after the fall of the PBS Government in Sabah.”