Too-quick reforms may backfire, says academic

UKM associate professor believes that conservatives may feel alienated, thus causing reforms to stall.

Faisal Hazis urges reformers to make changes to public universities before tackling UiTM.

PETALING JAYA: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia associate professor Faisal S Hazis has called for balance as liberal-minded Malaysians push for reforms, warning that changes introduced too quickly might stall for being unacceptable to those of a more conservative nature.

Faisal’s comments echo remarks by two Pakatan Harapan politicians recently.

Faisal agreed that the problem about being too hasty when it came to introducing more liberal policies was that it might result in those policies being shut down for a lack of acceptance from the more conservative public.

“We want change to be embraced by the people. If people cannot accept change, change will not happen. The problem is there could be a pushback and strong resistance against such policies and when that happens, the policy will remain idle.”

He said many Malay voters – about one-third according to some political analysts – had already opted for Umno and PAS in the first place.

“So there is a need to balance those who voted for a new government, to push for change, with a sizeable number of voters who, I would say, are conservative and had voted for BN and PAS,” he told FMT.

He said this was especially true when it came to opening up Universiti Teknologi Mara to students of other races. “Push for these reforms in other public universities first. UiTM you deal with that later on.”

Faisal, a member of Gerak, a group of activist academicians, said they were part of a movement for meritocracy in public universities, “to allow students to enter universities based on merit and also for academic staff from different backgrounds to join universities”.

He said there was already some semblance of such meritocracy in most public universities. “We have people from different religious backgrounds even though the universities are predominantly Malay. So to open up is not much of an issue, just increase the number of non-Malays there. But if you want to do that in UiTM, it’s a different story.”

The issue of opening up UiTM to other races was raised by a group calling itself Hindraf 2.0, and was harshly criticised by UiTM as well as the general Malay population.

Amanah vice-president Mujahid Yusof Rawa had also recently called for patience in achieving reforms, and voiced support for recent comments by PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli, who said in a radio interview that some rural Malays and their urban cousins might feel alienated if Pakatan Harapan was too insensitive to their anxieties when pushing for reforms.

The conservative group could end up in the arms of Umno and PAS, Rafizi had said.

However, Faisal said that aggressive moves for institutional reforms and democratic changes would not be a problem.

“I don’t see any harm in pushing for institutional reform, check and balance, democratic space, and all that. If you want to empower the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission to go after people who fouled-up, for example, then by all means, do it. I don’t think anyone, conservative or otherwise, thinks corruption is good.” -FMT