Political power has always been with Malays, says Rafizi

 The Bersama leader says those who claim that Malays are losing power were making it a racial issue in order to draw attention away from how power has been exercised.

Rafizi Ramli said in politics, emotional issues require an enemy, and it is usually made out to be the minorities or immigrants.

PETALING JAYA:

Bersama leader Rafizi Ramli has challenged the claim that Malays must unite politically because they were losing power, saying that racial claims had been made to draw attention away from the real issue of how leaders exercise such power.

“Malays have never been without political power. They have always held political power,” he said last night in the latest episode of his podcast.

His remarks came in response to controversial comments on “Tanah Melayu” made by Perikatan Nasional election director Sanusi Nor last month during the Negeri Sembilan election campaign.

Sanusi was reported to have said that the Chinese and Indian communities could fall back on their ancestral homelands, but the Malays had only “Tanah Melayu”. He later denied that his remarks were intended to question the citizenship or rights of Malaysian Chinese and Indians.

Rafizi said it was wrong to blame the economic problems of the Malays on other ethnic groups, noting that Malaysia had been governed for decades by administrations that championed Bumiputera policies.

The real issue was how political power had been exercised. He argued that decades of pro-Malay policies had yet to substantially improve Malay equity ownership.

He also rejected claims that Malays had lost power because of the Chinese and Indian communities’ economic influence. Rafizi said those in power often turned to racial themes to deflect attention from deeper governance issues.

“Those who have held power for hundreds of years will naturally try to preserve that power. As society becomes more open and people begin questioning that status quo, those groups start looking for a bogeyman and emotional issues to rally around.

“Those emotional issues require an enemy. Overseas, that enemy might be minorities, immigrants or Muslims. In Malaysia, it becomes immigrants, the Chinese and the Indians.”

He said this was why he disagreed with claims that Malays were losing political power, arguing that such claims distracted from how power and wealth had been distributed.

Rafizi also disputed historical accounts of colonial-era developments as showing Malays losing power to immigrant communities. He said political authority before independence had long been concentrated among the Malay aristocracy rather than ordinary Malays. - FMT