DAP,MCA and MIC preaching secularism but practising the opposite, the appalling state of Muslims is a telling indictment of faux secular governance.The poor and the Muslims –Such “secular” parties don’t care for Muslims. They care for Muslim votes. If they had “real concern” for Muslims – a key quality in a prime minister according to Titiwangsa member of paliament growth vs. inclusion is meanwhile a red herring. Good governance is the real answer: both economic growth and inclusion are intrinsic to it. The real issue is entitlement vs. empowerment.that economic growth, allied with welfare schemes which build productive capital assets formula of handouts which create dependencies is the not the most efficient development model for Malaysia. the Muslims in particular – have been entrapped into a fear psychosis that warns them: vote for “the other” and you will not be safe.That brings us to the third angle in this infamous triangle: the liberal, secular Chinese and Hindus Where does they stand in all this? He is naturally secular in the truest sense of the word: religion is a private matter,they rightly believes. It has no place in politics.
Muslim leaders have been willing accomplices in this tragedy. Mullahs issue regressive fatwas against Muslim women and edicts against sensible civil laws. Instead of condemning such fatwas, the government maintains a studied silence, tacitly encouraging extremism and keeping ordinary Muslims stuck in a time warp.
The two real enemies of the Muslim – communal politicians masquerading as secular politicians to win votes and Mullahs deliberately misinterpreting the holy book to retain power over their flock – form a natural alliance. Together they have enriched themselves but impoverished India’s Muslims, materially and intellectually, in the name of secularism. These are the Ayatollahs of secularism.But surely it is parties which preach secularism but practise an insidious form of communal separateness which feed a false fear among Muslim voters? Who can best create that model? Certainly not those who advocate a policy of entitlement with its attendant fiscal profligacy that has so severely damaged India’s economy. – Muslims would not be as poor, as deprived, as backward, as alienated and as stigmatised as they are today. “Secularism in the political – as opposed to ecclesiastical – sense requires the separation of the state from any particular religious order. This can be interpreted in at least two different ways. The first view argues that secularism demands that the state be equidistant from all religions – refusing to take sides and having a neutral attitude towards them. The second – more severe – view insists that the state must not have any relation at all with any religion. The equidistance must take the form, then, of being altogether removed from each.“In both interpretations, secularism goes against giving any religion a privileged position in the activities of the state. In the broader interpretation (the first view), however there is no demand that the state must stay clear of any association with any religious matter whatsoever. Rather what is needed is to make sure that in so far as the state has to deal with different religions and members of different religious communities, there must be a basic symmetry of treatment.” Symmetry of treatment is crucial: What does symmetry imply? Clearly, equality for all, special privileges on the basis of religion to none.
The Chinese know what they want and are willing to put up with obstacles and hindrances in their way to get ahead. Their work ethic is the envy of all Malaysians. They are investing heavily in the education of their young. They continue to modernise their companies for opportunities abroad, since they cannot get contracts in our country on their own merit, and must, therefore, be sub-contractors to favoured UMNO businessmen. At home, they expect a government which is transparent and accountable, not a corrupt one. In the last election, they voted against UMNO-led Barisan Nasional for this reason.possibly to the dismay of those journalists transfixed by hype, is not a contest between Lord Rama and Bhagwan Krishna. In the real world, it is mostly between General Hocus and Admiral Pocus. The voter does not choose between two paragons of virtue. He takes a punt on what is available, warts and all.Does this leave the electorate in serious depression? No.Dr. Mahathir has yet to deal with the ghosts of his past deeds. Here no one can help him but he himself. This is indeed tragic for a once formidable leader of our country who is advancing in years (born in 1925). He just cannot let go and now he has taken upon himself the task of interpreting history. It is not Malay or Chinese Dilemma. It is Dr Mahathir’s. He is unwilling to come to terms with himself.The Indian voter, having abandoned illusion in the mid-1960s, is now beyond disillusion: feet on the ground, eyes open and ears tuned to that fine pitch that distinguishes fact from bombast, he scans politics with a reality-check laser beam. The next general election will not be decided by the froth of school-playground taunt and retort that dampens television screens every evening. It will hinge on a challenge to democracy posed some 2,500 years ago.
IN response to the emergence of a Malay political party, UMNO and its success in rejecting the British inspired Malayan Union, the Chinese community of the 1940s saw the need for a political party of their own to present their views to the British government.
Thus was the MCA conceived and born, led by Malacca’s Tun Sir Cheng-Lock Tan. Although it was intended to counter the influence of UMNO and protect the interests of the Chinese community, events changed the strategy and role of the MCA.
In 1952 the Kuala Lumpur UMNO leaders and the Kuala Lumpur MCA branch leaders decided that in the Kuala Lumpur municipal elections, they should not contest against each other, but instead should support each other’s candidates in their respective constituencies.
The results startled them as they defeated almost all the non-racial parties. Realising the political advantage of cooperating with each other the Tunku (Abdul Rahman) and Sir Cheng-Lock Tan, and senior leaders of the MCA and UMNO decided to formalise their cooperation by setting up the Alliance, a coalition of MCA and UMNO.
The basis of this coalition was the idea of supporting each other and sharing the power gained. Buoyed by the success of the Alliance party in the 1955 elections, in which the MIC had joined, the Tunku looked more kindly at the proposal of Sir Cheng-Lock that citizenship should be based on jus soli (citizenship by being born in the country) and not jus saguinis (citizenship based on the Malaysian citizenship of the father or mother, i.e. citizenship based on blood relation).
The Tunku did not quite agree but he nevertheless decided to give one million citizenships to unqualified Chinese and Indians. With that the confrontation between the Chinese and the Malays changed into positive cooperation.
It was a classic kongsi that was set up. The essence is an undertaking to share. Sharing involves a give and take arrangement, in which each side has to sacrifice something so that the other can gain something.
As the Malays made up the majority of the citizens they naturally led the Alliance. But the Chinese and Indians were not without adequate power. In any case Malay political power would be mitigated by Chinese and Indians’ voting and economic power.
The Tunku saw immediate benefit from the “kongsi” as he believed Malays only wanted to be government employees and the Chinese wanted to be in business. There would be no conflict or tussle between them.
The Indians would fill up the professional posts. He did not foresee the days when government could not create enough jobs for the greatly increased number of Malays.
The kongsi Alliance worked well. But in 1963 Singapore joined Malaysia. Immediately the PAP tried to gain Chinese support by condemning the Alliance kongsi for being disadvantageous to the Chinese. Malaysians, said the PAP, were not equal. There should be a Malaysian Malaysia where all the benefits should be based on merit alone, with the best taking everything, irrespective of race.
Without saying so in so many words the PAP was inferring that the Malays did not deserve their positions. The best people should rule the country. In the eyes of the PAP, Singapore was ruled by the best qualified people. That they happen to be almost all Chinese is incidental.
In the 1964 elections the MCA and Malaysian Chinese generally valued their cooperation with the Malays. They rejected the PAP and its chauvinistic appeal, giving it only one seat.
The Tunku realised what the PAP was up to and decided that Singapore should not be a part of Malaysia. But the PAP was not done. The remnant of the party in Malaysia set up the DAP to carry on the Malaysian Malaysia meritocratic formula for undermining Chinese support for the MCA.
Harping continuously on the so-called Malay privileges and the unfairness to the Chinese, the DAP slowly eroded the idea of kongsi in the multi-racial coalition of the Barisan Nasional.
Despite the fact that the Barisan Nasional supported Chinese education and the use of the Chinese language, the DAP convinced many Chinese that the Chinese, their culture and language are not given proper treatment by the Barisan Nasional coalition.The MCA was attacked for not doing enough for the Chinese.
Socrates asked a simple question: who prevails in a trial between a doctor and a pastry chef before a jury of children? For the Greek philosopher, who placed the virtue of logic far above the merits of popular will, the answer was a no-brainer: a landslide for crooks. But if Socrates had been born in 1947 and observed Tanah Melayu elections with his rigorous intellectual diligence for over five decades, he would surely have seen the flaw in his thesis. Politicians may still offer either prescription or pastry, or indeed cake and more cake, but the jury has grown up. The voter understands the difference between a sweetmeat today and bread tomorrow. Every election after 1957 has been about delivery, not promise. A fire takes longer to extinguish than to start.
Corruption leapt up from margins to central dominance. There were many reasons, but among them was the gradual realisation by politicians that job security was over. They made as much hay as possible during the brief sunshine in their careers.The government of DrMahathir, Adullah badawi and Najib won because enough voters were convinced that it would, given another five years, win India a place at the high table of the world’s economy by raising growth and ensuring that its benefits seeped down to the impoverished base. Hope is the most dangerous thing you can betray. Growth in welfare was substituted by a cancerous spread in corruption. Nor could blame be transferred to subsidiary players. Among the accused was DAIM,who took the story into the home of the most powerful family in government. People expected PM Dr Najib to be a tough doctor in the Socratic mould. Instead, in his second term, he turned out to be another pastry cook.like Dr Mahathir
The Malay voters could be forgiven for turning cynical. Mahathir has, fortunately, only abandoned emotion — not fully, of course, but in sufficient numbers to create a different pattern. The voter has become an accountant. Minor exceptions apart, every election now delivers a clear mandate. Opinion polls manage to indicate a trend, but are far less successful in estimating the extent of victory, . The message is obvious. No government can take recourse to an alibi for non-performance. Victors swirl in silk at the time of coronation but are left with a thong when accountability kicks in. TheMalay voters has become cool, which is the perfect temperature for democracy. There is no reason yet visible why this pattern should not hold in either the UMNO polls this year
When I contested in the Gelang Patah constituency in the 13th general election, former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad accused me of wanting to create a “racial confrontation” between the Malays and Chinese in Johore. This was a pack of lies. In fact, events have shown that it is Mahathir in the past few months who has been trying to create a “racial confrontation”, particularly after the May 5 general election results, in his campaign to pit one race against another.
Mahathir is again up to his mischief in his opinion piece in the New Straits Times yesterday, concocting the dangerous and false myth of “the Chinese dilemma” of the Chinese making a grab to oust the political power of the Malays in Malaysia – and trying to set the agenda for the upcoming UMNO party elections.
Mahathir should know better than anyone that because of the political and demographic realities in Malaysia, the political power of the Malays in Malaysia have never been in danger and there is no attempt by the Chinese or any other community to oust the political power of the Malays.
What is at stake is whether UMNO and UMNO-putras can continue with their politics of race, cronyism, corruption, abuses of power and impunity or whether they have to give way to a new Malaysian politics of multi-racialism, good governance, public integrity, freedom and justice.
The challenge before Malaysians is not whether the Malays would lose political power but whether the 13th general elections has started a new political trend of more and more Malaysians, regardless of race, taking a stand against the politics of race in support of multi-racial politics and the pursuit of the Malaysian Dream where all her citizens are united as one people, rising above their ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic differences as the common grounds binding them as one citizenship exceed the differences that divide them because of their ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural divisions.
The future of Malaysia will depend on whether we have increasingly more Malaysians united in pursuit of a common Malaysian Dream, and not for a Malay Dream, Chinese Dream, Kadazan Dream or Iban Dream. Is the top MCA leadership in agreement with Mahathir’s dangerous and desperate racist vituperations and if not, are they prepared to publicly condemn his dangerous and desperate racist lies and concoction of “the Chinese dilemma” of the Chinese making a grab for political power to oust the political power of the Malays?
If Mahathir does not know or understand why MCA has lost all credibility and legitimacy as a political party, the reaction of the MCA top leadership to this poser should give him the proper insight and understanding.
But does Mahathir really believe his own racist allegations, lies and his latest wild “Chinese dilemma” myth? Does Mahathir expect any sane and rational Malaysian, regardless of race, to believe in his racist fulminations of “the Chinese dilemma” that the Chinese are out to oust the political power of the Malays and to dominate Malaysian politics – which are complete figments of his imagination like his earlier wild allegations that I contested in Gelang Patah to create a racial confrontation and to incite Chinese to hate the Malays?
The most dismaying development in Malaysian politics is the reckless racist fulminations of Mahathir and his ilk, but there is no need for Malaysians to despair.
It is said that “every cloud has a silver lining” and the silver lining is that Mahathir is facing a diminishing market for his racist fulminations which will foil his attempt to pit the Malays against the Chinese and destroy the pursuit of the common Malaysian Dream of all patriotic Malaysians.–Lim Kit Siang
