Malaysian Digest - Malaysia News and Current Affairs

KETIKA di bangku sekolah dahulu, kita pernah diajar oleh guru-guru sekolah supaya bersikap sederhana.

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IT is a shame that eight days after the 13th General Election, there are some Opposition leaders who continue to denounce the result as a “massive fraud.”

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A photo gallery of GE13 on 5th May 2013.

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Now that Barisan Nasional (BN) has won the tensely fought general election by simple majority, Malaysians are anxious to see how Datuk Seri Najib Razak set up his Cabinet. Judging from the coalition’s lackluster victory, Najib has even more to prove, more so now that his Government Transformation Programme (GTP) is expected to go into full swing. To convince the rakyat that he is committed to the GTP, Najib is compelled to replace the ‘skeletons’ in the cabinet with fresh new faces.

THE young are not happy with the result of the 13th general election (GE13) held on May 5. I saw that for myself at the ‘Black 505’ rally in Penang on May 11, at which most of the participants were young people – of all races.

KUALA LUMPUR: "If the coalition puts the Malays and Islam at a loss, PAS will leave PR! We won't hesitate," said PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, stressing that the party will leave Pakatan Rakyat (PR) if their affiliation with PKR and DAP will cost the Malays and Islam.

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PLEASE, for the sake of this nation's peace and stability, stop showing off your huge rally in the city to fool yourself that you have the numbers. 

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KUALA LUMPUR: With talk on an apparent 'Chinese tsunami' at the recently concluded 13th general election (GE13), not much has been said about MIC and the would-be consequences of MCA pulling out of top government posts on the party.

ONLY 24 hours more to go. For both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat, this is the final push. These last few moments are the most crucial – to convince fence-sitters, to right whatever wrongs as much as they can before they wrap up their campaign acts at 11.59pm today.

Chandra Muzaffar (pic) has been writing articles of late that clearly show his alignment with what Barisan Nasional (BN) practises and stands for. That is fine; he is entitled to support whichever party he wants, but when he writes half-truths, he has to be exposed.

Dear fellow Malaysians, peace.

I am writing this open letter because I am deeply concerned about two trends within the electorate which may have an adverse impact upon the future of our nation. The first is a trend associated with a segment of the Malay electorate, both rural and urban. The second is a trend associated with a segment of the non-Malay communities. If these two trends are enthroned through the 13th General Election on May 5, it could be catastrophic for our people.


The Malay Electorate

Some Malays, disillusioned with elite corruption and the widening gap between the have-a-lot and the have-a-little, regard a hudud-oriented Islamic state as the solution. They should ask themselves the following questions.

One, is there any such state in the contemporary world that serves as a model worthy of emulation? Saudi Arabia? Sudan? Afghanistan?

Two, why is it that the vast majority of Muslim states have not opted for a hudud-oriented administration?

Three, why have the people in the world’s largest Muslim country, namely Indonesia, rejected hudud-oriented parties over and over again in elections?

Four, why has Turkey, whose ruling party has an Islamic root, eschewed hudud and a fiqh-oriented legal system in favor of a democratic, constitutional, secular system of governance?

Five, if the mainstay of the ruling coalition in Malaysia since 1957 was PAS and not Umno, what would be the socio-economic situation of the Malays today?

Would poverty have been reduced from 64% to 1.7%? Would there have been the phenomenal transformation of an entire people, sustained over two generations, which has resulted in a significant Malay role in education, the professions, commerce and industry, compared to what it was at the time of Merdeka?

Would the Malays have emerged as an important component of the Malaysian middle class which has undoubtedly helped to stabilize ethnic relations and politics in the country and allowed democracy to function?

One just has to look at PAS’ 22-year rule in Kelantan to get an idea of what its version of Islam can do to a people. From its dismal failure to provide jobs for tens of thousands of well-qualified Kelantanese to its utter inability to curb rising drug addiction, Kelantan is Malaysia’s first and only failed state. Malaysian voters should have no illusions about the type of Islamic state that PAS seeks.


The Non-Malay Electorate

If some Malays are under an illusion about PAS’ Islam, a lot more non-Malays, especially many middle-class Chinese and some middle-class Indians, are laboring under a huge misconception about what their vote would deliver. They are convinced that it would be able to “eliminate ethnic discrimination” and bring to an end alleged “Malay supremacy”. Since those who have been pedaling these clichés have never really explained in detail what they mean by eliminating ethnic discrimination or Malay supremacy, non-Malays exposed to this rhetoric have drawn different conclusions.

For many, the perception is that Pakatan Rakyat is going to set aside the Special Position of the Malays and the Bumiputras of Sabah and Sarawak. This cannot be done. The Articles in the Malaysian Constitution pertaining to places in the public services, licenses, scholarships and land reserves (like some other Articles) cannot be amended or abrogated by Parliament even if Pakatan wins 100% of the seats. Special Position is safeguarded by the Conference of Malay Rulers.

Publicly, all three Pakatan parties, including the DAP, have endorsed Special Position. However, at the hustings, some of the DAP and PKR activists give the impression that it is discriminatory and is therefore unacceptable. This is why their leaders should be honest with their members and supporters. Tell the whole truth.

Neither Special Position nor any of the other iron-clad Articles in the Constitution pertaining to citizenship, language and the Rulers will change one iota if Pakatan comes to power.

Since Pakatan cannot do anything about Special Position, what sort of discrimination is it going to eliminate? Will it abolish the NEP? In theory, the NEP does not exist anymore. It came to an end in 1990 though one of its twin objectives of restructuring society in order to reduce the identification of ethnicity with economic function continues in certain specific areas. Given the nature of this objective, it would be wrong to view it as ethnic discrimination. Rather, it is an attempt to enhance national integration.


1Malaysia

Everything considered, the actual flaws with the NEP are related to its implementation – its excesses and its abuses. These should be rectified. In the last four years, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has made a concerted attempt to do so. Federal scholarships for students are based largely on academic merit; there is a serious endeavor to increase the number of Chinese and Indian public servants; and their mobility in the public services has improved through some high profile appointments.

At the same time, all 1Malaysia ventures – from its retail trade outlets to its affordable housing programme – are non-ethnic. 1Malaysia in its concrete manifestation is an all-embracing, inclusive idea. Najib is also paying close attention to the needs of different ethnic and sub-ethnic communities and engaging them at the social and cultural level as part and parcel of his 1Malaysia drive.

There is a lucid message he is attempting to put across. There must be understanding and empathy among us, whatever our religious or cultural differences. We must respect one another.

Respecting one another means that we should never ever manipulate each other. This is what happened in the recent DAP symbol episode. Though there was no question at all about whether the DAP could use its own rocket symbol, in the high drama that the leadership staged, it opted to use PAS’ symbol rather than the PKR symbol on the peninsula. Wouldn’t it have been more logical for the DAP to use PKR’s symbol since the DAP wants PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim to be the Prime Minister if Pakatan wins the general election? Why did it prefer the symbol of a party whose goal of a hudud-oriented Islamic state it vehemently opposes? Is it because PAS has much more Malay support on the peninsula than PKR and the DAP was hoping to capitalize on its support? Isn’t this rank opportunism?

Isn’t this what the PAS-DAP-PKR grouping is all about? An opportunistic grouping hell-bent on power but opposed to each other. If an illusion on the one hand and a misconception on the other makes the grouping a catastrophe, its opportunism renders it an even greater catastrophe.


Think carefully! Vote wisely!

With warm regards,

Chandra Muzaffar

IT is now down to the wire. With only a couple more days to go until Malaysians get to exercise their voting right in the 13 General Election (GE13), it would be safe to assume that everyone has more or less decided on who and what party we would be polling for.

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