EDITOR'S PICK Most Malaysians are aware of the parallels between our fairly young democracy and the racist system that ruled the old South Africa. However, very few outsiders see the web of controls which affect every aspect of Malaysian life and if they did find out, they would be shocked at the disturbing resemblance to apartheid.
The tourist who is asked to comment about Malaysia will wax lyrical about our beaches, food, jungle treks and shopping. Malaysia is a popular tourist destination but ‘outsiders’ hardly know about our darker side.
For each happy visitor, another would have experienced bitter disappointment; the filthy toilets, the litter, shocking taxi-service, terrible driving habits. All this disgruntled person has to do is scratch away beneath the surface and he would be horrified to discover a world full of prejudice and discrimination; they are not tourist brochure reading material.
Former US Ambassador to Malaysia, John Malott wrote an article entitled “The Price of Malaysia’s Racism” and invited us to have a good look at ourselves.
What he had to tell us about racism is nothing new. Many of us have known about it for a long time but most of us were too scared to say anything about it. Or we were too busy for we had lives to lead and children to take care of. Or perhaps, we prayed that it would not affect us.
The discrimination affects most, if not every facet of Malaysian life.
Our leaders want us to be a global nation but then ignore the importance of English.
Our leaders desire a high income economy but we import low unskilled labour, and let our brightest and best slip through our fingers.
Our leaders know that the health of the nation is of national importance. Healthy citizens means a capable and efficient workforce. But what do we do? We place more importance on medical tourism at the expense of good affordable medical care for our own people.
Our leaders try and entice the smartest and the skilled to return and serve their country. But these leaders forget that money is not everything and that conditions at home have to be acceptable and attractive for our experts to return.
Our leaders go to the United Nations Security Council and make speeches condemning extremism. But that show of goodwill is only shortlived for when these leaders are on home soil, they do little about the extremist groups which practise racial and religious intolerance. They excel at name-calling or desecrating religious symbols of other faiths.
The constitution says everyone is free to practise the religion of his choice and yet some people claim absolute ownership of one word; ‘Allah’. They are prepared to use violence to defend that one word. How ironical that one word can destabilise the fragile community. How unfortunate that the opportunity to promote peace and understanding is lost. When a Muslim insults someone of another faith, he appears to be let off with minimum punishment, if at all.
The country is facing economic hardship and the people have been told that various items will be dearer, and yet the government has found resources to build megaprojects and order ships worth RM6 billion in all. Are we at war? Was the success with the Somali pirates a reason to purchase more ships? What is wrong with more schools, hospitals, mobile clinics, libraries and roads?
The government-owned newspapers publish a daily diet of racist rants and yet cartoonists can be jailed and have their books confiscated.
The Penan girls have tried to seek justice after they were brutally raped by loggers in the interior of Sarawak, but these children are not talented enough to warrant the attention of our First Lady who much prefers to fly to the middle east to talk about Malaysia’s gifted and talented kids.
The Penan have been turfed out of their ancestral homelands, but we are told to rejoice as our king will soon have a new palace built at RM800 million.
The people in Sabah and Sarawak, especially those who have been displaced because of dam activity can barely scratch a living from the land to feed their families. And yet, in one night, the Chief Minister had a grand wedding reception to show off his young bride. There was enough food to feed several longhouses over several days.
That night too, the drink was probably flowing but the poor indigenous person suffers because oil palm acticity and the logging companies have polluted their waterways so that their children fall sick.
The indigenous people are encouraged to promote traditional weaving but the state destroys the jungles in which the raw materials for their handicraft grow. They scrounge a living from government hand-outs whilst billions are being siphoned by their leaders to offshore accounts.
If 1Malaysia is supposed to bind us then it is not working. The various races are not being treated as equals.
Corruption is a cancer in our society and yet few big fish get hauled to court.
Muslims are even more confused. Polygamy is permitted under certain circumstances and yet our lawmakers break the law with impunity. Child marriages are also allowed by the state. People fear the moral police and are prepared to risk their lives perching on window ledges because they fear the humiliation as much as anything else.
Single mothers who kill their babies now risk capital punishment. Unmarried underage teenagers who have sex must get married. This is so that their baby is not born illegitimate irrespective of whether the girl and boy are mature enough to start a family.
We once had the best judiciary, police, education, family planning clinics in the region, but those are now just a distant memory.
Our elections are rigged and there are blatant cases of vote-buying, but the government carries on without any shame. Our ministers allegedly commit a variety of crimes but they threaten to detain us so they can continue as before, again without shame. People die in police cells. Teenagers in the streets are shot dead. Politicians are stitched up.
Despite all the allegations of wrongdoing, the Cabinet and other senior politicians carry on as normal. They have no desire to represent our interests. They are self-serving and they only want to control us through fear and division.
Is Najib’s ‘OneMalaysia’ one big, hypocritical farce or does it represent unity?
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