Racism and inequality


Sakmongkol AK47 | NOVEMBER 17, 2013
The Malaysian Insider

Government leaders preach inclusiveness and togetherness. At the very least they pretend to want that. The idea of togetherness and inclusiveness can be summed up in the powerful idea of unity.

Something of that nature cannot be sold like an advertising product and commoditised- it must be secured by living out that experience. It must be practised as an everyday life experience.

Something of that nature too must be formed on the basis of earning and giving trust. The government has neither earned our trust and they have never trusted the people.

PM Najib paid a lot of money to consulting firms to come up with slogans to reflect the idea. He has actually paid RM7.2 billion to a number of consultants since 2009. Over a 5 year period, the fee is like RM3.945 million a day.

We won’t know how much PM Najib paid consultants who came out with slogans and follow through plans of 1Malaysia and now Endless Possibilities. What seems truly endless is the rapacious appetite to gobble up taxpayers’ money.

Judging by Najib’s addiction to top market branding, the fees must have run into billions too.

After 5 years, it appears that a slogan such as 1Malaysia is actually an advertisement product. We have all been suckered and our brains drugged. We have been intravenously injected with hallucinating ideas by marketing consulting firms.

Najib is the 1Malaysia Junkie. For Najib to get high and knocked off means nothing because he does it with taxpayers money. Since it has not worked out, another political advertisement product is introduced into the market. It is called endless possibilities.

That’s an even screwier one since whatever possible outcome can never be defined or finite.

It all now appears that these two ideas are just products ingeniously created by a marketing consulting firm or firms. Instead of selling definite products, they are selling an incorporeal idea. Which is even bloodier expensive. They all have a finite life span.

With so much money and hype as all great advertisements got and create; we expect the outcome desired to have been achieved. In the conduct of business, government leaders who must first believe in their own hype would have all preached and practised a life of inclusiveness and togetherness.

In reality, this government is utterly irresponsible, racist and divisive. One can be a racialist in the sense one can’t separate one’s ethnicity. We can be hostile towards one another because of a given construct. But the hostility ceases when we interact and play down our natural differences and operate on similarities and cultivated trust. The natural given can be moderated by awareness and understanding and trust.

But being a racist suggests the presence of overwhelming hatefulness towards the others not belonging to one’s race. The hatred is reflected in a variety of forms- attributing blameworthiness, presupposing guilt, or simply suspecting the other being the cause of one’s shortcomings and failings.

This is what Najib and his government is doing. Blaming others for his government’s failings and shortcomings serves a self-serving political purpose- blaming others deflects blame that ought to go to them. Blaming others shields those in power. So it must be done even at the expense of civility, inclusiveness and togetherness and moving forward as one nation one Malaysian race equal before the law.

Look at the 2012 Household Income Survey. I am not producing the data here. These are government figures.

Since 1970 to 2012, the top 20% of the population has always cornered on average, 52% of the country’s income. The bottom feeders- the bottom 40% has always shared on the average about 12.5% of the income.

The bottom feeders are members of the Sad Class- 80% of whom are Malays. Why is that? Why this consistent inequality?

Let me ask you some simple questions – the members of the administration, the leadership of the civil service, the leaders of industry, the professionals, the top flight bankers and lawyers – which category do they belong? They belong as you rightly answer to the top 20%. Now who makes the policies that supports the current version of the market system in Malaysia? The same people in the top 20% group.

The point is this. Much of the inequality that has persisted over almost 50 years is the result of this government’s policies. The inequality exists because of government policy. Because the government has the power to move money from the top to the middle and to the bottom. It has the power to make sure money, the bulk of it stays among the top 20%, move a little in the middle 40% and move even littler in the bottom 40%.

Now, look at the figures in the table below. All data are from the same 2012 Household Income Survey.

Race 2002 2012 x
Bumi 2376 4457 1.87
Chinese 4279 6366 1.48
Indian 3044 5233 1.72
Others 2165 3843 1.77

The most improved lot among the races in terms of household per capita income appears to be the Malays whose mean monthly income has increased 1.87 times. This was the same figure used by Najib Razak to gloriously announce when launching his Bumiputera Economic Empowerment Plan.

Here is the strike. If Malay income has improved best, don’t the BN leaders especially UMNO leaders have no shame blaming others especially Chinese for this achievement? Or are they concealing something and blaming others for their own shortcomings and failings?

Things like the Malay member of the top 20% earns an average monthly income of RM 10,666 while the Malay member of the sad class earns an average monthly income of less than RM1200? – sakmongkol.blogspot.com, November 17, 2013.

* Sakmongkol AK47 is the nom de guerre of Datuk Ariff Sabri Abdul Aziz who is the Raub MP.

  1. #1 by ENDANGERED HORNBILL on Monday, 18 November 2013 - 6:35 pm

    Imagine all those rowers in the same boat; some row, others like Perkasa just shout and scream profanities, then UMNOputras just suck up all the glory from the rowers.

    Now if the boat is going to go under, you need just the Perkasa goons and UMNO jesters to have a rock party on the boat. Rocking the boat, better still C4 it – and all rowers and noise-makers will sink to their death in the shark-infested seas. You think other countries care. They are vultures waiting to pick up the assets of a sinking Malaysia.

    So don’t be idiots Najib, UMNO and Perkasa. Go ahead and rock the boat. The pleasure is entirely yours to have.

  2. #2 by Loh on Monday, 18 November 2013 - 10:23 pm

    ///UPDATED 8.41PM PARLIAMENT Three ex-ministers sided with Dr Ling Liong Sik and this hurt the prosecution’s case, says de facto Law Minister Nancy Shukri.///–Malaysiakini

    The government charged LLL because it thought that LLL misled Mahathir into doing the wrong thing. Mahathir told the court that he was not cheated. So Mahathir knew fully what he had done as PM and Finance Minister. Thus Mahathir’s action which led the government to believe that there was corruption perpetrated by LLL was initiated by Mahathir himself. So instead of charging LLL, the government should charge Mahathir for corruption.

  3. #3 by Noble House on Tuesday, 19 November 2013 - 2:22 am

    According to reliable source, prior to the 2014 Budget, the Prime Minister’s Department has been funding various news portals with the intention to subliminally or blatantly disseminate pro-BN propaganda.

    Among the news portals involved is Malaysian Digest when it is said to receive a monthly aid of RM200,000 from the Prime Minister’s Department.

    The PM’s Department was given the allocation of RM6.85 billion under the 2014 Budget. Of the five items listed in the allocation is one referred to as ‘Dana Fasilitasi’ or Facilitation Fund, the amount for which is RM4 billion.

    Buying out the free media in cyberspace? What do you think?

  4. #4 by Sallang on Tuesday, 19 November 2013 - 7:56 am

    Who are these consultants? Can they not be crony companies, and money goes from government coffers to own pockets?
    Marketing and advertising firms can easily come up with slogans, ‘now you see it, now you don’t.’

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