Letters
by Allan C

I am a Chinese Malaysian male with diverse groups of friends – Tamils, Malayalees, Sikhs, Jaffna Tamils, whites, Eurasians, and Babas and Nyonyas.

The problem is I have very few Malay friends.

Umno tells them I am a threat to them..

Umno tells them I am undeserving of equal rights.

They might even believe it, and since I don’t want to think any less of them, I prefer to keep my own counsel.

Generally I don’t talk much about anything important with Malays, and certainly not about politics.

I think meaningful friendships between Malays and non-Malays are becoming rare in Malaysian society.

There is not enough dialogue between Malays and non-Malays at the ground level. Umno speaks from both sides of its mouth – telling the Malays the non-Malays are a threat to them, and then turning round to tell the non-Malays that their rights will be protected.

At other times it may say the reverse, the key denominator being what it needs to say to win votes at the time, and the ethnic composition of the audience. After 51 years of Umno’s divide and rule, it is no wonder that race relations are a joke.

With Biro Tata Negara, Khir Toyo and Ahmad Ismail to lead the way, only a fool will think Umno wants good race relations. Umno leaders wants good race relations only when it will keep them in power. Power and money are the real motivations for Umno’s political leaders.

After the twisted judicial treatments and twisted sentences meted out to the likes of Lim Guan Eng, Anwar Ibrahim, Teresa Kok and Raja Petra Kamaruddin, I think we can safely rule out any semblance of a sense of right and wrong and common decency as a meaningful guide to Umno’s decisions. Read the rest of this entry »