///The latest came from former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who casually reminded Malaysian Malays not to become like Singaporean Malays.///

Tun Dr Ismail said that Malays would willing give up the special position in the constitution out of pride, at the right time. The right time would be when Malaysian Malays are like Singaporean Malays.

The special position provided for Malays is because they are weak, and thus they need help. Tun Dr Ismail wanted Malays to be independent of government but Mamakthir does not.

Mamakthir wants Malays in Malaysia to retain the special position forever so that politicians including his children can take advantage of the racial division in the country to perpetuate the corrupt practices. Certainly the continuation of the special position of Malays does so at the expense of the pride of the community. Unlike TDI, Mamakthir has felt no lost of pride for the Malay race because he is not a Malay. In fact he is trying to dilute the Malay race so that Malays become unrecognizable. But as a group of persons so classified Mamakthir wanted to utilize their number to divide and gain unfair advantage at the expense of the nation. Mamakthir thinks that he could still fool the Malays.

No country can become a progressive nation when the people are not being treated equally. This is particularly so when the law and the country provides for such distinction between different groups of people in the country. The institutional discrimination such as provided by Article 153 has caused disaster as it has been wrongly interpreted. The constitution was clear however that those who were beneficiary under Article 153 were so treated because of the special position they were in; it was not a special right accorded to them. What then did the special position refer to? It refers to the fact that some Malays were poor, or perhaps the fact that a higher proportion of Malays compared to other community were poor at the time of independence, and the poor deserved assistance. It was certainly a slip-shod approach to drafting the constitution when Malays were generalized as needing assistance, rather than specifying a mean test to clarify who were the deserving candidates.

After NEP has been implemented for twice its expected duration, some argue that because there are poor families in rural areas, NEP should continue. The argument is misleading. If it is the government intention to help the poor, it does not mean that the government should extend such assistance to others who happen to belong to the same community as the rural poor. The poor families in the rural areas are not only Malays. Assistance to poor families should not be restricted to Malays only. It is most ridiculous that in the name of helping rural Malays, the urban rich Malays who should not be the target beneficiaries hijacked the lion shares of such funds. Indeed, through the approach adopted by UMNO in the NEP mode of assisting the Malays, the poor got poorer while those who had connection became fabulously rich.

NEP was a program initiated by the late Tun Razak to delink race with occupation or economic activities. Before the advent of NEP, some 75% or more of civil servants belong to Malays. Now, there were less than 1,000 non-Malays in the civil services numbering around a million. Civil service is now an extension of UMNO. So NEP as implemented only made the situation worse than it was before.

NEP as implemented was more discriminatory than that provided under article 153. Tun Razak could have considered that after NEP has run its 20-year course, there would be no relevance for Article 153, since Malays would no longer be required to be identified as a group who needed special care, like an endangered species. Tun Razak might have the prescience that 20 years was the upper limit for a racial divisive policy before more harms set in, like a sick person consuming poison as cure. NEP has now been in force for 40 years. In addition to making the country polarized by race, it has become a failed state having Myanmar as its peer. Najib would be in denial if he does not recognize that NEP has converted Malaysia into a secret society with the civil service accounting for the largest membership. No modern government in the world has sunk to the position as Malaysia where all its institutions fail to perform their function. The personnel in these institutions are there to use their position for personal gains, in addition to being a financial burden for the state. It is a poetic justice that though Malays were able to exert unfair advantage over non-Malays, they suffer eventually in living in a low income country where their efforts do not earn them a decent standard of living because the government is presiding over a failed state. The moral hazards arising from the belief that their livelihood is the responsibility of the government make Malays believe that a large family earns Malays more political power. But until some members become UMNOPutras, they have to bear the consequence of large family and low income.

Nobody would deny the government its intention and actions to help the poor, but it is certainly against civility and moral ethics that people who bear the racial or religious characteristics of the poor should avail of assistance given to the poor. Indeed the politicians who fought in the name of the poor would not declare that they would not partake in the programmes for the poor. These politicians were the first to enrich themselves on behalf of the rural poor. It is ridiculous that government should have formulated policies to make Malay rich richer, such as the AP scheme while the poor non-Malays have to subsidize the rich Malays. The 7% discount given to Malays on house purchase while non-Malays pay the full price is a classic example of how UMNO government was good at implementing perverted policy.

The 30% target of Malays participation in commerce and industries was never written in the New Economic Policy. It was only listed as a memorandum as what Tun Razak perceived as an example of Malays’ participation in commerce and detaching race with economic function. Razak could not have considered that Malays would run amok just because they collectively own less than 30% of equity share capital. If it was so, riots could not have limited to one occasion in 1969.

The succeeding governments after Razak took equity share capital in limited companies as proxy for Malays participation in business. Since 1970s all newly listed companies were required by law to provide 30% of its share capital to Malays. There are certainly Malay companies which have more than 30% share capital themselves, if not wholly owned by Malays. As the companies listed in stock exchange before 1970 account for at most 10% of the total current market capitalization, Malays equity share in the limited companies have already accounted for more than 30%, if they have retained their shares in the companies. Najib mentioned that many Malays have cashed in on the shares. Even if that was so, Malays who sold their shares could have used their proceeds to undertake other investments. The government should not insist that Malays after having taken their cake should still see them on the table. It is illogical for the government to insist that Malays should have 30 % share capital in limited companies when it did not restrict Malays selling their shares which were offered to them to achieve the NEP target. Indeed, even by 1990 Malays had been issued 30% shares at its 1990 value, and NEP should have stopped then. It is most unreasonable to insist that NEP should continue just so that Malays would attain 30% share, if they had not done so, when the shares of 30% issued to Malays after 1990 was beyond what was envisaged by Tun Razak, and yet the government still insist that Malays should own 30% of the amount 20 years later than the target date of 1990.

Mamakthir claim that if Malays are not united under UMNO, they will lose political power and be worse that Malays in Singapore. One Singaporean Malay said that if they had the same treatment as Malays in Malaysia, they would become malas and manja. He should have added that they would also be living in a poor country, like in Malaysia.

The non-Malays were accommodating to allow assistance to be extended to the relatives of the poor rather than the poor themselves. The relatives of the poor insist now that they should continue to have government assistance to become rich when the poor remain poor. And worse, they now think that just because they have the number, they can call the minority group pendatang, and with that distinction, they now have a special rights, not recognized by the constitution.