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.

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.