THE KERALA SNAKE IS BACK WITH A VENGEANCE

THE KERALA SNAKE'S IS BACK WITH A VENGEANCE

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said.

“I believe that the Malays and Bumiputeras should not be sidelined,” he said.

“We should do all we can to help them together with the Chinese and Indians,” Anwar told reporters He said, however, that fighting for Malay supremacy to enrich a small number of Malays while a larger section of the community were still in deplorable condition, was unacceptable.On the remark by former Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Zaid Ibrahim recently that the Malay supremacy concept had failed, Anwar said, the statement should be studied by all. Has ever a non-Muslim group objected to the building of a Mosque and called it a 'desecration' of a non-Muslim place of worship? If Islam is the religion of the federation, it cannot be said to be the religion of Sabah. So why is Islam being the 'big bully' and forced down people's throats? Surely this leads to unnecessary division in a society which enjoyed harmonious relations between the races and religions until Malay Islam reared its ugly head.

the latest posting in Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad’s blog, in which he criticised non-Malays for asking for more concessions from state policies.

In response to these demands, the current Prime Minister has liberalised rules pertaining to equity ownership in some services’ sub-sectors and promised to set up a scholarship based purely on merit, beginning from next year.

Mahathir has found all these to be unacceptable, as they are tantamount to the government helping the relatively better off non-Malays taking even more from the relatively poorer Malays.

To substantiate his point, he went on to assert that non-Malays now own around 50 per cent of the share capital while Malays own only 20 per cent, far from the target set in the New Economic Policy of 30 per cent.

I find Mahathir’s arguments to be objectionable on 3 grounds. Firstly, quite apart from the accuracy of his statistics on share ownership according to ethnic group, his focus on this particular issue is a case of wrong priority.

I see this massive furore over Tun M's article Kaki Dalam Kasut. The very blunt Khoo Kay Peng responded almost instantaneously and held no punches back. I can see where the both of them are coming from. Tun being a realist; while the very intelligent KKP, in my opinion, is sometimes too much of an idealist.

Hey, no offence KKP. You are one of the better guys around. And I tabik you for your style.

I know I am gonna be getting a whole lot of stick for being on the side of dear old Tun. And 2 days in a row at it. But, truth be told, Tun had just spoken the truth.

The Malays are in power but the Chinese are in control of this country. Why? Because the elitist Malays who are in power are whores to wealth. How many among the 'elite' Malays in the corridors of power truly have their heart for the people or even the Malays? And how many of these Malays in the corridors of power aren't at where they are for money, money and money?

The Chinese know this. And they also know that they do not have the numbers to create among them a Prime Minister. The Chinese are realists. They are survivors. Realising that it is not possible for them to form the government, they instead find ways to control the government. People say that the Jews and the Chinese are the smartest - and if you asked me, I say they probably think alike too. The Chinese in Malaysia control the Malaysian government the way the Jews control the US government. Something new? Think about it.

To the Chinese, and this must be the worst kept secret, the Malays in power are lazy and greedy. Easy money. Easy money. And with this knowledge, the Chinese gets their way by providing financial support for Mr. Malay. Patronage. I help put you up there, you take care of me. Then we plunder together. Since Mr. Malay is too lazy to do the actual dirty work to earn the money, he will always need the Chinese to earn him his dough. Some of you call this cronyism. But this is not cronyism. The Chinese call this playing it smart.

Count me the number of Chinese in Malaysia's top 10 richest. Extend that to the top 100. Do you think it's easy to get that many projects with that many zeros in value? The Gohs, the Tans, and the Yeohs are the ones who truly decide where the country is heading. They come up with a master plan and their toy boy Menteri finds ways to implement them. This is how it is done, not the other way. Malaysia is not planned based on Kementerian wanting to this and then implement. Those with interests come up with the plan. The Menteri simply gets paid. Who looks like the real masters here?

We all know, and I am sure Mahathir himself, too that shares and even properties of high value in urban areas are owned only by a small proportion of the total population. This is true of all communities, not just in Malaysia, but in countries all over the world, including the USA and Japan.

For the bulk of the population, share ownership is far removed and irrelevant to their lives.

Their concern is with obtaining a just return to their efforts and labour, i.e. with egalitarianism.

Instead of focusing his concern on how wealth and income can be redistributed from the upper strata of all communities to the lower strata of all ethnic groups, Mahathir chose instead to concentrate on redistributing wealth from one socio-economic elite group to another. Precisely because of this misplaced priority, the pattern of wealth and income distribution for the country as a whole, and for the Malays in particular, has gotten worse over the years.The Malays have been enriched in the past couple of decades but only a select few truly benefits from it. That's because the Chinese have created a 'structure' where the ultimate wealth will flow among the Chinese. Let's take an example of a construction project. The government allocates RM100 million to build a road. The Menteri and his cronies award the project to a Bumi company. The Menteri and his thieves take a 15% cut. The Bumi company keeps 5% of the project value. The project is then ali-baba-ed to some Chinese sub-contractors. (Tun said "Mungkin semua ini disebabkan kesalahan orang Melayu sendiri. Mereka tidak guna peluang yang disediakan bagi mereka".)

The wholesale adoption of neo-liberal policies, such as the privatisation of massive infrastructural projects to cronies; the increasing reliance on indirect taxes, which are regressive, as a source of governmental revenue; and shrinking the role of the state sector as a provider of public goods, has led in part to this rising inequality.

What is worse, and this is my second objection, Mahathir’s resort to using very strong ethnic underpinnings in his argument may well lead to further ethnic division and contradictions. I would have thought that as a former Prime Minister of 22 years, he would have made it his utmost priority to promote the core values of socio-economic egalitarianism, inter-ethnic co-operation and communitarian togetherness.

It would seem that this is not the case, which is indeed most disappointing. The Chinese sub-contractors on the other hand no longer sub it down. They share the balance of RM80 million among Chinese businessmen via provision of labour, materials, freight, and what is and what not.

This 'sharing' is made possible because the Chinese have extended their interests in all forms of businesses in this country. And we all know how much the Cina Ah Peks don't trust the Malays in doing jobs for them. Heck, they don't even trust the Malays to deliver ordered raw materials. You can't really blame them when the Malays have such poor track records. So where did the wealth ultimately end up with. You heard me right, the circles of Chinese. And a vicious circle is thus created.

And this is where Tun gets frustrated. The Chinese will not change a system that treats them even better than an open market. Whenever the Malays try to come up with a new system, the Chinese will manipulatively re-invent and send the lazy Malays back to square one. The Chinese will fight to maintain status quo. In no part of the transaction do they lose a single sen. The portion 'retained' by the Malays is not even their profit. It's the public's money, stupid - the project has been awarded at a price much higher than that in a free market. The net profit may also even be higher than that in a free market.

Finally, Mahathir, like many others who take the racial approach, has taken the simplistic and unscientific assumption that all communities are monolithic and homogenous in socio-economic terms, when in fact they are far from so. All the ethnic communities in Malaysia are class stratified.

The Malays, as much as the Chinese and the Indians, are all stratified into different income groups, with the rich making up only a small percentage of the total. The bulk of the Chinese, like the bulk of the Malays and the Indians, are relatively poor. Over the years, these labouring Malaysians have found monetary returns to their labour unable to catch up with the rising cost of living. In real terms, all of them have suffered.

Mahathir’s thoughts and efforts should be on how governmental policies can be better designed to alleviate their economic sufferings and not resort to pursuing racist arguments in support of one group of the rich elite. Reorienting his priorities will go a long way towards helping the nation attain equality, social justice and inter-ethnic harmony.the Chinese have no social ethics. Sure they did not ask for grant or subsidy, but they damn well manipulated the system. Too bad that they are too smart!

You just have to give it to them. The Chinese are street smart, hard working, entrepreneurial and most important of all, they are realists.

So yes, the Chinese controls the nation and wealth of the country like what Tun said. He is not senile la. And to proof that even further, lets compare the wealth of Malays and Chinese based on categories; apple to apple.

Tun's super rich sons. What do you expect? Which man do not first enrich himself and his family first? This is human's nature. In which country does this not exist? Look at the US. The elites are always wealthy. Just that they don't to it that obviously. So, maybe Tun was not very subtle with his boys' wealth. But that's how it is. This is the real world. To me, it's a foregone conclusion that the leader(s) will take. But I only hope that they make sure that they do their job in leading the nation. The country must benefit from his leadership. And this I think Tun M did. He built Malaysia. No questions about that. Badawi on the other hand, took way much more in a much shorter time and gave nothing back in return. As to you struggling to make ends meet, your destiny is in your own hands..

EDITED BY TAXIDRIVER

By Dr. Toh Kin Woon is a Research Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Kyoto and former State Executive Councillor, Penang