Malay Dominance and the half-way house to Valhalla CHIAROSCURO
MGG Pillai

For the last 30 years, after the post-May 13 emergence of Malay Dominance, Malaysian politics in effect was Malay politics plus. It would have worked if the non-Malay partners in the ruling coalition had held their ground and did not allow themselves to be satraps of the Umno that dominated it.

This policy is called by various names, the most acceptable the New Economic Policy (NEP). What made it easy was the MCA's inexplicable decision to pull out of the Alliance after the opposition grained ground in the non-Malay constituencies in the 1969 general elections. It was Malay Dominance that henceforth would rule. When the MCA returned to office it accepted the fait accompli, and explaining away its importance by sacking those who who question it. The MIC, then as now, is an occasional bit player, a joker which knows not, nor cares, what it does.

This policy is called by various names, the most acceptable the New Economic Policy (NEP). What made it easy was the MCA's inexplicable decision to pull out of the Alliance after the opposition grained ground in the non-Malay constituencies in the 1969 general elections. It was Malay Dominance that henceforth would rule. When the MCA returned to office it accepted the fait accompli, and explaining away its importance by sacking those who who question it. The MIC, then as now, is an occasional bit player, a joker which knows not, nor cares, what it does.

Education frees the mind. UMNO's raison d'etre in 1946, at its founding is not UMNO's in 2001. The compact which UMNO had with MCA and MIC before independence cannot be sustained if it is not nurtured and kept alive. The riots of May 1969 changed the government's orientation to decidedly one of Malay Dominance. That works so long as the other races do not question it, and the Malays accept UMNO's hegemony.

The ostensible focus was to reassert Malay Dominance, but it also criticised the UMNO government and by extension its role in the presumed Malay plight. But it had great latitude. Some speakers, if they had spoken on opposition platforms, would have experienced soon enough of what the inside of a prison cell would look like. Some remarks about the Malay was as racist as can be.

Singapore therefore extols meritocracy, the survival of the fittest, as its worldview. In Malaysia, in its policy of affirmative action for the Malay, it eschews it. In Singapore, the Malay must fit into this meritocratic worldview, the government prepared to nudge the Malay along but not to mollycoddle. In Malaysia, Malay Dominance, the "ketuanan Melayu", would go the window if meritocracy is set to work. The Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, no less, has said so in so many words.

The PPP fire dimmed permanently, its carcass taken over by dismissed MCA leaders but it never got a seat to contest even in its once-stronghold of Ipoh. In the 1969 general election, a coalition it led under SP won half the seats in the Perak state assembly, as the Gerakan-led coalition in Selangor, that led the move to "ketuanan Melayu" (Malay Dominance" of Tun Abdul Razak. In the revolving door leadership that followed they came into the public eye when its president made a dato' or appointed a former president became a bankrupt. This is not the kind of background that would the Indians proud that it has a new deputy minister.

But that is not enough. It should be thoroughly discussed, not in the context of UMNO or Malay Dominance but how it would mesh in with a multiracial society. Not just by politicians but by interested parties and discussed in the context of a multiracial Malaysia. It can be. It should be. The broad agreement must be fleshed out, and that can only come with open debate and discussion.

So, whether Malaysia is multiracial and diversified rests not with the non-Malays but with the Malays. It is they who holds the reins of power. If they look upon every call for fair play as sedition and treachery, Malaysia heads for a difficult future. The New Economic Policy was to narrow the wide economic differences between the Malays and non-Malays, but built into it was Malay Dominance. The non-Malay parties in the then Alliance government gave up the ghost after the 13 May 1969 riots, and stupidly, on reflection, withdrew to allow UMNO to do as it wanted. This Malay Dominance holds so long as the Malays are behind UMNO and the Chinese are there to prop it up. This Chinese support is in doubt. The Prime Minister therefore panders to Malay chauvinism to keep UMNO and him in control. Within his government, none would question him. Not in fear but in nonchalant anger that the end is at hand. Which is why when the Prime Minister makes racist statements and demands, few in UMNO take him seriously.

The Chinese walked into this Malay cultural and political confusion. Like now. There were other variants to this, one of which is Malay Dominance, which became the cornerstone of future governments, and one which is challenged now.

But it was this sticking to the forms, while the Chinese community began a rear-guard action to change the concords agreed to at independence, strengthened by UMNO anger at the significant Chinese community's sympathy and support for Indonesia during the Confrontation. The hartal in 1967 in Penang, to protest at the removal of English as an official language, set the pace to remove the Tengku and keep the Chinese in place. The Labour Party's funeral procession of a shot activist during the election campaign, and the Alliance's poor showing, led to the May 13 riots. The official version is challenged, as public documents, especially in those released in foreign countries of diplomatic reports of the moment, suggest the collusion of the then deputy prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and in which the two stalking horses for the Tengku was one Dr Mahathir and the former mentri besar of Selangor, Dato' Harun Idris. It provided UMNO to stage a coup against the Alliance, to ensure that Malay Dominance would dictate the future Malaysian governments. The New Economic Policy, with its pro-Malay economic and political objectives, was pushed through, with neither the MCA nor MIC challenged; the MCA president, Tun Tan Siew Sin, resigned from the cabinet amidst the riots, and that marginalised ever since both MCA and MIC in future governments. Tun Razak, as sharp a political operator as the Tengku, effectively sidelined the MCA, first be removing from it the portfolios of finance and of commerce and industry, and then encouraging the split within it with the appointment of Dr Lim Kheng Yaik, now Dato' Seri and in the cabinet, then a leading figure in the reform-minded Chinese Unity Movement against the MCA leadership. The then deputy prime minister, Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, described the MCA, rightly, as "neither dead nor alive".

Last year, when the Prime Minister, opening the MCA convention, talked of a Chinese prime minister in the Malaysia of the future, he raised a sensitive racial issue. But it raised no eyebrows, even if the statement would have questioned both Malay Rights and Malay Dominance. So, why is UMNO Youth so incensed when an MCA politician and business partner of the Prime Minister's sister-in-law question the practice of Malay Rights as practiced? The National Front, before the November 1999 General Election, agreed to consider the Chinese organisations's electoral propsals. So why does UMNO Youth use this to manufacture this crisis? Is this yet another "sandiwara" -- the more famous one, in the last two months, is the Grik arms heist -- to enable UMNO to tell its Malay hinterland that they would not allow a diminution of Malay Rights under any circumstance? But would not Malay Rights be under attack should, as the Prime Minister envisages, a Chinese prime minister in the future? Where was UMNO Youth when that sentence was made?

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