MGG Pillai Commentary View

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Racism and religious fundamentalism in a multiracial state

The armed forces cannot understand why non-Malays do not want to be soldiers, sailors, airmen. A half-hearted, half-baked attempt to recruit them fails dismally. The armed forces brass cannot understand why. But the non-Malay knows what the brass professes not to. They are not welcome. The armed forces are so structured that it benefits the Malay. The non-Malay gets into a few technical branches, with the proviso that he faces a glass ceiling very early in his career. If he is an officer, he must suffer the indignity of having to salute the man he trained as an officer because Malay officers are speedily spread through the ranks while the non-Malay plods on to his glass ceiling. So, what we get in the end is not a professional army but an army in which the non-Malay is told in no uncertain terms he is a washout, especially when he is not.

There is only provision for one non-Malay major general and a couple of brigadier generals. It is policy that race, not competence, dictates one's progress in the armed forces. The multiracial character of the armed forces at independence was based on the premise that the most competent would reach the top. With a largely Malay army, it was assumed that most would reach the top would be Malays, but the non-Malay would have a fighting chance. However, over the years, especially after 1965 and as a matter of course after the 13 May 1969 racial riots, the non-Malay was sidelined. In the early 1970s, in the first flush of the New Economic Policy, recruitment into the police and armed police was denied the non-Malay. In the early 1970s, only half a dozen non-Malays joined the police force. Even fewer were recruited into the armed forces.

Thirty years later, it is a political problem. The armed forces, and the police, is almost wholly Malay, as is the civil service. The promised fairplay for the non-Malay is a pipe dream. A quote is in place. It began, oddly enough in the education service. When the last expatriate, an advisor to the service, retired under the Malaysianisation scheme in 1965, UMNO and the Malay officers insisted that his successor ought to be a Malay, not the one next in line, a Jaffna Tamil. Tun Hamdan Sheikh Tahir, as he is known now, was way down the pecking order, but he was picked to succeed the retiring expatriate. The man who should have been just withdrew into his shell, and stayed on until his retirement a few years later. That became the norm. After the 1969 riots, it was official policy that the non-Malay be put in his place. Their roles in the heirarchy is a token, only or two Indians and Chinese allowed into the upper reaches. I know of some many civil servants and armed forces officers who were assistants to those they had trained when they joined.

This is in every institution of government. There is the token judge from each community in the High Court, Court of Appeal and the Federal Court. The Federal Court does not have its token Indian judge, and the recent public squabble between Judge Gopal Sri Ram and Judge R.K. Nathan had, at its roots, a bit of this. Not only here. Look at the cabinet. One Indian minister, half a dozen Chinese ministers, and none in a policy making ministry. A policy framed in the early 1970s now come to haunt the government. When the non-Malay involvement in the affairs of government is necessary to ensure the BN remains in control, there is none. The BN needs the Chinese vote to offset the sharp decline in Malay support, but the Chinese vote is not sanguine to supporting BN. Hence the calls for non-Malays to join the armed forces, the police, the civil service.

It would not make any difference. Not when there exists in every ministry and department a small group of Malay and Muslim loyalists out to ensure it is not sullied by non-Muslims. When a non-Malay is brought in, they protest. When he is promoted, they protest. When he is given a task that they feel should have gone to them, they protest. When the deputy in any department is a non-Malay, and the head goes on leave, his duties does not go to the deputy but to the third in line, a Malay. Recently, in an in-service course for Malaysian ambassadors, of the 30 who came, harly ten per cent were non-Malays. When tokenism is the BN key to multiracial fairness, the non-Malay goes into the institutions of state only when he has no other choice. But when a service is inhibited by those of one race, with an ingrained policy of ensuring those of another race are confined in a straitjacket in a cul de sac, something must give. As now.

The BN would not address this. It has lost the Malay ground, so it cannot confront the Malay racist and Islamic fundamentalist who wants to a government peopled by one race and one religion. This has ramifications the BN and UMNO politician now begins to fear, but they cannot react or reverse the trend without damaging themselves. When the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, declared Malaysia to be an Islamic state, he pandered to this irredentist trend, and made the case for a multiracial Malaysia even weaker. There is now in Malaysia four or five distinct nations papered together with a none-too-subtle forced multiracialism in a decidedly racist state. When the citizen decides his future is hopeless and the government leaves him in the lurch, he looks elsewhere. Those who decide to fight it out, in the belief as a citizen he must, he becomes a silent opponent of the regime. This is not only amongst the non-Malay but increasingly amongst the Malay as well.

Can the government reverse the trend? I doubt if it could. The rot has set in too deep, the laws changed so dramatically that recourse to the courts is all but impossible, the deliberate self-serving impotence of the non-Malay parties in the National Front coalition, makes it difficulty. The law is reduced so recourse to the courts is denied as an administrative measure. If you were to buy a house from a housing developer, you finance him with progress payments, and if he should not honour his commitment, the best you can do is to whistle for the money. In an amendment to the housing developers' act, he is barred from seeking redress in the courts. If the government detains you under the Internal Security Act, and the minister deems it fit you should be detained for two years, you are barred from seeking redress from the courts. The minister's decision cannot be challenged. And it multiplies. Ad infinitum. The government is not interested in resolving it, only to tighten the laws so it cannot be challenged. Especially when it is wrong.

But a clash is coming, which would shake the Malaysian nation to its roots. Sabah and Sarawak, with a strong Christian minority (Roman Catholicism in Sabah, and the Protestant religions in Sarawak), and deep sense of centrifugal hurt, begins to come to the fore. The more so when UMNO insists that these two states shold always be governed, if not by UMNO than by UMNO-friendly Muslims. This blatant attempt at power grabbing has got the non-Muslim native in a flux. The Chinese in the two states have a worldview different from that of West Malaysia. The Peninsular Malaysian is viewed as an object of domination, not helped by the arrogance of the Peninsular Malay there. The political decisions and policies of the past would be tested in the future when the architects of that are long gone. Already, the young Malaysian, of all races and religions, are out of touch with the rulers, who do not understand why they are not grateful for what the government had done for them. It is not that they are grateful but that what is given them with one hand is taken away, with interest, by the other. And they cannot accept a government that governs in capriciousness and with intent to punish.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my