Bapa Telur Penyu

COMMENT | Writing of the 12th Malaysia plan, P Ramasamy, one of the few truth speakers in Pakatan Harapan, asked: “Will there be pressure on the part of the Harapan opposition to ensure that the 12MP will not be a repeat of earlier plans?”

While I understand the need to ask this question, it is an unfair question to ask, because as we know, Harapan has always chased the same political high when it comes to the bumiputera question, not to mention the system of governance as BN/PN. To understand this, it is best to revisit Suaram adviser Kua Kia Soong’s piece hereBut really, I have no idea what the real situation of the bumiputera is. I doubt anyone does. I know for a fact that the Orang Asal of this country have a raw deal when it comes to participation and equity but really, their issues are the last thing that the mainstream political class and polity care about.

Nobody really knows beyond a scattering of data points quoted by supporters and detractors, because you cannot have an honest conversation about race in this country. 

We know there have been Umno ministers who said that Malay “rights” to entitlement programmes should remain in perpetuity and we know that opposition political operatives have no real agenda to deal with this question beyond blathering on about needs-based affirmative action.

Indeed Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob has admitted that all those poverty alleviation programmes are carried out by the vast bureaucracy and nobody has any idea about their effectiveness – “… that hitherto many ministries had programmes on poverty alleviation but there was no specific monitoring on their effectiveness.”

Not because monitoring these programmes would mean there would be transparency, but because many of these poverty alleviation programmes were part of the gravy train driven by bureaucrats, political operatives and their various proxies.

Hence all this talk of poverty alleviation especially when it comes to the Malay community is mired in the kind of corruption that plagues the mainstream political establishment. 

This is not to say that people do not need help, but rather the way how the political establishment targets certain groups while allowing the political elites to get away with literal theft, is part of mainstream politics in this country. 

Refer to Kua's piece about Harapan's tackling of the kleptocratic problem in this country.

Accustomed to government handouts

As PSM’s Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj said in 2019 when Harapan was mucking about with the aid given, to of all people fishermen: "If you stop affirmative action for the rich Malays, even the poor Malays would accept it." 

And when Ismail Sabri said this – “Yet, another day, perhaps the religious council will bring zakat relief for the village again, and train the people again. But no one is monitoring. No one shows the way. (The visitors) give courses, give goods, and then leave... in the end everything is a failure. The project fails because there is no specific monitoring.” – we know that non-Malays are not subject to these types of poverty alleviation programmes.

Indeed if we could get one agency to help, that would be manna from heaven.

Beyond the fact that this demonstrates how ineffective these programmes are to the Malay community, it also demonstrates how people have become accustomed to government handouts from various programmes from different ministries, each enabling the current political structure to maintain power through entitlements.

Forget about non-Malay political operatives for a moment. This idea that non-Malays will always find a way to achieve their ambitions in this racist system is mainstream political propaganda. 

They do not need the system; hence the system should reflect the needs of the majority.

This enables corrupt politicians to shape anti-inclusion narratives that receive very little pushback because, to do so, would jeopardise the political power of non-Malays, which over the decades has diminished anyway.

Furthermore, if non-Malays question “privileges”, “rights”, and whatever else the political establishment deems sacred, we are accused of causing disharmony or being seditious or whatever other relics of colonialism that find new use against age-old dissent.

Non-Malays not only have to abide by the odious “social contract”, but we also have to be complicit in it. Non-Malays who deviate from the groupthink, or non-Malay political operatives who attempt to argue otherwise, are vilified by their own, who tell them through various excuses and justifications which boils down to not spooking the Malays.

Only some extremely brave Malays – who understand that it could be worse for them – dare speak up, and most often they are ostracised by the mainstream of their community because the political elites wage a campaign of lies and propaganda against them and they will get no help from non-Malay political operatives.

This is why non-Malay Harapan political operatives were comfortable propping up their Malay partners and reinforcing certain mainstream ideologies over their coalition’s manifesto. 

Now of course, especially for Harapan supporters, blaming former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad for this mess ignores the reality that non-Malay political operatives from Harapan were supporting him.

And all of this is in service of a bunkum policy that has no basis in reality.