Racism is good for you...so says UMNO!

Racism alive and well in Malaysia? Of course it is! You must be in denial if you think otherwise. Anywhere you go, whatever you do, however hard you try to shake it off, everywhere you turn…..RACISM will be there! In education, at work, in the civil service, the Police, the Armed Forces, the Banks, the Insurance companies, in business, in the hospitals…every where you look, racism is there covertly or overtly doing its dirty work of dividing the people of Malaysia. And it is so because the largest political organization in this country, namely UMNO, lives and swears by it for their very survival. Without Malay supremacy UMNO is dead meat. UMNO’s Ideology?

 

Malay nationalism.

Malay supremacy. 

Now it cannot get clearer than that can it? UMNO believes in the supremacy of the Malay race. And if Pakatan Rakyat or any of you believe all this talk about 1Malaysia and Malaysia being for the other races too …then you are all in denial!

Maybe one day in the distant future racism will be an ugly phase in our nation’s history. Maybe twenty years from now  an enlighten government will be in Putrajaya and documents will show UMNO’s complicity in the systematic and endemic importation of hundreds and thousands of Indonesians into Malaysia to bolster the electoral chances of UMNO!

A sober analysis of other government documents will also show that UMNO encouraged non-Malays to emigrate overseas in mistaken belief that they pose a threat to the Malays and also to diminish their numbers as against the Malays.

But that will be for future government to uncover - for now racism is real. 

And the people at the wrong end of this ugliness are the non- Malays. What would damm UMNO is that at no time were these non-Malays ever a threat to national security of Malaysia and if a referendum were to be taken it would show that all this was done much against the wishes of the Malays themselves.

But the wishes of the people were overruled by the UMNO politicians who were motivated by racism and political opportunism – and led by Mahathir. By the time the mass immigration of Indonesians came into effect there really was no need to bolster UMNO’s political vote bank because UMNO already had the ability to do what it wants in Malaysia.

UMNO had the numbers  to enact, amend or dismiss any legislation it chooses. The NEP enacted after the May 13 riot effectively stifle any dissent from any quarters and entrenched the Malays as the Sons of the Soil – Bumiputra - empowering them with enough privileges in all things Malaysians to effectively ensure their dominance in Malaysia – so it seemed.

So this begs the question – why then did Mahathir went ahead with this plan to bolster the already overwhelming Malay numerical strength with further immigration not of skilled people, but of workers and labourers that brought  with them social problems and wreck havoc on the very fabric of the Malaysian society already in place?

First Mahathir found it necessary to bring in these immigrants to try and shore up Malay numbers in constituencies where non - Malays were already settled in numbers. For example there was a plan to increase the Malay numbers in Penang – and DSAI was fully aware of this from the very start.     

Mahthir did so in spite of being in a coalition with political entities that represented ethnic groupings in these areas and fully knowing that the end game was to overwhelm even his coalition partners in the constituency they then controlled! 

Mahathir saw these newly arrived immigrants as an insurance for UMNO’s future. To be used to UMNO’s advantage when the time warrant its usage. Meantime these immigrants were working at menial jobs, living in wretched condition. Eventually these Indonesian were dispersed into our society and in the process they brought with them what any unskilled workers and labourers would bring with them: stress into the local populace resulting in much unwanted social evils such as an increase in crimes etc. etc.

What UMNO has put at stake by this deliberate policy or encouraging racism is destroy the Malaysian tradition of shared commitment by all the races to live together in peace and harmony. At the zenith of Mahathir’s power our Malaysian society was becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, more polarized along racial lines and the other races were becoming more alarmed by Ketuanan Melayu. The Malays were artificially made to be more conscious of racial difference – that the Chinese were taking everything that by right belonged to the Malays – and as a result of all this, everyone became increasingly preoccupied with political representation over racial line in order to protect their own ethnic interest.

What should had happened over time is that the various divides of culture and racel should have become more porous or eventually even collapse as the population gravitate towards 1Malaysia. This did not happened.

What happen instead is that UMNO used race and religion to divide and rule between the Malays and the non-Malays. UMNO seized upon these differences and used them as ideological beachheads to police and contain the various races and limit opposition political discourses (through use of the ISA)     

    

What dominated the political landscape was Ketuanan Melayu and the use of Islam for their own ends. PAS and UMNO were trying to outdo each other as being more Islamic then the other. When all else failed for UMNO in Kelantan and Trengganu UMNO stopped the flow of petrol ringgits into Kelantan and Trengganu. The fact that it was the Malays that suffered from these selective disbursement of the nations wealth was never something that mattered to UMNO.

And the result of all this is the Malaysia we have today. Race and religion defines political parties. Race and religion defines political policies and activities. Race and religion isolates Malays from the others and in places, Malays from Malays. So the irony of it all is that not only is racism alive and well between the races, but racism even divides the Malays. 

And in the middle of all this is UMNO – the catalyst of this divide. It sees racism as the cure all for its problems  - not the elimination of racism it but the use racism to promote political divide amongst the people of Malaysia so that they will be that much easier to manipulate for UMNO’s advantage. That is why racism is alive and well – UMNO needs it to survive and prosper!