We Always Talk About Unity We Have To Prove This Agong

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We were kampung kids, relatively poor but naively happy with our lot. We absorbed each other’s social expressions and traits. We were cultural hybrids. Race, religion and class didn’t matter – until May 1969 when we lost our innocence
The kampung kinship I knew may still exist today. Drive through the old country, drop by the kedai, graze at the medan selera, you’ll see we get along very well indeed
But burrow deeper, you’d feel a vacuum in how we understand our respective life priorities and the means to achieve our goals
The sense that all is not well lingers as politicians, past and present, continue to divide and spawn demagoguery with impunity

Such is our weakened kinship that the 16th Yang Di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah (above) feels apprehensive Malaysians will ever gather as one people, at least not during his five-year term
One would not be wide of the mark to think the 59-year-old Agong could be alluding to the dissonant words and deeds of politicians, and their racialised rhetoric as they scheme to regain or maintain power in the next general election
Malaysiakini readers’ reactions were unsurprising. A Malaysian emigrant (‘Anonymous_1544340881’) wrote: “… the rulers are very well respected by the populace, especially the Malay Muslims. The words of the rulers, especially the reigning King, carries a lot of weight and moral authority … the PH government after the last 20 years of serious mismanagement of the country is too weak to do it themselves.”Indeed, in spite of its reformist election manifesto, Pakatan Harapan is showing signs that Ketuanan Melayu imperatives will ultimately frame its socioeconomic programmes to stave its supporters from returning to the Umno-PAS camp
What’s holding the country together, ironically, is Article 153 of the Constitution that grants the Yang di-Pertuan Agong responsibility to “safeguard the special position of the Malays and natives of any of the States of Sabah and Sarawak and the legitimate interests of other communities."Structural racism is so integral to Malaysian realpolitik that it has become normalised. Here lies the non-Malay dilemma: question Article 153 and trigger racial repercussions or yield and live with the institutionalised discrimination
Reasonable Malaysians would rationalise that affirmative action is justifiable and morally right in the right circumstances, for instance, to redeem historical injustices suffered by minority groups, and to address systemic discrimination of gender, ethnicity, and caste in the workplace and tertiary education sector
Indefinite affirmative action programmes for the numerically and politically dominant Malay population, however, have long caused simmering discontent among the minority non-Malays who are generally resigned to the political realities of living and prospering in Malaysia if they have fairer access to socioeconomic and tertiary education opportunities
Painful lessons from May 1969 underscore the perceptible acceptance that all are better off in a politically stable environment. Skirmishes among the Malays do no one any good, especially for non-Malays, who would proverbially be crushed in between. Gajah sama gajah berjuang, pelanduk mati di tengah (When elephants contest, the mousedeer dies in between)
To date, political patronage and rent seeking have compromised the original goals of the decades old New Economic Policy “to eradicate poverty” among the Malays and “restructure society to eliminate the identification of race with economic function in order to create the conditions for national unity”
Former Director of the Centre for Public Policy Studies, Lim Teck Ghee (above) and foreign observers have written on this thorny issue. The main difficulty is obtaining and crunching the data to show empirical evidence that the NEP has or has not achieved the targeted 30 percent Bumiputera equity ownership, and relative poverty alleviated, which should consequently cast affirmative action programmes to the back burner
One of the indices of income inequality is the Gini coefficient with 1.0 showing maximum inequality. In Malaysia, the Gini coefficient had declined from 0.513 in 1970 to 0.40 in 2016. This, however, does not necessarily mean that inequality within racial groups has declined, according to an economic analyst
The current threat to political stability is a perceived economic disparity within the Malay community, which becomes more complex if the orang asli and numerous Bumiputera sub-groups in Sabah and Sarawak are added to the equation. Political scientist James Chin noted these key challenges facing Malaysia post-GE15. Likewise, economist Lee Hwok-Aun deliberated in a lengthy paper on the “imperatives, compromises and challenges” of the race-based policies
Much also has been written on adjusting the ethnic-based affirmative action system with merit and need-based programmes, which is unlikely given the entrenched vested interests by the Umnoputras, the main beneficiary group of the NEP. Will the Umno base give up their special position and privileges? One would think not
Hence, public expectations of what the PH leadership can achieve over the next four years are reportedly limited, given the colossal task of delivering its promise of fundamental reforms to the system, particularly in gradually phasing out affirmative action, while reconciling the different ethnic-based interests of its coalition partners and appeasing its Malay base
Nonetheless, given the rakyat’s capacity to confront and reject corrupt leadership as in the GE14, that day will come when the politics of possibilities will see the system rebooted, the cache cleared of kakistocrats and replaced with more liberal thinkers and progressive democrats
As the Agong urges: “We are in the same boat and we cannot afford to have citizens who are not united. We always talk about unity ... we have to prove this (unity).”ERIC LOO is a Senior Fellow (Journalism) at the School of the Arts, English & Media, Faculty of Law, Humanities & Arts, University of Wollongong. He is also the founding editor of Asia Pacific Media Educator. - Mkini

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