A divide so hard to bridge

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From the UiTM dispute to the annual matriculation issue, Malaysia seems caught in a loop of racial controversy. But there are those who give us hope. 

THE SPM results are out. So, we can brace now for the annual lament of non-malays who will have top scorer children unable to get places in the public universities’ matriculation programmes.
It’s likely to be worse this year with more students scoring straight As and the number of matriculation places likely to be unchanged.

A Malay politician has already rushed in, telling the Malays who did not do well that they have nothing to worry about.

He is offering places in Giatmara, Mara and several other universities and colleges, promising them free education – and allowances to boot!

This, while other parents who are even willing to hold down two jobs to see their children get an education, are pleading for places. It must be frustrating for these parents.

The race divide in our country is very real.

The majority community and the minorities seem to be living in two different worlds, albeit in the same country. There’s already that controversy about Universiti Teknologi Mara and the parallel pathway programme for training cardiothoracic surgeons.

Despite close to 70 years of independence and more than 100 years of the various races and religions living together, we tend to know – or care – little about each other.

We even see “the other” as a joke to be laughed at, mocked, even bullied.

Take that teacher in Ampang. Four boys had thrown water bottles at each other. It is something quite ordinary – boys will be boys. So will teachers. When we were in school, we did not throw bottles, but teachers threw dusters. And they were unerringly accurate! They did not care about what race we were, that duster would land smack on the forehead of the errant lad.

This teacher in Ampang, though, does not seem so colour blind. He sent the four boys out to stand under the sun – no problem with that – but then called in three of them, reportedly of a different race, after just 15 minutes.

The other boy was left to bake for hours; he suffered a heatstroke and mental health problems. He has now been declared a disabled person and is unable to go back to regular school. The incident happened at the end of April, and as we go into June, we are told that no action has been taken against the teacher.

The boy’s mother, pregnant with another child, is devastated.

There was another mother who was devastated late last year. She had forgotten her two-year-old child and left the toddler in her car while she went about her work. That was on Nov 8. The grief-stricken mother was charged in court on Dec 22. It took the cops just a month and a half to charge a mother who had accidentally left her child in a hot car.

But the Ampang case was not an accident. It was malicious, as far as reports go. Yet, there seems to have been no real action so far although, according to the Ampang Jaya district police, the probe into the case has been completed and the investigation papers have been referred to the deputy public prosecutor.

What’s worse, the boy was served with warning letters for being away from school while he was getting medical treatment. Did the headmaster know that?

And there is that big question: Was the teacher racist? Was the difference of punishment due to the difference in race?

It should not be. Remember our current Prime Minister’s famous speech about “anak Melayu, anak Cina, anak India, anak Kadazan, anak Iban”? It was Gettysburglike, something we should all hold him to.

There can be no racism in schools. We don’t need people like that teacher in the system. What we could do with are people like Michael Tong Wai Siong.

For the last 16 years, the now 55-year-old has played father to three Malay boys. He first saw one of them when he was a 39-year-old visiting an orphanage in Gombak, Selangor.

The boy, who had learning difficulties, was sitting alone. Tong took him under his wing, putting him through tuition classes to make school easier. He also took the boy home.

Not only that, he also “adopted” the boy’s two brothers who were in a different orphanage.

He raised them as good Muslims, getting them an ustaz for religious classes and even preparing the early morning meals for the boys during Ramadan. It is heartwarming.

There was also Chee Hoi Lan, who was given the Ikon Ibu Sejatikeluarga Malaysia award in 2022. She raised a child who was abandoned at the age of two months by her biological mother, an Indonesian citizen.

Chee, a kindergarten teacher, adopted the child and single-handedly raised her as a good Muslim for 24 years now.

Both Tong and Chee are true Malaysians who understand what multiculturalism is.

I would love it if we could get more such heartwarming stories, especially the other way around. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to also hear of a Muslim who raises a non-muslim child in the religion of his or her birth?

There is also hope in people like 20-year-old Chinese lad Jeremy Wong Jin Wei and 24-year-old Malay-pakistani Zubir Khan.

Wong is Chinese but is as Indian as they come. He loves Tamil movies and Tamil songs and speaks the language fluently. He even has a couple of Indian names he has given himself – Jerogunathan Wongasamy, and Jerthalaiva Wongbeng, his Tiktok moniker.

While Wong may love Tamil songs, Zubir has become a huge Tamil singer with his hit single Macha Macha Nee Ennoda Macha, which garnered 3.5 million views on Youtube in just over five months. He, too, is surrounded by Indian friends.

In a country wracked by apartness, people like Tong, Chee, Wongasamy and Macha Zubir show us one thing – in the midst of all the bleak news, there may yet be hope for our country.

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US seeks selfish gains as China goes all out to curtail coronavirus spread

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Wilbur Ross disgracefully cites coronavirus as American opportunity

https://youtu.be/94CYX10BDVw

Fear of the unknown  

 

Battling epidemic of ignorance

 

Fight the virus, not China:

https://youtu.be/uDdYT1yTQdw

While China marshals a collective effort to combat the outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), some Western countries, led by the US, are seizing the opportunity to stir up trouble and attack China’s system.

The truth is, US system is not nearly as efficient as the Chinese system. The US method of resolving problems is to procrastinate. For example, US President Donald Trump’s administration simply chooses to build a border wall to resolve illegal immigration issues.

Trump wanted to build the wall, but Democrats in the US Congress oppose it. Such a situation leads to procrastination and public complaints. Various interest groups often have different demands and goals on major issues. Thus, the US is often inefficient in resolving problems, including the spread of influenza in the US.

The US always calculates economic cost when responding to public health issues and emergencies. For example, when the wildfires swept across California in 2018, the local government paid inmates only $1 an hour to fight the fires. In many parts of the US, even firefighting has been privatized and handed to profit-seeking corporations. This basic service now depends on how much people can pay. For the Chinese government, people’s safety is top priority. Only by completely eliminating the spread of the virus can the Chinese government fulfill its responsibilities.

The US also tends to hype the human rights issue. The New York Times claimed that China’s lockdown of the city of Wuhan, in Central China’s Hubei Province “would almost certainly lead to human rights violations.”

The statement is immoral and distorts the truth. Essentially, public health issues are not an issue of human rights. There must be efficient prevention and control.

During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the US did not conduct inspections at airports and borders as soon as it could, which failed to contain the spread of the disease. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, people’s houses were damaged by floods and robberies were rampant.

Why didn’t the US talk about human rights then? When facing the challenge of survival, the rights of individuals must be subordinated to the needs of majority. This is the same in both Eastern and Western ethics. When it comes to life and death, we must first solve the problem of survival before considering how to live more comfortably.

Although the US claims to be tolerant of diverse opinions, criticizing China is mainstream political discourse. Whenever something goes wrong in China, many US media outlets and politicians consistently attribute the problem to China’s system.

China is fighting the 2019-nCoV with confidence. However, some remarks emanating from the US are quite negative, a result of Washington’s prejudice, double standards, and binary opposition mind-set.

Some US politicians tend to interpret non-political issues with a political thinking. They are unaware that such problems require global efforts. Certain US accusations against China are morally indecent, which may negatively influence the world’s efforts to jointly address the 2019-nCoV and other similar public health issues.

Attacking China’s system clearly deviates from the general trend in which all countries around the world join hands to cope with public health issues. Such a move reflects that some US politicians lack a conscience and a spirit of self-reflection, especially so when considering the US itself has failed to properly handling similar problems.

While the 2019-nCoV remains so far unchecked, all countries and regions should coordinate and cooperate to cope with the challenges of bringing it under control. The US should pay more attention to exchanging experiences with China to avoid similar outbreaks, rather than politicizing the issue and placing blame.

Tackling the 2019-nCoV requires a systematic approach, and internal and external efforts must be jointly made. China should first handle its internal affairs. In the course of dealing with the epidemic, despite some twists and turns, the country’s general direction is very clear – to defeat the virus and restore public confidence.

This crisis needs a national effort. Relevant policies and resources should be made and allocated step by step, leading to a sustainable and virtuous cycle. This is the fundamental direction we need to respond to outside doubt.

Meanwhile, we should also publicize our fruitful work in an effective way, and inject the international community with more confidence in China’s actions.

China should work with other countries and regions to cope with the 2019-nCoV and make timely and prompt counterattacks against forces with evil intentions. In this way, the world will see which countries are really working on public health issues, and which have ulterior motives. This is also an efficient way to respond to some US politicians’ groundless attacks against China, so that their accusations collapse onto themselves.

The article was compiled by Global Times reporters Li Qingqing and Yan Yunming based on an interview with Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations, China Foreign Affairs University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

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Move away from a culture of mediocrity! Who does Malaysia belong to?

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Mediocre future? If selection at the matriculation level is not based on meritocracy, the quality of our tertiary institutions will be diluted and they will produce only mediocre graduates eventually. — Filepic

Affirmative action should be based entirely on need because a poor Malay student needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor Indian or Chinese student.

THE debate over the intake of students into matriculation colleges in the country is an annual one, just like the offer of government scholarships. I have been a keen follower of this subject for many years and there has never been a year without complaints being made about the selection process.

It is always about top scoring non-Malay students in the SPM examination not being offered places while others with lower grades walk into colleges. This is nothing new in Malaysia, actually.

So why the intense debate now, with leaders from both sides of the political divide openly defending or criticising the quota system applied to the selection?

For those who may not know, the 90:10 (bumiputra:non-bumiputra) quota has been in existence since 2005, according to records. There have been “political adjustments” in the past when more non-Malay students were offered seats, but these were one off actions presumably during election years to woo votes.

One of the reasons for the deluge of criticisms now – some from leaders in the Pakatan Harapan coalition itself – could be due to the new kind of democracy that we expect under the new government.

There have been unverified reports of heated arguments in the Cabinet among ministers, with some defending the policy and others against a quota system that appears to be extremely unfair to Malaysians as they are being deprived of one of their rights in their motherland. Yes, Malaysia is the motherland for most of us and not India or China or Indonesia.

Maybe our government leaders should see the extent of hatred in the social media clips and hate messages that have been circulating expressing the anger, fear and frustrations of non-Malays.

And, of course, some unfairly blame Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, seeing him as the man who started this quota system previously and who is now perpetuating it.

What I gather from media reports and social media is that people feel Pakatan has moved away from its election promise of building a more equitable society that will not deprive any community of fair and equal access to tertiary education.

Hearing this promise, among others, Malaysians placed much hope on Pakatan building a new society for all races. When they see it is not happening, or becoming worse in some instances, they react.

I don’t think it is wrong for every top performing student from the B40 (lower income) category to feel devastated if he or she is deprived of a seat while lower-performing schoolmates are offered places. It makes me wonder if the selection committee has some ulterior motive to create this situation to benefit the opposition.

The matriculation programme, an affirmative action policy, started as a system that was based on wonderful ideals, so most Malaysians did not question its implementation initially. But for some reason, it has come to be regarded as pernicious now, as it appears to benefit only one community.

I believe that this practice has led – whether consciously or not – to excellence being suppressed to the point of creating a culture of mediocrity in many aspects of life. This is not going to change even if another government comes into power as long as the policy is not tweaked to meet the changing world.

OK, the government decided to add another 15,000 seats to the 25,000 given out in an attempt to quell the current outcry. Based on the quota, an additional 1,500 non-bumiputra students will now be given college places. At the same time, there will be another 13,500 bumiputra students added, which means there is a high possibility of the need to take in weak students just to meet the quota.

If this practice goes on, it will continue to dilute the quality of our tertiary institutions, producing only mediocre graduates eventually.

As a result, striving for excellence has become secondary, with some Malaysians feeling it is their right to be given university or college seats, or positions and promotions later, because they belong to one race. This is widely in existence and is being perpetuated despite the new government’s promises.

Winning votes at any cost has become as addiction with our politicians, it seems. Are we going to let their thirst for power destroy our nation?

I do agree that most Malaysians are not ready for an absolute meritocratic society because, as some critics say, it will create reverse discrimination where the majority will lose out to a minority.

But I believe, slowly but surely, the balance has to change for non-bumiputra citizens. After all, we are not asking for what is not ours, only what we deserve.

There is no discrimination when we pay our taxes and our only home is Malaysia. And I am sure the first two lines of our national anthem run deep in our hearts: “Negaraku, tanah tumpanya darahku (My country, for whom I will shed my blood)” are words that most of us carry in our hearts, and we are indeed ready to take up arms to defend the nation from any threat, as shown in the past.

We are in the 21st century now when affirmative action should not be based on a citizen’s skin colour or creed. Affirmative action should be based on one’s need because a poor Malay student needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor Indian or Chinese student.

There are many Malaysians who think that we’ve arrived at a time when affirmative action needs to be dismantled slowly, with a specified time frame given.

But this is a highly contentious issue and the government must tread carefully, as any sudden deprivation will have a strong social reaction.

We should create a belief that a love of learning will gain Malay-sians far more than any affirmative action laws we might pass.

But this change should come from within, as no quota or law can make us realise this. If Malaysians are not willing to work hard and earn their places or positions and instead wait for hand-outs all their lives, we will fail as a nation eventually.

Let’s stop breaking the hearts of Malaysians when it comes to education. All students need a helping hand, irrespective of who they are, as we march onwards towards becoming a respected First World nation.

K. Parkaran

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We can soar with a meritocratic system – Letters

 

Who does Malaysia belong to?

 

Great responsibility: To move forward, we Malaysians have to take responsibility for the destiny of the nation on our own shoulders.

The Federal Constitution does not confer any rights to ‘ownership of the nation based on ethnicity or religion.

TO whom does Malaysia belong to may sound like a hilarious question, but do not overestimate the capacity to which the human mind is used.

Experience and observation will tell you that many of us (sometimes me included), often make a choice of not thinking about things based on facts. Instead, we form conclusions based on conjectures and other people’s uninformed opinions.

So who does Malaysia belong to?

There are many ways of approaching this question. As I often tell the audience in my talks about “thinking”, we have to understand the question first before we can even attempt to seek an answer.

For example, if we think of Malaysia as a politico-legal entity – a “nation” – then it becomes obvious that the question relates to an examination of the legal structure of the nation.

Seeking the answer may lead to further questions. It is no longer a “kedai kopi” kind of discussion where everyone wants to have a say simply because they can make sounds with their mouths. That can be a tiring experience, at least for me.

So when then did the politico-legal entity called “Malaysia” come into being’?

Malaysia was legally born on Sept 16, 1963, when the Federation of Malaya (West Malaysia), Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak formed the larger Federation of Malaysia. About two years later, the Malaysian Parliament passed a Bill to separate Singapore from the Federation. Hence, from 1965, Malaysia is legally made up of what is know today as West and East Malaysia.

Obviously, we do not think that the Federation of Malaysia had come about as a result of some casual social chat between the leaders of the respective states over teh tarik.

There were meetings and discussions back and forth between the parties and they came up with an agreement to join together as the Federation of Malaysia vide the Malaysia Agreement 1963.

Whenever there is an agreement, there are terms and conditions for the parties to abide by. The agreement, however, is not the subject of this article.

When you see Malaysia as a legal entity, you will immediately ask a few other questions: How is Malaysia managed as a nation and who manages it? What are the rights, duties, obligations, and privileges of the “members” of this Federation of Malaysia? What about “non-members” who are present in the Federation?

These kind of questions have to be asked and thought about. We can understand that the “members” refer to the states that make up Malaysia and most of the human beings who live here.

The human beings make up the citizens and the non-citizens and well, some illegal immigrants. Each of these human beings have different legal status in our country.

When we speak of “belong”, we think in terms of ownership, management, rights and privileges. How is it possible to say something belongs to you if you do not own it, or do not have the right to manage it?

Legally, the nation is “owned” by the citizens of the country because they are authorised to “manage” the country and to determine its destiny. The citizens can either bring the nation to a high level of civilisation or bring it down to a failed state.

The basic framework of the rights of the citizens and how the nation is to be managed is provided for in the Federal Constitution, correctly termed by the constitutional law expert Professor Emeritus Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi as the “document of destiny”.

How we interpret the Constitution and if at all we give “life” to the provisions in the Constitution will shape the destiny of the nation. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and it is an extremely important document that every citizen should know.

It is important to note that the Constitution does not confer any rights to “ownership” of the nation based on ethnicity or religion.

Every citizen is equal before the law save for particular laws relevant to particular groups of citizens due to the diverse nature of our citizenry. The Constitution clearly spells out the fundamental liberties that all citizens have a right to enjoy in Part II, and the manner in which the Federation of Malaysia is to be managed in Part IV and VI.

There are also provisions regarding the civil service (Part X), the judiciary (Part IX) and elections (Part VIII), to name a few.

In this regard, therefore, any claims to ownership of the country in terms of religion or ethnicity is therefore not supported by the reality of the law.

It is also a divisive and bigoted perspective which will harm the nation in the long run. In layperson terms, Malaysia legally belongs to all Malaysians and they have equal rights and duties to develop Malaysia and to live in it peacefully.

Do not behave as if the country belongs only to the politicians in power. We should have learnt this lesson by now. Ownership does not come without an effort. You have to protect the nation as how you protect your home or property in accordance with the laws.

If you really think this country belongs to you, then you should not simply be subservient to unjust laws, if any.

You have to challenge it and ensure that it is consistent with the provisions in the Constitution and move your parliamentary representatives to pass just laws that will protect you and develop the nation wholesomely. Ownership comes with real responsibility and not with mere slogans, rhetoric or political speeches.

It is most unfortunate that despite having achieved independence for more than 60 years, there are still many citizens who are ignorant of the Constitution.

This I believe, is largely due to their own apathy and also due to the unfortunate Malaysian culture of taking the politicians to be their teachers.

Hence, political narratives that affront common intelligence are mistaken to be the law by the feeble minded amongst us. We have to move forward and take responsibility for the destiny of the nation on our own shoulders.

 Jahaberdeen M. Yunoos

 

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