By Iqbal Abdullah,
This piece is meant to be read alongside
"An open letter to my Malay friends" published on
Malaysiakini on August 31st, 2012.
Malaysia
is a powerful idea, which is still believed by Malaysians far and wide,
no matter how long they have been away from her. This idea will only
remain a dream if all of us, as Malaysians, do not work together to make
this idea into a reality. This is the reason I am writing this open
letter to my Non-Malay friends.
First of all I would like to
congratulate all my fellow Malaysians on Tanah Melayu's 55th year of
Independence from the British, which finally led to Malaysia's
Independence as a whole.
Like most of you, I too believe Malaysia
is already at a crossroad. What turn we take next, will depend on you,
my dear Non-Malay friends.
You, my dear non-Malay friends, hold a
very important key to deciding Malaysia's future, which without, will
only condemn our Malaysian idea to only an unfulfilled dream.
No matter what other fellow Malaysians who have left think about non-existent opportunities in Malaysia,
Forbes
on the other hand tells us that at least in 2006, within the top 40
wealthiest people in Malaysia, only 10 of them are Malay, or bumiputera.
With or without the "Bumiputera special privileges" they talk so
much about, the top eight of the wealthiest people in Malaysia are
in-fact non-Malays, while the wealthiest of them all is a Chinese.
Our
state of Penang chief minister is a non-Malay. Try and go to any of
these economically successful persons and ask them if they had any lack
of opportunities to succeed. I am pretty sure they will tell you
otherwise.
Economically, my non-Malay friends have always been
ahead. In 1970, the bumiputera only had 2% of the economy, while the
chinese had 33% and the rest were held by foreigners.
After 34 years in 2004, even though the bumiputera makes 60% of the population, economic ownership has only increased to 19%.
Though
we see the advances made by our Malay friends, my non-Malay friends
have gone further ahead: They successfully increased their
ownership of national wealth beyond the 40% mark.
This
hold on the economy by my non-Malay friends have directly or indirectly
limited opportunities available to our Malay friends.
It is
perhaps due to the nature of our non-Malay friends to limit their sphere
of influence to their own race. It is the norm to have "Chinese only"
or "Mandarin required" open position adverts regardless if the job is
only as an IT technician or even a lorry driver.
The fact that
the Mandarin or "becoming Chinese" subjects were not compulsory
requirements in our education doesn't seem lost. Thus economically, our
non-Malay friends have a bigger say to promote changes in Malaysia.
Due
to the bigger economic clout my non-Malay friends have, they are able
to afford a higher level of education not easily accessible to my Malay
friends. It makes sense when we see that 80% of the overseas Malaysians
are non-Malays.
For the Malays, having an opportunity for an
overseas education will most of the time equal to having some sort of
scholarship somewhat, most of the time from the government.
After
55 years of independence, this is somewhat still true. The income
disparity between Malays and non-Malays is still apparent.
Chinese households earn an average of twice more than the Malay household in Malaysia.
It
is then only natural that we need the collective intellectual input of
these high learning non-Malay friends to build our country to further
Malaysia's greatness.
Unfortunately at the same time, Cuepecs
tells us that due to the lack of interest of our non-Malay friends to
help out in the government, in 2012 out of the 1.2 million applications
to work for the government, only 2.1% are from our Chinese friends
(These are only applications, not the number of accepted applications!).
Their
reasons of not joining are because of low pay, and because they want
high ranking positions if they enter the civil service.
Nurul
Izzah, the current MP for Lembah Pantai said "one Malaysian regardless
of race, who has left the country...is a loss to us. They should be here
celebrating, to improve the economy. I detest many people trying to
singularly find out whether they are Malays, Chinese or Indians."
My
sentiments too exactly. Race is a non-issue. Unfortunately, this is not
shared by my non-Malay friends. In a 2006 opinion poll by the Asia
Foundation found out that a majority of the Chinese correspondents put
ethnic first before nationality, while the majority of Malay
correspondents put their religion first before nationality.
On the other hand, my ethnically Indian friends, overwhelmingly identify themselves as Malaysian first before their ethnicity.
This
might explain why we have all sort of things happening where the
identity and pride of the race is more important than the aspirations of
the nation itself, such as Dong Zong demands for the SRJK(C) school to
have only 100 percent teachers trained in Mandarin for its schools.
There was also a non-Malay friend of mine who questioned why was he
unable to register his name officially at the Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara
in Chinese characters.
He specifically pointed out the fact that
he could do it in Japan (where he worked) but not in his home country,
and this equals to discrimination and double standards practised in the
country.
Another non-Malay friend of mine, who happened to be a
staunch supporter of "Bersih", cursed an ethnic Chinese policeman who
was doing his job protecting our prime minister from demonstrators,
saying that the policeman is a disgrace to his race and demanding that
the policeman ask forgiveness from his ancestors.
All and any issue that we have in Malaysia is not caused by one race alone.
One
portion of our people are too scared that they will be coolies in their
own country due to their lack and inability for more economic control,
while another portion of our people are building walls around themselves
due to their fear that their deemed as superior identity and so-called
'rights' will be overruned.
Unfortunately, the former has very
little room to help out in the economic front because their involvement
is too limited, while the latter has little say on how the country is
being run because they are uninterested to take part in the system, more
so when they deem that doing so is a degrading thing to do.
What
saddens me most is that everyone complains and screams of injustice but
when you look at it a little bit closer, no one is really making an
effort of taking part and working together with their fellow countrymen
to build the country.
We then take to the streets calling the
fight the "good fight for justice" and making comparisons to Myanmar or
even the Arab Spring.
And the brain drain? I am not really
worried about this. The world is too small now. AirAsia has made it
possible for you to get to the other side of the world without much
effort.
You can always contribute back to your motherland
wherever you are at, just like how the Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi in
Penang used to send money back to Fujian in China.
Monetarily,
you can always send money back to your family in Malaysia, or even start
a small business in Malaysia to support your overseas business, and pay
corporate tax. More importantly, you can train Malaysians with the
knowledge and skills you have gained abroad.
If it means that you
would have to forgo your connections and opportunities outside of
Malaysia to come back and contribute, it would actually be best that you
stay wherever you are, and contribute remotely to your motherland.
When there's a will, there will always be a way.
When
the time comes though, we should all be back to put our votes in the
ballots, or do that at your nearest Malaysian mission (they plan to pass
a law so you can do this).
Our democracy unfortunately does not
recognise "voting by feet", no matter how strong you root for Malaysia.
Doing that doesn't really change things much. We need to put papers into
ballot boxes, in order to make a difference in this democracy.
So
my dear non-Malay friends, every Malaysian, regardless of our skin
colour, are responsible to make the Malaysian Idea a reality. The time
all of us should have realized this has passed. It is not a zero-sum
game.
It has never been, and it will never be a "we against them"
issue. No matter how hard you try to build walls around yourself, none
of us will be going away any time soon. There is only "us" in this land.
“Those who have (received contracts) are instead outsiders. 
