Bitten by BN is a mild way of saying it but what the BN coalition and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has done to the Indian community of Malaysia is far worse. They are now committing a severe breach of contract on promises they made and signed into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) - on April 18, 2013 with Hindraf acting as the representative organisation for the Indian community of Malaysia.
Here are some excerpts from that historic document - as samples of what were agreed upon. You can see the scale and scope of what was promised. There is much more elsewhere in that MOU contract document.
The MOU required the BN government to come up with programmes to double the mean monthly family income by 2018 from 2013 levels for all families earning less than RM3,000 per month. That is at least about 40 percent of the Indian families in the country. Absolutely nothing has happened on this. There has been no socio-economic development programmes targeting this group or even ng them access to some other general socio-economic development programmes.
It is now well three years into the MOU contract of five years. The BN coalition and Najib are clearly indicating that terms like this were meant to be nothing more than embellishments to buy the Indian vote when they needed their votes most desperately in the 13th general election. If in three years nothing has happened we can only conclude that nothing will happen at all on this count. Breach, deception, political trickery - call it what you want.
Very little to nothing has been done to alleviate the problem of former estate temples being on private land and being continuous targets of demolition and eviction. This problem remains till today at the same level it has been in recent years. What hopes there were when the agreement was signed that there would be a robust solution to a nagging problem of a section of Malaysian society? All such hopes have been lost .
This was more icing that Najib gave on the cake of the big lie to the Indian community.
The contract requires the BN government to establish clear policies and programmes to eliminate the problem of statelessness experienced by a large number of Indian Malaysians. Every day new cases keep coming up on top of the what already exists. The problem does not look like it is going to go away any time soon.
There is completely a lack of willingness on the part of the BN government to address the root causes of the problem. They set up something called the Special Implementation Task Force (SITF) whose job it is to work on eliminating the problem. But all they are able to do is give out forms (borangs) to the illiterate and semi-literate people and who are required to produce voluminous information.
When are very falteringly able to do that, it takes months and years if at all before they will get something positive. When they fail to produce the information they are blamed for the persistence of the problem. The positive approach envisaged in the MOU has been completely obliterated. Does this government deserve any love from the Indian community?
No accounting yet from the Najib gov’t
This is a sample of the type of sharing that was envisaged in the education field. But considering the breadth of the requirements covered and that were recorded in the MOU agreement , what is happening today is little more than eyewash. With recent cutbacks in the budget, the allocations have been further slashed. Statistics are hidden behind the Official Secrets Act (OSA), there is no accounting yet from the Najib government on this matter.
To save his grace, Najib has thrown bits and pieces here and there and his cronies turn that into a “Najib is the PM who has done the most for the Indian community” label. Political trickery all the way.
Najib sets up a ghostly organisation called the Socio-Economic Development for the Indian Community (Sedic) and gives it some piddly funds, and Sedic for its part makes a big deal about giving that money out to the people through NGOs and engages in an illusion that they are contributing to permanent and comprehensive solutions.
They do nothing to the core problems of the Indian community at all they are just buying is the Indian vote. In the process they legitimise the deception of BN and Najib.
So, if you put all of that together what you get is a picture of outright deception of a politically vulnerable community. The Indian community believed some good will come out by supporting the BN in those last elections. They have been proved utterly wrong. Najib has shown all this is chicken feed for him.
When one considers the scale and scope of what was agreed between BN and Hindraf in the agreement - comprehensive and permanent solutions for the many socio-economic ailments of the Indian community was the core concept. But what has happened is peanut programmes with nothing more than further attempts to buy the Indian vote as the primary objective.
The Indian voters must become savvy to this point and understand that they will make their bitter point about the betrayal only by absolutely rejecting BN, Not one vote of the Indian community must go to the BN. BN has to be taught a lesson , so they will not attempt such deception on unsuspecting and vulnerable poor people. Betrayers must be dealt with no mercy.
Therefore the Hindraf People’s Movement calls out to all Indian voters in Sungei Besar and Kuala Kangsar to deny even one vote to BN. BN must be taught a lesson. To do otherwise will mean we lose out on even the little leverage the community possesses as an economic and numerical minority in the country.
RAMESH PERIASAMY is a member of the senate, Hindraf People’s Movement.
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