MCA ≠ Chinese, Umno ≠ Malays, and etc...
Some years ago on a MAS flight to London, an Indian Malaysian hostess asked me: What do you study?
And I said politics.
She uttered, ‘Oh, so you want to be like Lim Liong Sik is it?’
You can imagine my bafflement on hearing this. Anyway, my cheekiness got the better of me as I found myself telling her that had I really desired a political career, I would most probably do better than Lim, the MCA president at the time.
That was not all. I once had teh tarik and some kueh mueh at a Malay stall one fine afternoon. The owner struck up a conversation with me, and I told him I was interested in politics. Immediately, he told me the wakil rakyat in the district was an MCA fella, and suggested that “mungkin kamu boleh gantikan dia selepas dia letak jawatan” (perhaps you can replace him after he has resigned).
He laughed rather heartily, but I wasn't quite amused.
In fact, I couldn’t really get cross with the nice hostess and the friendly pakcik for associating the MCA with me, could I?
Given the decades-old raced-based political arrangements in the country that resulted in conflation between political and ethnic identity, each and every Malaysia seems condemned to live with this unpleasant reality, however much we may dislike it.
Whenever a Chinese Malaysian student fails to be awarded a JPA scholarship despite having scored x number of As, he/she is almost certain to blame a Malay for stealing it from him/her, “because they got Umno mah”.
It is not that I am not sympathetic with the scores of Chinese students who are missed out on public scholarships every year. Quite the contrary, I often feel my blood boiling on hearing the same story year after year.
But what makes me uncomfortable is that many seem to find a Malay scapegoat for everything that goes wrong, and associate the person with Umno. No matter how much we detest the MCA acting as the sole representative of the Chinese in Malaysia, we tend to make the same mistake by first thinking “Melayu tu Umno” and, second, seeing each and every Malay as a beneficiary of the much-abused NEP who thrives “at our expense”.
It is entirely not dissimilar from the distorted view (thanks to Utusan!) of the Chinese and, to a lesser extent, the Indians, that we prosper because we all “had a head start over the Malays”.
So, I am very much heartened by the updated version of Dr. Syed Husin Ali's book The Malays: Their Problems and Future, which gives an in-depth look into the root causes behind the series of social and economic ills facing the Malay community. I never see these as “their problems”; rather, I regard them as my personal challenges as well, because I very much hope to share this land with them and therefore care about them, just like I care about the Indians and the Orang Asli communities.
Dr. Syed, of course, is among the Malaysian scholars that I admire most. I wish I had been able to attend his book launch and listen to his speech. Thanks to the Internet and the flourishing blogsphere, I can now read it online* while being away from Malaysia. (http://dinmerican.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/dr-syed-husins-speech-at-launch-of-the-malays-their-problems-and-future/)
Do you think your destiny should not be bound up with that of the MCA? Then you must also stop Umno from deluding you that only it can secure the future of the Malays. Getting a copy of Dr. Syed's book should be a good start towards this process. Enjoy.
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