Since Sunday evening, my FB page was all abuzz with people rushing to share this particular link:
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-cannot-succeed-unless-equal-opportunity-given-to-non-muslims-says. It was an article on certain statements made by Obama during the Young Southeast Asian Leadership Initiative town hall meeting, held in conjunction with his visit to Malaysia over the weekend.
While I applaud him for being quite bold, I did not feel the ground move. He merely reiterated what Lee Kuan Yew had written in
his book, and what we Malaysians are well aware of but do not openly discuss.
Regrets, I have a few...
I'm not writing this to go into on how wise he is or how Najib probably doesn't want to be friends with Obama anymore. I made an interesting observation amidst all this: none of my Malay friends have shared that link or like the shared link (none that I have observed anyway). Now that I think back on it, almost all my Malay friends chose the silent path when race as a subject crop up. I'm far from upset at them, but it does beg the question, what is so taboo about speaking up on unfairness or a show of support for equality?
Obama wasn't criticizing the Malay race. He voiced out what we all already know: that the Malays are one-up from the other races of the land. It's a fact. A way of life that the non-Malays cannot question and the Malays do not complain about.
Any factions who are oppressed or marginalized need a defender to speak up for them. I would like to see that things can go on the way it is if a 19 million strong voice actually spoke up for the non-Malays. But the sad and ugly truth is, most Malays do not want to get involved. Being involved means that they want their special rights to be taken away, and it affects not just them but their future generations too. I must agree that it's always nice to have insurance to hedge against the unknown. In their shoes, I wouldn't want to be worse off than when I started either.
What this effectively means is, although the President has spoken, we all just syok sendiri only. Nothing can change and nothing will change until the government changes. BN cannot take criticism and cannot care less if people don't agree with their ways. As predictable as the ticking hand of a clock, the government has quickly defended itself with logic that’s so off tangent and at the same time evasive. Read all about it
here.
A system or society built on meritocracy is really not such a bad thing. If you run a cafe, and your cashier kept getting all the bills mixed up, would you keep him? If you run a hotel, and your hotel manager is rude to guests and spends all his time chatting on the phone, would you keep him? I'd be surprise if you said you would, for it's human nature to only want the best, especially if you're paying for something. Running a country is very much like running a business. Everyone must do their job well so that the business will flourish. And if you understand this, why would you want anything less for your country?
** Edit **
Included here a screenshot of the article by The Star, the government's preferred daily publication. I would deeply regret it if such a fine article is archived in the future and no one gets to read it anymore...
