Pragmatism failed non-Malay polity By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy

Malaysiakini : “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

- American writer James Baldwin

COMMENT | Whenever I write about “ketuananism” in this country, I have made it extremely clear that a vital component of it is complicity.Non-Malay power structures have been complicit in the spread of Malay supremacy and the erosion of secular norms.

What destroyed the MCA was not DAP’s propaganda but the acceptance by a large voting demographic of the Chinese community that no representation in the government is better than MCA representation.

While MCA has a record of accomplishment to fall back on, the same cannot be said of MIC. The latter is a testament to the fact that the Indian community is estranged from mainstream politics because MIC has been derelict (I would argue criminally so) in its duties.

Keep in mind that for decades, the non-Malays voted for BN and demonised the opposition using pragmatism as a rallying cry instead of institutional reform.

And to be fair, for decades, the non-Malays prospered while their Malay/Muslim brethren were short-changed by the Malay uber alles party they voted for.

The so-called social contract resulted in “two Malaysias”. For example, denied educational opportunities, the answer was private education for non-Malays which benefited them and cronies of the establishment.

It also created an imbalance in the healthcare ecosystem, where doctors were churned out but declined to be posted where there was a need for them and of course, the agitation of the mainstream Malay establishment, who for so long were the “gatekeepers of entry” into the middle class.

Is there merit in believing that pragmatism trumps the kleptocracy of the state? Pragmatism in knowing, but not saying, that it is in nobody's interest to change the system, but instead replacing the powerbrokers in the hopes of maintaining some kind of social and political equilibrium?

What is happening in the Malay community now, is the chickens coming to roost after decades of failed ethnocratic policies.

It is comforting to think that non-Malays have it worse when it comes to institutional racism but I would argue that the people who have it worse are the dominant polity.

Govt in collusion with religious establishment

This, of course, not only has to do with electoral gerrymandering but also the reality that the political establishment, in collusion with the religious bureaucracy, has carried out programmes to reinforce the Malay uber alles rule.

It not only includes bureaucratic malfeasance like constitutionally created “Malays” through immigration but also the ditching of family planning programmes which was an essential variable pre-1969, when it came to long-term economic and social policy making.

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