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Malaysia Today: Sunday, 29-Aug-2004
12:41 AM
I have a dream (or Happy Merdeka from Malaysia Today) Yesterday, 41 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed American civil rights demonstrators at the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his famous �I Have a Dream� speech. 19 days later, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak joined the Federation of Malaya, which saw the birth of Malaysia. Singapore, however, soon left Malaysia in a huff and that Island Republic went on to become one of the �Asian Tigers� proving that meritocracy and not Malay Supremacy is the way forward. On Tuesday, 31 August 2004, we shall be celebrating Merdeka Day or Independence Day. But is it �Merdeka Day� we are celebrating or �Malaysia Day�? If it is Merdeka Day, the day our First Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, stood before Malayans to the reverberating shouts of �Merdeka�, then Sabah and Sarawak should not be joining us in our celebrations as they did not see independence until 16 September 1963 when they joined Malaysia. If it Malaysia Day we are celebrating, then we should celebrate it on 16 September instead, and it should be the 41st and not 47th Anniversary we should be celebrating. Malaysia has a penchant for distorting history. For example, Umno is proclaimed as 58 years old and, next month, Umno is supposedly holding its 58th General Assembly. Last year, the final assembly that Dr Mahathir Mohamad attended to say goodbye after more than 22 years at its helm, was advertised as the 57th Assembly. But Umno was declared illegal after its 41st Assembly in 1987. A new party called Umno Baru or �New Umno� was then formed to replace the since deregistered Umno -- so this year�s Assembly will be the 16th and not 58th. How can Umno then also claim to be the oldest political party in Malaysia when the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) just held its 50th Assembly? And the same goes for the �struggle� for Independence. Umno claims to have been the spearhead of the Independence movement. Actually there were many others who struggled and suffered in the quest for independence. The contribution of these real patriots have been downplayed and erased from the history books. For all intents and purposes, Umno hijacked the Independence movement when it seemed apparent that the British were about to give Malaya independence. Umno is the pretender to the throne. It is the illegitimate claimant to the Independence movement. And to add legitimacy to its claim, its �kills off� all those personalities and does not give recognition or a mention to those who were really instrumental in giving Malaya its independence. The leaders of the 1950s and 1960s were men of vision. They did not launch an a la Dr Mahathir �Vision 2020� campaign, which is mere rhetoric with no substance. They, like Dr Martin Luther King Jr., had a dream. They had noble ambitions for the creation of a Malayan race. Take the issue of Malay Reservation land. Even as far back as the 1960s there were moves to �unreserve� land for Malays. The capitalists of that era were drooling at the mouth over the potential of developing Kampong Baru, smack in the middle of the �Golden Triangle�, into a modern metropolis. The Tunku was appalled, as were the Chinese leaders of that time. The Tunku knew the minute Kampong Baru and all other prime Malay Reservation land throughout Malaya were allowed to fall into non-Malay hands, the land would disappear before you could utter, �Can you please give me your bank account number?� �What then?� asked the Tunku. The Malays would sell off all their land for quick cash. Then, when this cash is all finished, as it would be, what would the Malays do? You cannot separate the Malays from their land. Land is extremely important to the Malays. This is the asset they leave to the next generation when they die. Their land is where they go home to when they retire. A Malay with no land to call his own is a Malay who would be a man with no home in his own country. The Tunku, as did the non-Malay leaders of that time, realised the danger of allowing the Malays to sell their land to the non-Malays. The Malay has to be protected from himself. The prospect of quick cash would cause the Malay to forget his priority and values. For, as soon as this cash is exhausted, he would become very unhappy and would harbour ill feelings to the non-Malay who now owns his land. This is a clear recipe for racial strife. The non-Malay leaders of that time went even further. They approached their leader of that time, Tan Siew Sin, who was also the Finance Minister, to propose that they come out with a sort of Economic Policy to allow the Malays to bring themselves up to the economic level of the non-Malays, in particular the Chinese. But it was not easy. There was strong opposition in Umno from the likes of the Tunku�s Deputy, Tun Abdul Razak, Dr Mahathir, and so on, who accused the Tunku of selling out to the Chinese, being a �Chinese lover�, a �traitor to the Malay race�, and so on. It took the race riots of 1969 for the Umno leaders, in particular Tun Razak, to realise what the Tunku and Chinese leaders were trying to do all along was right and, if they had gone along with it, needless bloodshed could have been avoided. The Tunku, in fact, had a Chinese Political Secretary, Yap Chin Kwee. Yap was violently opposed to the idea of opening up Malay Reservation to the non-Malays. He may be Chinese, but he did not, and still does not, agree to the idea of allowing the Malays to sell their land to the Chinese. He knows what land means to the Malays and how the Malays can be blinded by the prospects of quick cash. The Malays, as we all know, will sell anything for hard cash. As Umno itself admits, the Malays will sell their votes for the right amount of money. And this is Umno�s dilemma. The 2,500 delegates to the Umno General Assembly next month are selling their votes. The clean Umno leaders -- yes, there are some of those still in Umno, though they are a very small minority -- in fact, are no longer interested in winning a seat on the Umno Supreme Council. They are worried that if they do win they might be accused of buying their way in. Umno leaders such as Shahrir Samad, Salleh Said Keruak, and a couple more, do not mind if they do not win rather than win and be suspected of indulging in �money politics�. In the past, Malayan leaders had a dream. That dream was nation building. But that dream has now been shattered. Money is the name of the game today. The Dr Mahathir era groomed the Malays to the new ideals of �to get rich is glorious�. The TV and newspapers talk about the successes of the ruling party. And what �successes� do they list as proof? The Twin Towers, the highways, the bridges, Putrajaya, and all the trappings of material development. Values and ethics are not mentioned. Malaysians today have no values and practice no ethics. That is not important in life anymore. Only money is. On the issue of Kampong Baru, Dr Mahathir in fact tried to get his hands on this prime land 20 years ago but failed. They had already prepared a master plan for the development of Kampong Baru and it was supposed to have been the site of the Petronas Twin Towers. But years were wasted on negotiating with the thousands of landowners, some who were second or third generation while others could not even been traced. Impatient with the delay -- and, as we all know, Dr Mahathir is a man in a hurry -- he decided to shift the site to the neighbouring Selangor Turf Club. The Turf Club was told to move out on the excuse that it was creating a massive traffic jam and it was given a replacement site in Sungai Besi. But the Twin Towers now creates an even bigger traffic jam, everyday of the week, compared to the Turf Cub where the traffic jams were only on weekends. Yes, I have a dream. My dream is to get my hands on prime land in Kampong Baru. And, to do that, I shall change the laws guiding the development of Malay Reservation land. In Tunku�s days, he and the Chinese leaders then would say, I have a nightmare. My nightmare is allowing the Malays to sell their and to the non-Malays. This would create a class of very discontented Malays who have now lost their land and have exhausted their cash and would take their frustrations out on the non-Malays. Well, Happy Merdeka everyone. The Malays are soon to be merdeka (freed) from their land. ------------------------------------------------ ADIL-Net will remain a Free Forum until further notice. 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