A non racial Malaysia: Are we ready for it?

April 17, 2008

There is growing belief among some Malaysians that our country is ready for non racial politics.

It seems to me that they also believe that they represent the majority in this country.

I hate to burst the bubble, but realistically, this issue will require a debate and an honest self-examination on the rakyat’s part considering the historical and cultural framework of the country to achieve an acceptable formula.

And the majority of the Malaysian electorate must be ready to give to the proposing political party the following mandate:

1. A two-thirds majority in parliament, because any party which intends to change the constitution must have this
2. The Elimination of Article 153 which defines the Malay Rights in the Constitution, and with the two-thirds majority, it gives the proposing party local standi
3. Ban all race based political parties and enshrine it in the Constitution
4. To close all the ethnic base school as non-malays accept national schools as the sole school system

But let’s be realistic. What are we going to do if we ban all race based political parties? The elimination of race based parties would create a vacuum when there will be a need for institutions will be there to cater for each races’ needs in terms of culture, religion and education.

As a mandatory precondition to achieve the above objective, we must step forward and volunteer our time and money to create more NGOs to cater for the social needs of the individual races. This model has proven somewhat successful in the United States where various Asian, Black or Latino NGOs have taken steps to address issues local to their own communities.

And let’s not start about how we need to first improve the quality of our education system.

A quick think of the situation will tell us that all this will take a lot of hard work, painful sacrifices and therefore take time to implement.

Do not get me wrong. I am all for a non racial Malaysia. And this must be the long-term target for the nation.

But we must admit that It is not possible to implement a non racial Malaysian society without equalizing the economic and social welfare of all the races in Malaysia first.

And now, to add to our woes, we are faced with the negative impact of a slowing global economy, rising prices of commodities and declining standard of living for Malaysians in general, the economic welfare of the rakyat becomes more important than the ideal of a non racial Malaysia.

It is difficult to narrow the gap in the well being of different races if the economy does not generate new wealth to be fairly distributed among the races.

So these are the medium term targets that we need to achieve:

1. New wealth in the economy that is fairly distributed among the races,
2. a world class education system that is both colour blind and economically efficient, and
3. new NGOs as institutions that will fill the vacuum when race based political parties are gone.

Only when Malaysia is in such a position we can truly consider to further dismantle the racial shackles that bind us.

But for the mean time, let us concentrate on pressing matters.

By Jazlan · Filed Under Feature, Straight Up