Sunday, November 26, 2006
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Anwar Ibrahim Press Statement on LKY
Anwar Ibrahim Press Statement
LEE KUAN YEW SHOULD LOOK AT RACIAL AND DEVELOPMENT ISSUES FROM THE BASIS OF JUSTICE FOR ALL RACES
Former Singaporean Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew recently criticised Malaysia and Indonesia for marginalising the Chinese. This clearly presumes that the Chinese communities in the two countries are not treated fairly. We should respond with a fresh dialogue since it touches on the basic issues of a constitutional democracy, economic management, racial unity and social justice.
Under current practices, a free dialogue take place only in Indonesia. I doubt the possibility that such a dialogue can be allowed either in Singapore or Malaysia where laws restricting freedom and the media continue to operate.
Lee Kuan Yew is now a respected statesman due to his record of initiating continuous economic growth and managing the city-state. Nevertheless, his record is tarnished from clamping down on free speech, as well as oppressing and imprisoning his political enemies. Furthermore, the involvement of the state’s companies in a few neighbouring countries is criticised for lack of accountability. Amartya Sen has now rendered obsolete his once-dominant ideal of “Asian Values”.
Clearly Lee Kuan Yew is still trapped by his outdated thinking. His argument exposes the element of racism which has been suppressed for so long. Therefore he recognises the problems of Chinese overseas but not the anxiety of the neglected Singaporean Malays. Furthermore, what is regretted is the fact that he does not show any concern to the plight of other marginalised races in Malaysia or Indonesia, whether the bumiputra or Indians. In fact in Indonesia, the latest statistics reveal nearly 40 million people trapped by poverty.
Lee Kuan Yew should look at racial and development issues from the basis of justice for all races. Clearly he should understand the fact that when the New Economic Policy was initiated in 1970, the stake of the Malays and bumiputra in the economy was a mere 1.8 percent. The success of the NEP in education, producing a critical mass of professionals and providing business opportunitie should be acknowledged. However the policy has been hijacked, leading to corruption and cronyism, enriching the few and marginalising the majority of the bumiputra. The fruits of the NEP are also shared by a few Chinese and Indian corporations selected to receive contracts for mega projects, independent power production and the gaming sector.
I have put forward a New Economic Agenda to replace the out of date NEP. The country should be more competitive and prepared to face globalisation. We must take care of the poor and marginalised, eradicate corruption and provide opportunity for all races to propel a more robust and vigorous economy.
Lee Kuan Yew has been comfortable all this while with neigbouring autocrats that share a similar racial perspective. He must now accept that more and more people of the region now demand freedom and justice for all as the new paradigm for the 21st century.
ANWAR IBRAHIM
Advisor of People’s Justice Party
LEE KUAN YEW SHOULD LOOK AT RACIAL AND DEVELOPMENT ISSUES FROM THE BASIS OF JUSTICE FOR ALL RACES
Former Singaporean Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew recently criticised Malaysia and Indonesia for marginalising the Chinese. This clearly presumes that the Chinese communities in the two countries are not treated fairly. We should respond with a fresh dialogue since it touches on the basic issues of a constitutional democracy, economic management, racial unity and social justice.
Under current practices, a free dialogue take place only in Indonesia. I doubt the possibility that such a dialogue can be allowed either in Singapore or Malaysia where laws restricting freedom and the media continue to operate.
Lee Kuan Yew is now a respected statesman due to his record of initiating continuous economic growth and managing the city-state. Nevertheless, his record is tarnished from clamping down on free speech, as well as oppressing and imprisoning his political enemies. Furthermore, the involvement of the state’s companies in a few neighbouring countries is criticised for lack of accountability. Amartya Sen has now rendered obsolete his once-dominant ideal of “Asian Values”.
Clearly Lee Kuan Yew is still trapped by his outdated thinking. His argument exposes the element of racism which has been suppressed for so long. Therefore he recognises the problems of Chinese overseas but not the anxiety of the neglected Singaporean Malays. Furthermore, what is regretted is the fact that he does not show any concern to the plight of other marginalised races in Malaysia or Indonesia, whether the bumiputra or Indians. In fact in Indonesia, the latest statistics reveal nearly 40 million people trapped by poverty.
Lee Kuan Yew should look at racial and development issues from the basis of justice for all races. Clearly he should understand the fact that when the New Economic Policy was initiated in 1970, the stake of the Malays and bumiputra in the economy was a mere 1.8 percent. The success of the NEP in education, producing a critical mass of professionals and providing business opportunitie should be acknowledged. However the policy has been hijacked, leading to corruption and cronyism, enriching the few and marginalising the majority of the bumiputra. The fruits of the NEP are also shared by a few Chinese and Indian corporations selected to receive contracts for mega projects, independent power production and the gaming sector.
I have put forward a New Economic Agenda to replace the out of date NEP. The country should be more competitive and prepared to face globalisation. We must take care of the poor and marginalised, eradicate corruption and provide opportunity for all races to propel a more robust and vigorous economy.
Lee Kuan Yew has been comfortable all this while with neigbouring autocrats that share a similar racial perspective. He must now accept that more and more people of the region now demand freedom and justice for all as the new paradigm for the 21st century.
ANWAR IBRAHIM
Advisor of People’s Justice Party
Dear Prime Minister
Marginalisation
Dear Prime Minister.
May you and family be in the best of health and blessings.
If there is a way, can you ask local papers or media channels to stop from reporting or discussing the remarks made by MM Lee about Malaysian Chinese?
I say this coz comments published in Singapore (supporting MM's comments) are made from a skewed angle and do not take into account the historical reasons.
The comments so far are made by Chinese Singaporeans who do not really understand the issues. They also seem to suggest that similar problems do not exist in Singapore when, in fact, Singapore Malays in their own motherland, Singapore, are treated more dismally that Malaysian Chinese in the land of Malay Bumis.
Indeed, if this issue is to continue, then it is only fair to show that Chinese leaders in Singapore are doing greater injustice to Singapore Malays than Malay Malaysian leaders to Malaysian Chinese.
The Malaysian Chinese are not bumis in Malaysia yet they get nearly everything:
a) Right to have Chinese vernacular education from preschool to university.
b) Right to retain their Chinese names [The Chinese in Indonesia and Thailand get nothing of that sort. Worse, they have to have Thai or Indonesian names]
c) Right to display Chinese names in Chinese characters in huge public adverts in buildings and public places
d) In development projects, they reap early profits as all projects require infrastructures and these materials are controlled by Malaysian Chinese
e) Voting strength by constituencies also show so many Chinese advantage.
It is good for us not to say that Malaysian Chinese are "marginalized" .
If they want to talk about marginalization or injustices, it is better that they talk about Singapore Malays who, in their own motherland, are marginalized and subject to so many injustices:
1. Malay language has lost its stature in the State and industry
2. Chinese language has now become a universal precondition in employment
3. Malays are "cordoned off" in National Service. Many key security sites are out-of-bounds to Malays [Even Malay Ministers and MP's are not allowed to enter such areas]
4. The Civil Defence takes in high proportion of Malays considering the lower stature of CD and the higher death and injury risk in CD services.
4. No Malays are holding key positions in government and statutory boards.
5. Malay MP's are given sinecures. In fact Malays are deemed fit only to be Ministers in Sewerage, Drainage, Refuse, Welfare and Drugs matters
6. Promotions and postings in government and statutory boards also show the Singapore Chinese' disdain towards Singapore Malays
7. Recent retrenchments also reflected that Singapore Malays "should go first"
8. Proportion of Singapore Malays who remained unemployed is high, notwithstanding good educational and vocational qualifications
9. Vast in-take of Chinese from China, Hong Kong Taiwan into Singapore but strict control of Malays from Malaysia & Indonesia.
I hope your office would do something to stop this, or rectify the matter by giving the issue its proper balance.
I cc this note to BH Singapore and Malaysia.
I do not cc to Straits Times as they do not publish letters of this kind.
I cc to TODAY coz two strong letters were published in today's TODAY edition.
Regards,
Mansor Haji Sukaimi
Former Member of Parliament (1976-1984)
Dear Prime Minister.
May you and family be in the best of health and blessings.
If there is a way, can you ask local papers or media channels to stop from reporting or discussing the remarks made by MM Lee about Malaysian Chinese?
I say this coz comments published in Singapore (supporting MM's comments) are made from a skewed angle and do not take into account the historical reasons.
The comments so far are made by Chinese Singaporeans who do not really understand the issues. They also seem to suggest that similar problems do not exist in Singapore when, in fact, Singapore Malays in their own motherland, Singapore, are treated more dismally that Malaysian Chinese in the land of Malay Bumis.
Indeed, if this issue is to continue, then it is only fair to show that Chinese leaders in Singapore are doing greater injustice to Singapore Malays than Malay Malaysian leaders to Malaysian Chinese.
The Malaysian Chinese are not bumis in Malaysia yet they get nearly everything:
a) Right to have Chinese vernacular education from preschool to university.
b) Right to retain their Chinese names [The Chinese in Indonesia and Thailand get nothing of that sort. Worse, they have to have Thai or Indonesian names]
c) Right to display Chinese names in Chinese characters in huge public adverts in buildings and public places
d) In development projects, they reap early profits as all projects require infrastructures and these materials are controlled by Malaysian Chinese
e) Voting strength by constituencies also show so many Chinese advantage.
It is good for us not to say that Malaysian Chinese are "marginalized" .
If they want to talk about marginalization or injustices, it is better that they talk about Singapore Malays who, in their own motherland, are marginalized and subject to so many injustices:
1. Malay language has lost its stature in the State and industry
2. Chinese language has now become a universal precondition in employment
3. Malays are "cordoned off" in National Service. Many key security sites are out-of-bounds to Malays [Even Malay Ministers and MP's are not allowed to enter such areas]
4. The Civil Defence takes in high proportion of Malays considering the lower stature of CD and the higher death and injury risk in CD services.
4. No Malays are holding key positions in government and statutory boards.
5. Malay MP's are given sinecures. In fact Malays are deemed fit only to be Ministers in Sewerage, Drainage, Refuse, Welfare and Drugs matters
6. Promotions and postings in government and statutory boards also show the Singapore Chinese' disdain towards Singapore Malays
7. Recent retrenchments also reflected that Singapore Malays "should go first"
8. Proportion of Singapore Malays who remained unemployed is high, notwithstanding good educational and vocational qualifications
9. Vast in-take of Chinese from China, Hong Kong Taiwan into Singapore but strict control of Malays from Malaysia & Indonesia.
I hope your office would do something to stop this, or rectify the matter by giving the issue its proper balance.
I cc this note to BH Singapore and Malaysia.
I do not cc to Straits Times as they do not publish letters of this kind.
I cc to TODAY coz two strong letters were published in today's TODAY edition.
Regards,
Mansor Haji Sukaimi
Former Member of Parliament (1976-1984)
Grooming the Next Generation of Leaders
SEEING IT MY WAY
M. Bakri Musa
www.bakrimusa.com
Grooming the Next Generation of Leaders
Jack Welch, the retired legendary chief executive of GE, related his
less-than-pleasant task before leaving office of personally telling the
three or four other capable candidates under him that they were not his
choice to succeed him.
There are two points to this observation. The obvious is that GE under
Welch had no shortage of capable talent for the top slot; the second,
Welch’s acute sense of obligation (and class) to let the other
accomplished contenders hear the bad news first and directly from him.
A common lament to my recent call for Abdullah Badawi to step down was
the lack of solid candidates to succeed him, best expressed by one of
the government’s backbencher in Parliament. Although when he said it,
Zaid Ibrahim was merely trying to praise Abdullah Badawi, however
awkwardly.
Grooming the next tier of leaders is one responsibility many leaders do
not pay sufficient attention. Of all the prime ministers, only Tunku
Abdul Rahman had acquitted himself well on this point; he had the
capable Tun Razak.
Dynamic Duo of Razak and Ismail
For a while Tun Razak had Dr. Ismail as deputy prime minister. It
reflected favorably not only on the caliber of these two distinguished
Malaysians but also the prevailing climate in UMNO at the time that the
two worked well together, the skills and personality of one
complementing the other. In the political climate of today’s UMNO,
there would be endless intrigues and Machiavellian maneuverings.
Their smooth rhythm was shattered with the unexpected death of Dr.
Ismail. It could not have come at the worse possible time for Tun
Razak, for he was at the time fighting his own personal battle against
a deadly cancer. This fact was concealed from the public; Dr. Ismail
was one of the few whom Tun Razak had confided his innermost secret.
That was the kind of trust and confidence they had in one another, a
combination and display rarely seen anywhere, or since.
Tun Razak displayed his astuteness in spotting talent on other than Dr.
Ismail. The late Tun used his trips to the districts as opportunities
to size up junior officers. He enticed many into politics, including
some whose talent could easily have been overlooked because of their
earlier less-than-stellar academic performance in school. Abdullah
Ahmad for example, became his personal assistant. Later following the
Tun’s death and the shift of political wind, Abdullah Ahmad was jailed
under the Internal Security Act.
Talent, like water, finds its own level. On his release, Abdullah
Ahmad went on to Cambridge; he later served as Special Ambassador to
the United Nations. The Tun also saw the talent in one young Dr.
Mahathir, and quickly brought him back into UMNO’s fold after the Tunku
had expelled him earlier.
Not all of Tun Razak’s choices were right, of course. Struggling with
his own lethal battle, we could readily excuse his choosing Hussein Onn
to replace Dr. Ismail. Hussein’s subsequent tenure as Prime Minister
was a forgettable one, but he had one enduring legacy: his choice of a
deputy.
Selecting Mahathir was Hussein’s greatest contribution. It was ironic
that later in the midst of UMNO’s internal squabbles he would repudiate
what turned out to be his wisest decision!
To be sure, Hussein did not make that prescient choice on his own. The
three then UMNO Vice-Presidents had essentially given him an ultimatum
to pick one of them. It was a reflection of Hussein’s personal
weakness and lack of leadership that he did not tell them off for
usurping his prerogative.
Hussein displayed other ineptness as prime minister. Mahathir found
out about his lucky future not directly from Hussein but through the
latter’s press conference. Presumably the other two Vice-Presidents
heard their piece of unhappy news likewise. Hussein lacked class in
not personally informing them in private ahead of time.
Practice Does Not Make Perfect
Mahathir had three deputy prime ministers before Abdullah Badawi. The
principle that practice makes perfect obviously eluded Mahathir, for he
now openly regrets his choice. Instead of ruminating over it, he is
trying hard to remedy the situation.
In picking Abdullah, Mahathir, like Hussein before him, did not venture
beyond party tradition. Mahathir limited his choice to only the
sitting UMNO Vice Presidents. By anointing Abdullah and discouraging
contests in the two top slots (in the name of party “tradition”)
Mahathir denied UMNO members their voice. More crucially, he denied
the party a wider selection and the collective wisdom of its membership.
It is a delicious irony that while Mahathir endlessly exhorted Malays
to break free from the suffocating bounds of our traditions, he was
unable to liberate himself from the strictures of his own party!
Mahathir has one redeeming trait: determination. When he discovered
late that Anwar Ibrahim was wanting as a would-be successor, he did not
hesitate in correcting the error even though it was painful to him (and
also Anwar), his party, and nation.
Whether Mahathir would be successful in rectifying this latest blunder
(in selecting Abdullah) remains to be seen. He is now older and, more
significantly, out of office. The only power he has is his
considerable influence, personal conviction, and, not to be lightly
dismissed, good health. Those are the very qualities lacking in
Abdullah Badawi.
Abdullah’s Public Piety and “Mr. Clean” Facade
Abdullah’s public piety and “Mr. Clean” image is nothing more than a
shrewdly crafted facade. The man’s character does not justify those
descriptions.
Take his piety. Soon after becoming prime minister, he unashamedly
indulged in a grand gesture of being Imam by leading his ministers in a
widely publicized congregational prayer. The latest had him leading an
even larger group after breaking fast. These are nothing more than a
crass attempt at evoking the powerful images of our great Caliphs,
giants who were not only political but also spiritual leaders.
Malaysians forget (or more correctly were never reminded) that Islamic
Studies was not Abdullah’s first choice. He stumbled upon it because
he could not handle the mathematics to pursue economics. Then, as
today, Islamic Studies was a dumping ground for those not inclined for
or incapable of rigorous academic pursuit.
Likewise his “Mr. Clean” image; he never had the opportunity before!
Now that he is Prime (and Finance) Minister, he is furiously making up
for lost time.
All previous prime ministers were magnanimous upon assuming office by
pardoning prisoners, especially those held under the ISA. Abdullah
granted none; so much for the charity of his Islam Hadhari.
As for his humility and frugality, this was a man who would not move
into the official residence until it had undergone multimillion-dollar
renovations. Apparently the décor was not up to his exquisite taste!
To think that he could not even afford a house when he was dropped as a
minister a while back.
Such profligacy reflects an aesthetic sophistication of a Marcos rather
than the Kennedy.
The late Tun Razak agonized over putting in a swimming pool for his
young children at the old Sri Perdana. He did not have to brag or
publicize his frugality, humility, or piety. The fact that Abdullah
has to means that he is anything but.
It is not just the citizens who were taken in by Abdullah’s carefully
cultivated public persona, even the hardnosed Mahathir too bought into
it. Mahathir mistook the man’s eager nodding to mean agreement when
actually Abdullah was merely bidding his time as a raccoon would for
the farmer to leave the chicken coup. Mahathir now publicly calls his
successor a chronic liar. Any self-respecting man would take deep
offence to that; Abdullah took it in stride.
Prevention Always Better Than Remediation
Jack Welch offers many insights on preventing such succession errors
and the more general lesson of grooming the next tier of leaders. On
his frequent visits to the periphery, Welch would ask his divisional
heads to identify their promising junior officers. He would then size
them up personally to see whether he agree with their superior’s
assessment. Additionally he would them what they were doing to nurture
those talent.
Whenever promising candidates were fast-tracked, Welch would also
reward their immediate superiors. That would encourage them and others
to develop the talent under them. It would also prevent the dirty
trick prevalent in the Malaysian civil service where promising
subordinates would be sent to obscure postings lest they become a
threat to their superiors.
The civil service has an elaborate process for evaluating officers, but
it is done in secret. When I was in government service, I made it a
point to discuss my report with my young doctors individually and in
private. There would be no point to the exercise if they were denied
the valuable feedback. My senior colleagues pointedly told me that I
was breaching the civil service code.
Such sessions benefited both parties; I had occasions to change my
evaluations following them. Far from being dyspeptic encounters, they
permitted me to know my junior officers better. Today I still get
letters and e-mails from them, even those whom my evaluations had been
less-than-rosy. I also bask in the reflected glory when they shine,
especially those whom I had given glowing reports.
Had Malaysian leaders followed Welch’s example, they would now enjoy
the luxury of having an abundance of leadership talent, and the nation
would be spared the present embarrassment.
M. Bakri Musa
www.bakrimusa.com
Grooming the Next Generation of Leaders
Jack Welch, the retired legendary chief executive of GE, related his
less-than-pleasant task before leaving office of personally telling the
three or four other capable candidates under him that they were not his
choice to succeed him.
There are two points to this observation. The obvious is that GE under
Welch had no shortage of capable talent for the top slot; the second,
Welch’s acute sense of obligation (and class) to let the other
accomplished contenders hear the bad news first and directly from him.
A common lament to my recent call for Abdullah Badawi to step down was
the lack of solid candidates to succeed him, best expressed by one of
the government’s backbencher in Parliament. Although when he said it,
Zaid Ibrahim was merely trying to praise Abdullah Badawi, however
awkwardly.
Grooming the next tier of leaders is one responsibility many leaders do
not pay sufficient attention. Of all the prime ministers, only Tunku
Abdul Rahman had acquitted himself well on this point; he had the
capable Tun Razak.
Dynamic Duo of Razak and Ismail
For a while Tun Razak had Dr. Ismail as deputy prime minister. It
reflected favorably not only on the caliber of these two distinguished
Malaysians but also the prevailing climate in UMNO at the time that the
two worked well together, the skills and personality of one
complementing the other. In the political climate of today’s UMNO,
there would be endless intrigues and Machiavellian maneuverings.
Their smooth rhythm was shattered with the unexpected death of Dr.
Ismail. It could not have come at the worse possible time for Tun
Razak, for he was at the time fighting his own personal battle against
a deadly cancer. This fact was concealed from the public; Dr. Ismail
was one of the few whom Tun Razak had confided his innermost secret.
That was the kind of trust and confidence they had in one another, a
combination and display rarely seen anywhere, or since.
Tun Razak displayed his astuteness in spotting talent on other than Dr.
Ismail. The late Tun used his trips to the districts as opportunities
to size up junior officers. He enticed many into politics, including
some whose talent could easily have been overlooked because of their
earlier less-than-stellar academic performance in school. Abdullah
Ahmad for example, became his personal assistant. Later following the
Tun’s death and the shift of political wind, Abdullah Ahmad was jailed
under the Internal Security Act.
Talent, like water, finds its own level. On his release, Abdullah
Ahmad went on to Cambridge; he later served as Special Ambassador to
the United Nations. The Tun also saw the talent in one young Dr.
Mahathir, and quickly brought him back into UMNO’s fold after the Tunku
had expelled him earlier.
Not all of Tun Razak’s choices were right, of course. Struggling with
his own lethal battle, we could readily excuse his choosing Hussein Onn
to replace Dr. Ismail. Hussein’s subsequent tenure as Prime Minister
was a forgettable one, but he had one enduring legacy: his choice of a
deputy.
Selecting Mahathir was Hussein’s greatest contribution. It was ironic
that later in the midst of UMNO’s internal squabbles he would repudiate
what turned out to be his wisest decision!
To be sure, Hussein did not make that prescient choice on his own. The
three then UMNO Vice-Presidents had essentially given him an ultimatum
to pick one of them. It was a reflection of Hussein’s personal
weakness and lack of leadership that he did not tell them off for
usurping his prerogative.
Hussein displayed other ineptness as prime minister. Mahathir found
out about his lucky future not directly from Hussein but through the
latter’s press conference. Presumably the other two Vice-Presidents
heard their piece of unhappy news likewise. Hussein lacked class in
not personally informing them in private ahead of time.
Practice Does Not Make Perfect
Mahathir had three deputy prime ministers before Abdullah Badawi. The
principle that practice makes perfect obviously eluded Mahathir, for he
now openly regrets his choice. Instead of ruminating over it, he is
trying hard to remedy the situation.
In picking Abdullah, Mahathir, like Hussein before him, did not venture
beyond party tradition. Mahathir limited his choice to only the
sitting UMNO Vice Presidents. By anointing Abdullah and discouraging
contests in the two top slots (in the name of party “tradition”)
Mahathir denied UMNO members their voice. More crucially, he denied
the party a wider selection and the collective wisdom of its membership.
It is a delicious irony that while Mahathir endlessly exhorted Malays
to break free from the suffocating bounds of our traditions, he was
unable to liberate himself from the strictures of his own party!
Mahathir has one redeeming trait: determination. When he discovered
late that Anwar Ibrahim was wanting as a would-be successor, he did not
hesitate in correcting the error even though it was painful to him (and
also Anwar), his party, and nation.
Whether Mahathir would be successful in rectifying this latest blunder
(in selecting Abdullah) remains to be seen. He is now older and, more
significantly, out of office. The only power he has is his
considerable influence, personal conviction, and, not to be lightly
dismissed, good health. Those are the very qualities lacking in
Abdullah Badawi.
Abdullah’s Public Piety and “Mr. Clean” Facade
Abdullah’s public piety and “Mr. Clean” image is nothing more than a
shrewdly crafted facade. The man’s character does not justify those
descriptions.
Take his piety. Soon after becoming prime minister, he unashamedly
indulged in a grand gesture of being Imam by leading his ministers in a
widely publicized congregational prayer. The latest had him leading an
even larger group after breaking fast. These are nothing more than a
crass attempt at evoking the powerful images of our great Caliphs,
giants who were not only political but also spiritual leaders.
Malaysians forget (or more correctly were never reminded) that Islamic
Studies was not Abdullah’s first choice. He stumbled upon it because
he could not handle the mathematics to pursue economics. Then, as
today, Islamic Studies was a dumping ground for those not inclined for
or incapable of rigorous academic pursuit.
Likewise his “Mr. Clean” image; he never had the opportunity before!
Now that he is Prime (and Finance) Minister, he is furiously making up
for lost time.
All previous prime ministers were magnanimous upon assuming office by
pardoning prisoners, especially those held under the ISA. Abdullah
granted none; so much for the charity of his Islam Hadhari.
As for his humility and frugality, this was a man who would not move
into the official residence until it had undergone multimillion-dollar
renovations. Apparently the décor was not up to his exquisite taste!
To think that he could not even afford a house when he was dropped as a
minister a while back.
Such profligacy reflects an aesthetic sophistication of a Marcos rather
than the Kennedy.
The late Tun Razak agonized over putting in a swimming pool for his
young children at the old Sri Perdana. He did not have to brag or
publicize his frugality, humility, or piety. The fact that Abdullah
has to means that he is anything but.
It is not just the citizens who were taken in by Abdullah’s carefully
cultivated public persona, even the hardnosed Mahathir too bought into
it. Mahathir mistook the man’s eager nodding to mean agreement when
actually Abdullah was merely bidding his time as a raccoon would for
the farmer to leave the chicken coup. Mahathir now publicly calls his
successor a chronic liar. Any self-respecting man would take deep
offence to that; Abdullah took it in stride.
Prevention Always Better Than Remediation
Jack Welch offers many insights on preventing such succession errors
and the more general lesson of grooming the next tier of leaders. On
his frequent visits to the periphery, Welch would ask his divisional
heads to identify their promising junior officers. He would then size
them up personally to see whether he agree with their superior’s
assessment. Additionally he would them what they were doing to nurture
those talent.
Whenever promising candidates were fast-tracked, Welch would also
reward their immediate superiors. That would encourage them and others
to develop the talent under them. It would also prevent the dirty
trick prevalent in the Malaysian civil service where promising
subordinates would be sent to obscure postings lest they become a
threat to their superiors.
The civil service has an elaborate process for evaluating officers, but
it is done in secret. When I was in government service, I made it a
point to discuss my report with my young doctors individually and in
private. There would be no point to the exercise if they were denied
the valuable feedback. My senior colleagues pointedly told me that I
was breaching the civil service code.
Such sessions benefited both parties; I had occasions to change my
evaluations following them. Far from being dyspeptic encounters, they
permitted me to know my junior officers better. Today I still get
letters and e-mails from them, even those whom my evaluations had been
less-than-rosy. I also bask in the reflected glory when they shine,
especially those whom I had given glowing reports.
Had Malaysian leaders followed Welch’s example, they would now enjoy
the luxury of having an abundance of leadership talent, and the nation
would be spared the present embarrassment.
NEP will destroy the Malays
NEP will destroy the Malays
Bede Hong
Oct 2, 06 1:17pm
Since joining Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) as its treasurer in July, Khalid Ibrahim has called for the abolishment of the New Economic Policy (NEP) - an affirmative action scheme launched in 1971 to uplift the lot of poor Malays.
The call is surprising as it comes from a person once described as an ‘industry captain’.
Khalid, 60, is the former chief executive of Kumpulan Guthrie Bhd and former group chief executive of government-linked plantations company Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB). He stepped down from Guthrie in 2003. He also set up an asset-management company managing funds from licensed offices in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
After spending nearly two decades in fund management, most recently with Malaysia's National Equities Board (PNB), Khalid has made an about turn.
In part one of this two-part interview, Khalid tells malaysiakini about the need for the government to cut down on its operations costs, describes the NEP as ‘the devil’ and laments the lack of successful bumiputera entrepreneurs.
Malaysiakini: What do you think of the economy?
Khalid: With the likelihood of a world economic slowdown, coupled with the possibility of another rise in oil prices, which is quite the likelihood, I think the government needs to be concerned with reducing its operations costs. It’s more important than being cautious with spending.
It’s time for the government to re-look at the operating expenditure and how it can cut 10 to 20 percent of this to maintain a reasonable level of operation without excesses.
An operations cost of RM112 billion, which covers for example the expense of building Putrajaya and its maintenance, is taking a bite out of the budget.
I think after the 1997/98 economic crisis, the government has become the main agent to push the economy. There were enormous dependence on large projects to push the economy such as Putrajaya, Cyberjaya, KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport), the twin towers.
You could have other more productive options, rather than just enhancing the construction industry. I say this because when the infrastructure is done, you still have the additional cost of maintaining them. These are projects that do not have value added income. Yes, you could say people come to the Petronas Towers to take photos and all that, but those kind of income contributions are negligible.
Why the sudden change of heart?
In the early years of my career, I was among the people who initiated the implementation of the NEP and also created the institutions that act as bumiputera distributing arms in the corporate sector.
Some people have been surprised as a former promoter of the NEP, I am now ignoring the vehicle to advance the Malays.
The concept of the NEP is really just affirmative action. Of course affirmative is trying to correct certain perceived imbalances in the economy. In fact, the definition for affirmative action is very clear - it’s called positive discrimination.
It’s when you discriminate against people to resolve the disparity between communities to reach a level of an even playing field. So I think it was quite clear back then.
But now, the NEP has been vulgarised by a small section of the bumiputera community in terms of corporate enhancement. The NEP now is becoming a scheme to enhance the income and also the wealth of certain selected members of the community through references to secure all the contract give-outs and so forth.
It becomes so embarrassingly clear that this vehicle of NEP has been catered specifically to certain sections and groups of people. For example, we see that in the contract to supply computers to schools; the people who got the contracts have no experience in handling computers. And yet they become the front runners and it is sub contracted out.
So there is abuse in terms of not getting the right products delivered, resources that have been thrown out due to inefficiency, distribution to these schools have not been fully utilised and as a result, it is an enormous waste. Now the selected people have become so-called world players in terms of cyber cities and so forth.
If the NEP is not doing what it’s supposed to do, then what is it being used for?
It is a known secret that all division heads of Umno have a chance to get contracts from the government in order for them to fund their political activities. They became Malay rent collectors used by non-Malays to become front runners to get these projects. And it becomes a habit and a norm rather than an exception.
Now the whole country is in a mess. In fact, if you take notice, the on-going exchanges between (Dr) Mahathir (Mohamad) and Dollah Badawi (Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) are centred on the failure of contract handouts rather than the poor or the marginalised people. The debate has left out the poor people of Sabah for example, where statistics show a very high percentage of poverty.
We do see that the NEP has become a tool for securing income, unearned income for those who don’t do work. It’s really a free income for those who have connections with the government.
The after effect is that there is so much loss in government expenditure that the taxpayers are not getting the value on the expenditure made.
The NEP is not being updated, compared to other institutions that were set up in the early days like PNB, Tabung Haji, Felda, Tabung Angkatan Tentera. Unlike the NEP, these other institutions are moving forward in a steady way.
They had wanted to create so-called Malay corporate leaders and entrepreneurs when in fact it’s very hard to find them now. Those who are the super corporate entrepreneurs now, in terms of world class standards, you don’t get bumiputera or Malay names.
You get names like T Ananda Krishnan, Yeoh Tiong Lay, Lim Goh Tong and Robert Kuok (laughs) ... I think the whole of Malaysia enjoys the NEP because the NEP is not going to the Malays.
In our discussion on the NEP ... participants were telling us since the early 1980s and 90s they (the top businessmen) were constructing companies and building real estates and so forth. They became major players, the companies grew from millions to billions. But until today, they are just sub-contractors in Malaysia.
But if you analyse them (the major players) in a cynical manner, their success (is founded on the ability) to use the Malays to get contracts, and they benefited enormously from that. This is the seed of corruption...These sub-contractors now have to increase their cost in order to compensate the bribe they pay the runners to get those contracts.
Can you imagine this in Malaysia that wants to have more corporate governance, to become a highly regarded transparent nation? I think the NEP has in fact destroyed us, corrupted the whole thing. That’s why we say, hey, it doesn’t please a lot of Malays, it also doesn’t please the Chinese or Indians, and it also destroys the good character of how we to do business. People have been saying it’s only about implementation, but it has already taken the character of the devil (laughs). We cannot do with this. That’s why it deserves to be cut off.
This instrument is going to be one that will kill us and kill the nation. It has became a cancer of society. And to solve the problem of cancer, we cut it off.
The fight within Umno is on how they’re getting the best of the NEP. The 3,000 (Umno delegates) control the destiny of the nation. Ask people in the villages, they’ll tell you they wouldn’t know that they have big contracts waiting for them.
How would things be like if the NEP is abolished or modified ...
Now, if it wasn’t for the NEP, we could have achieved better growth because of the better ability to use resources. We could have an additional three or four percent in annual growth.
If you look at Singapore or Malaysia, they started off about the same time, that means the per capita income in both countries were about the same. Now, Malaysia’s just below US$5,000 but Singapore’s US$21,000.
What does this mean? Should we be discussing about the NEP? The logic of the technical economic argument shows that the NEP hindered growth, while the proponents of the NEP during my period (said it ) was to create political stability. Without political stability, there is no environment for industrial growth.
But the environment has changed, foreign investors are afraid of coming in. Investors have to consider this renter class that is going to tax you 30 percent.
I think the NEP has also condoned the lack of professionalism in governing and management, meaning it doesn’t care whether you are efficient or not, when you distribute to your friend. You can charge a higher price.
In order to hide all these mismanaged activities, the government is not being transparent. The government still relies on the OSA (Official Secrets Act) to hide the inefficiencies. Now there is no separation between the executive, legislature and judiciary in order for there to be check and balance.
In fact, the government has become a collusion with everybody rubbing each other’s back. Certain ministries and civil servants must be cunning enough to adjust some of the requirements of general order in order to accommodate the giving of these concessions.
And of course the politicians have to collude with the executive in order for them to have free trips to play golf in exotic places under the pretext of trying to set up real estate investment and study tours.
During the Anwar (Ibrahim) case, you can see this relationship (between the executive, legislature and judiciary). They became one team. That’s where we are now, the result of trying to implement the NEP ... a creature that is going to destroy the future generation of Malays.
There has yet to be a realistic alternative proposal to the NEP ...
DAP may have their own agenda, and PAS their own agenda to ensure that taxpayers will not be discriminated. I think the whole character of this needs to be stopped. Let’s come up with a new national agenda that caters for the needy and the masses. And in fact that was the original intent of the NEP. NEP has become an income sourcing tool in the most vulgarised manner.
We are working on a proposal so that all parties (can get) involved to improve the welfare of Malaysia. The NEP cannot subscribe to this because it is racially discriminatory.
We must create an income and opportunity based discrimination, that is the different way of looking at it. We want to explain to the people in Malaysia that they have been shortchanged. Let us wake up and demand for change. Of course don’t expect the government to think like this. The reason is this, the political nature is such that they are blinded. They are blinded as they have so much vested interests. It will be as though they are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
How will the government be coerced into doing what you want them to do?
The voters will have to decide. We talked to DAP and all, they have different agendas ... now we have to work together.
But come election time, the government will come up with sweets and all the goodies. But we are going to tell the voters that all these sweets will eventually cost you more [laughs]. You have taken the bribe in order to destroy your future generations. This is poison ...this is going to kill you.
But you must remember, this is not theoretical or speculative because we have already experienced it. You can take the goodies because they’re rightfully yours as taxpayers, but don’t give your vote. (laughs).
What do you think of the Asli (Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (Asli) Centre for Public Policy Studies) statistics?
(Asli estimated that bumiputera corporate equity ownership was around 45 percent, when based on September 2005 Bursa Malaysia figures)
Analysts must be very careful about this. Academicians cannot see the political intrigues of it. If you are not careful you might be catching your own tail.
You solve one problem - the statistical connotations but the implications are wide ranging. If a declaration is made that Petronas, for example, is categorised officially as bumiputera equity, then demands would be made by certain sections that the entire shares be diverted.
I saw the (Asli) statistics given, but it is not going to be helpful in arguing that the NEP is no longer relevant. It could backfire. Of course these discriminatory practices happen in all countries. The UK has got it, France has got it, people are cursing Australia for not doing it.
If you are in Malaysia, it means that you are being seen as taking advantage of the elements. The real issue is how you would harness the skills and abilities to compete in the international arena.
Just like Temasek, 70 percent is international - giving a return of 18 percent annually. That’s the benchmark. Otherwise, you are just a kampung player.
We must tell all the managers of GLCs (government-linked companies) ... to let the shareholders make the distribution decision. When we make profit we will decide how. You make the profit, you do it in the most professional manner with the best corporate governance but when the profit comes in, then the question of distribution comes in. In fact, it is high time for Malaysia to conduct the so-called good way of solving this problem.
If the CEO (chief executive officer) of a GLC says ‘I cannot perform because I was being disturbed by my boss who is politically influenced’. I will say this: ‘We don’t care. You don’t look at us for pity. We will kick you because it’s your duty to kick the other person and you didn’t do your job.’
Bede Hong
Oct 2, 06 1:17pm
Since joining Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) as its treasurer in July, Khalid Ibrahim has called for the abolishment of the New Economic Policy (NEP) - an affirmative action scheme launched in 1971 to uplift the lot of poor Malays.
The call is surprising as it comes from a person once described as an ‘industry captain’.
Khalid, 60, is the former chief executive of Kumpulan Guthrie Bhd and former group chief executive of government-linked plantations company Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB). He stepped down from Guthrie in 2003. He also set up an asset-management company managing funds from licensed offices in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
After spending nearly two decades in fund management, most recently with Malaysia's National Equities Board (PNB), Khalid has made an about turn.
In part one of this two-part interview, Khalid tells malaysiakini about the need for the government to cut down on its operations costs, describes the NEP as ‘the devil’ and laments the lack of successful bumiputera entrepreneurs.
Malaysiakini: What do you think of the economy?
Khalid: With the likelihood of a world economic slowdown, coupled with the possibility of another rise in oil prices, which is quite the likelihood, I think the government needs to be concerned with reducing its operations costs. It’s more important than being cautious with spending.
It’s time for the government to re-look at the operating expenditure and how it can cut 10 to 20 percent of this to maintain a reasonable level of operation without excesses.
An operations cost of RM112 billion, which covers for example the expense of building Putrajaya and its maintenance, is taking a bite out of the budget.
I think after the 1997/98 economic crisis, the government has become the main agent to push the economy. There were enormous dependence on large projects to push the economy such as Putrajaya, Cyberjaya, KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport), the twin towers.
You could have other more productive options, rather than just enhancing the construction industry. I say this because when the infrastructure is done, you still have the additional cost of maintaining them. These are projects that do not have value added income. Yes, you could say people come to the Petronas Towers to take photos and all that, but those kind of income contributions are negligible.
Why the sudden change of heart?
In the early years of my career, I was among the people who initiated the implementation of the NEP and also created the institutions that act as bumiputera distributing arms in the corporate sector.
Some people have been surprised as a former promoter of the NEP, I am now ignoring the vehicle to advance the Malays.
The concept of the NEP is really just affirmative action. Of course affirmative is trying to correct certain perceived imbalances in the economy. In fact, the definition for affirmative action is very clear - it’s called positive discrimination.
It’s when you discriminate against people to resolve the disparity between communities to reach a level of an even playing field. So I think it was quite clear back then.
But now, the NEP has been vulgarised by a small section of the bumiputera community in terms of corporate enhancement. The NEP now is becoming a scheme to enhance the income and also the wealth of certain selected members of the community through references to secure all the contract give-outs and so forth.
It becomes so embarrassingly clear that this vehicle of NEP has been catered specifically to certain sections and groups of people. For example, we see that in the contract to supply computers to schools; the people who got the contracts have no experience in handling computers. And yet they become the front runners and it is sub contracted out.
So there is abuse in terms of not getting the right products delivered, resources that have been thrown out due to inefficiency, distribution to these schools have not been fully utilised and as a result, it is an enormous waste. Now the selected people have become so-called world players in terms of cyber cities and so forth.
If the NEP is not doing what it’s supposed to do, then what is it being used for?
It is a known secret that all division heads of Umno have a chance to get contracts from the government in order for them to fund their political activities. They became Malay rent collectors used by non-Malays to become front runners to get these projects. And it becomes a habit and a norm rather than an exception.
Now the whole country is in a mess. In fact, if you take notice, the on-going exchanges between (Dr) Mahathir (Mohamad) and Dollah Badawi (Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) are centred on the failure of contract handouts rather than the poor or the marginalised people. The debate has left out the poor people of Sabah for example, where statistics show a very high percentage of poverty.
We do see that the NEP has become a tool for securing income, unearned income for those who don’t do work. It’s really a free income for those who have connections with the government.
The after effect is that there is so much loss in government expenditure that the taxpayers are not getting the value on the expenditure made.
The NEP is not being updated, compared to other institutions that were set up in the early days like PNB, Tabung Haji, Felda, Tabung Angkatan Tentera. Unlike the NEP, these other institutions are moving forward in a steady way.
They had wanted to create so-called Malay corporate leaders and entrepreneurs when in fact it’s very hard to find them now. Those who are the super corporate entrepreneurs now, in terms of world class standards, you don’t get bumiputera or Malay names.
You get names like T Ananda Krishnan, Yeoh Tiong Lay, Lim Goh Tong and Robert Kuok (laughs) ... I think the whole of Malaysia enjoys the NEP because the NEP is not going to the Malays.
In our discussion on the NEP ... participants were telling us since the early 1980s and 90s they (the top businessmen) were constructing companies and building real estates and so forth. They became major players, the companies grew from millions to billions. But until today, they are just sub-contractors in Malaysia.
But if you analyse them (the major players) in a cynical manner, their success (is founded on the ability) to use the Malays to get contracts, and they benefited enormously from that. This is the seed of corruption...These sub-contractors now have to increase their cost in order to compensate the bribe they pay the runners to get those contracts.
Can you imagine this in Malaysia that wants to have more corporate governance, to become a highly regarded transparent nation? I think the NEP has in fact destroyed us, corrupted the whole thing. That’s why we say, hey, it doesn’t please a lot of Malays, it also doesn’t please the Chinese or Indians, and it also destroys the good character of how we to do business. People have been saying it’s only about implementation, but it has already taken the character of the devil (laughs). We cannot do with this. That’s why it deserves to be cut off.
This instrument is going to be one that will kill us and kill the nation. It has became a cancer of society. And to solve the problem of cancer, we cut it off.
The fight within Umno is on how they’re getting the best of the NEP. The 3,000 (Umno delegates) control the destiny of the nation. Ask people in the villages, they’ll tell you they wouldn’t know that they have big contracts waiting for them.
How would things be like if the NEP is abolished or modified ...
Now, if it wasn’t for the NEP, we could have achieved better growth because of the better ability to use resources. We could have an additional three or four percent in annual growth.
If you look at Singapore or Malaysia, they started off about the same time, that means the per capita income in both countries were about the same. Now, Malaysia’s just below US$5,000 but Singapore’s US$21,000.
What does this mean? Should we be discussing about the NEP? The logic of the technical economic argument shows that the NEP hindered growth, while the proponents of the NEP during my period (said it ) was to create political stability. Without political stability, there is no environment for industrial growth.
But the environment has changed, foreign investors are afraid of coming in. Investors have to consider this renter class that is going to tax you 30 percent.
I think the NEP has also condoned the lack of professionalism in governing and management, meaning it doesn’t care whether you are efficient or not, when you distribute to your friend. You can charge a higher price.
In order to hide all these mismanaged activities, the government is not being transparent. The government still relies on the OSA (Official Secrets Act) to hide the inefficiencies. Now there is no separation between the executive, legislature and judiciary in order for there to be check and balance.
In fact, the government has become a collusion with everybody rubbing each other’s back. Certain ministries and civil servants must be cunning enough to adjust some of the requirements of general order in order to accommodate the giving of these concessions.
And of course the politicians have to collude with the executive in order for them to have free trips to play golf in exotic places under the pretext of trying to set up real estate investment and study tours.
During the Anwar (Ibrahim) case, you can see this relationship (between the executive, legislature and judiciary). They became one team. That’s where we are now, the result of trying to implement the NEP ... a creature that is going to destroy the future generation of Malays.
There has yet to be a realistic alternative proposal to the NEP ...
DAP may have their own agenda, and PAS their own agenda to ensure that taxpayers will not be discriminated. I think the whole character of this needs to be stopped. Let’s come up with a new national agenda that caters for the needy and the masses. And in fact that was the original intent of the NEP. NEP has become an income sourcing tool in the most vulgarised manner.
We are working on a proposal so that all parties (can get) involved to improve the welfare of Malaysia. The NEP cannot subscribe to this because it is racially discriminatory.
We must create an income and opportunity based discrimination, that is the different way of looking at it. We want to explain to the people in Malaysia that they have been shortchanged. Let us wake up and demand for change. Of course don’t expect the government to think like this. The reason is this, the political nature is such that they are blinded. They are blinded as they have so much vested interests. It will be as though they are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
How will the government be coerced into doing what you want them to do?
The voters will have to decide. We talked to DAP and all, they have different agendas ... now we have to work together.
But come election time, the government will come up with sweets and all the goodies. But we are going to tell the voters that all these sweets will eventually cost you more [laughs]. You have taken the bribe in order to destroy your future generations. This is poison ...this is going to kill you.
But you must remember, this is not theoretical or speculative because we have already experienced it. You can take the goodies because they’re rightfully yours as taxpayers, but don’t give your vote. (laughs).
What do you think of the Asli (Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (Asli) Centre for Public Policy Studies) statistics?
(Asli estimated that bumiputera corporate equity ownership was around 45 percent, when based on September 2005 Bursa Malaysia figures)
Analysts must be very careful about this. Academicians cannot see the political intrigues of it. If you are not careful you might be catching your own tail.
You solve one problem - the statistical connotations but the implications are wide ranging. If a declaration is made that Petronas, for example, is categorised officially as bumiputera equity, then demands would be made by certain sections that the entire shares be diverted.
I saw the (Asli) statistics given, but it is not going to be helpful in arguing that the NEP is no longer relevant. It could backfire. Of course these discriminatory practices happen in all countries. The UK has got it, France has got it, people are cursing Australia for not doing it.
If you are in Malaysia, it means that you are being seen as taking advantage of the elements. The real issue is how you would harness the skills and abilities to compete in the international arena.
Just like Temasek, 70 percent is international - giving a return of 18 percent annually. That’s the benchmark. Otherwise, you are just a kampung player.
We must tell all the managers of GLCs (government-linked companies) ... to let the shareholders make the distribution decision. When we make profit we will decide how. You make the profit, you do it in the most professional manner with the best corporate governance but when the profit comes in, then the question of distribution comes in. In fact, it is high time for Malaysia to conduct the so-called good way of solving this problem.
If the CEO (chief executive officer) of a GLC says ‘I cannot perform because I was being disturbed by my boss who is politically influenced’. I will say this: ‘We don’t care. You don’t look at us for pity. We will kick you because it’s your duty to kick the other person and you didn’t do your job.’
Malaysia’s Islam: Bringing the “Progressive” Middle Ground Back In?
Malaysia’s Islam: Bringing the “Progressive” Middle Ground Back In?
Marzuki Mohamad
Debate on Malaysia’s Islam continues. In my previous posting in Malaysia Today (Zainah Anwar’s Hate Ideology: Desecularization or DeIslamization, or Both?, http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/guests.php?itemid=322), I argue that recent reassertion of religious identity among Malaysian Muslims, or desecularization as some will say, is a response to a particular de-Islamization force, the rise of which relates to a larger socio-political transformation that Malaysians have undergone over the past couple of decades. Suggesting that there has been widening gap between the Islamists and the secularists ever since, with both sides are moving further toward the extreme end of each side of the politico-religious spectrum, I proposed that the actors in the current Islamic debate moderate their stance and move back to the middle.
General responses to my argument, especially in the commentary section of the online news source, are furious, if not hysterical. This is understandable since increased reassertion of Muslim identity, which is often wrongly associated with religious extremism, has always been perceived as a problem rooted in the religion itself, rather than in the “progresses” that the modern society is now experiencing. Self-proclaimed progressive and liberal Muslims and non-Muslims alike could not accept this alternative perspective, let alone the moving-back-to-the-middle suggestion. For them, there is no such thing as the middle ground in Islam since the religion is immutable, non-negotiable, non-compromising, dogmatic and antithetical to the “progressiveness” of modern society. Contrary to what they think, this short article attempts at providing a glimpse of the progressive middle ground in Malaysia’s Islam - of what it has been, why it has changed and how it should fit into the present context of the Islamic debate. In short, it is a modest attempt at relocating the “progressive” middle ground, which is, perhaps, not too far from our historical past.
It is useful to clarify at the outset the contextual meaning of the term “progressive” that is used in this article. As the plain meaning of the word progress implies gradual change from a particular state of being to another, which is often for better, the application of the adjective word progressive to Malaysia’s Islam refers to, among other things, its evolution from a religion clouded by superstitious beliefs and practices to one which is deeply spiritual and highly rational; from largely informal to being essentially formal; and from inwardly conservative and orthodox to being receptive to progressive modern ideas and values.
At the heart of this progress has been a built-in mechanism in the vast corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology which asserts the compatibility of the divine religion with changing times and circumstances. While it inaugurates the Qur’an and the Sunnah as the main sources of Islamic law and theology, or the Shari’ah, it allows ijtihad (human reasoning) on matters which has no clear and unequivocal injunction in both sources. It also accepts new ideas and practices as long as they are not inconsistent with fundamental aspects of the Shari’ah. As Islam responds to changing circumstances but relies on its own internal built-in mechanism to progress, the process of departing from its orthodox past has been gradual and enduring. More important, the religion progresses because it is inherently desirable to do so, rather than being hard pressed to change.
Islam’s inherent ability to progress with changing times and circumstances has made possible the existence of wide space for moderation, or the progressive middle ground, within the religion. Along this middle ground, Islam accommodates new socio-political development while it retains its fundamental doctrines. This is particularly evident in Malaysia’s Islam’s encounter with modernization, the process of which, like progressive Islam, has been gradual and subtle. Along that process, the Islamic legal system has been formally modernized while it retains substantive elements of Islamic jurisprudence. Islamic banking and finance coexist with their conventional counterparts within the larger framework of modern capitalist market economy. Islamic education modernizes with the mushrooming of modern madrasahs and pondoks which incorporate in school syllabuses Islamic revealed knowledge as well as modern acquired knowledge in science and technology, mathematics, English language, geography, etc. From these madrasahs and pondoks, emerged Muslim technocrats and bureaucrats who participated in building the modern state and its economy. Young Muslim scholars - men and women - went to finest universities in the West, and in due course of time, acquainted themselves with the philosophies of Marx, Weber and Hegel. Some even traveled further down the road to find themselves entangled in the thought of Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard. In politics, Islamic parties took part in democratically held, though not necessarily free and fair, elections and, thus far, managed to form government at state level. Of late, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) has been an integral part of societal struggle for a wider democratic space.
Ironically though, government’s Islamization policy, which has been debunked by its secularist critics for its tendency to increase the role of Islam in the state and perpetuate Islam’s domination over the rest of other religions, paved the way for extra state funding for the purpose of modernizing Islamic judiciary and bureaucracy. Shari’ah court judges enrolled in professional judicial courses in which they learned how to hand down decisions based on written statutes passed by modern legislature, case laws and adduced evidences as much as the civil court judges do. Shari’ah prosecutors too were trained to handle cases according to formal court’s rules and procedures. During trials, they examine, cross-examine and re-examine witnesses similar to what public prosecutors do in conventional criminal courts. What determine Shari’ah court judges’ decisions are settled laws and evidences adduced before them in open courts rather than their own arbitrary substantive intuition of what is right or wrong. Islamic religious bureaucrats too were absorbed into the modern public service. They manage various religious departments according to government general orders much like what ordinary public officers do in other government departments.
In short, while Malaysian Islamic judicial system, with its elements of legal predictability, has departed far away from the Weberian vision of traditional Qathi justice system, its religious bureaucracy has also been at ease with Weberian formal-legal bureaucratic model which plays an integral part in a modernizing society. In both areas, there has been a sweet conjunction between Islam and modernity, which symbolizes Islam’s inherent ability to progress without abandoning its fundamental doctrines. Having said this, however, there are still rooms for improvement. Absorption of qualified women personnel into high ranking positions within the system has been slow and halting. Often, for being male-dominated, both Islamic judiciary and bureaucracy failed to escape allegations of gender bias.
While Malaysia’s Islam progresses and moderates, it also pushes to the fringe extreme elements within both the Islamist and the secularist forces. It ignores the conservative Islamists’ call for restoration of a full-fledge theocracy and, at the same time, disregards the secularists’ insistence for complete annihilation of the role of religion in the state. In between the two poles are the moderate and progressive Muslims who, beginning from the 1980s, increasingly played an important part in the government. Among them was Anwar Ibrahim, a former prominent Muslim activist who, before falling out with former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in September 1998, experienced a meteoric rise in the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the government. Others include the “old” progressive Muslims in the mainstream Islamic organizations such as Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM) and Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM), and Muslim intellectuals in the faculties of Islamic studies at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and the University of Malaya (UM). Together with the old progressive Muslims, Anwar helped realize the progressive Islamization project under Mahathir’s administration.
Among important milestones of the progressive Islamization project, which under the premiership of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi assumed a new name of “Islam Hadhari” or civilizational Islam, include formulation of a National Education Philosophy which emphasizes spiritually, physically, intellectually and emotionally balanced education; establishment of Islamic higher education and research institutions such as the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) and Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia (IKIM); introduction of Islamic banking, finance and insurance; and co-option of Islamist organizations into a host of “insiders” and government partners in nation building. This progressive Islamization project has also served as a religious logic of developmental state. With its promotion of economic development as a means to improve Muslim’s backwardness, it gives increasing state role in economic development a semblance of religious legitimacy. In regards to ethnic relations, the progressive and tolerant face of Islam allows harmonious interaction of Muslims with people of other faiths and cultures, making possible a relatively harmonious inter-religious and inter-ethnic relation.
In sum, until the 1990s, the progressive Islamic discourse primarily revolved around these themes: modernization of Islamic judiciary, bureaucracy, education and economy as well as rationalization of ethnic relations. These are the areas in which Islam’s built-in mechanism for progress could deal with swiftly. Along this process of progression, there has been a kind of benevolent ambiguity where it has often been hard to convincingly describe whether Malaysia’s official Islam is fully Islamic or fully modern. The case has always been like it is Islamic, and yet modern; or modern, and yet Islamic. Underlying this benevolent ambiguity has been a working “progressive” middle ground on which Islam encounters and emulates modern values, and yet retains vast corpus of its traditional jurisprudence and theology intact.
By the late 1990s, the terrain of progressive Islamic discourse underwent a tremendous change. The emergence of new universal libertarian human rights discourse and the worldwide Islamophobia posed new questions to and raised new concerns within the Muslim community. While the worldwide Islamophobia had in one sense resurrected the old myth of fictional mahound, the new libertarian human rights struggle emboldened the beleaguered Muslims who are now taking up a struggle to liberate themselves from the tyranny of the new mahound - Islam that is. The much celebrated view that individuals are the ultimate giver of meanings and definer of spiritualism has made the distinction between the image and the reality, the authentic and the aberration imploded in never ending public discourses. Progressive Islam has now to come to grip with, not modernization of Islamic education, economy or administration, but post-modernization of individualism. It has to deal with a whole range of new issues and concerns which primarily relate to the primacy of libertarian values over communitarian mores. These include the question of primacy of private space, legal enforcement of morality, the plight of Muslim gays, lesbians, transvestites and the subaltern, and Muslim’s right to freedom of, in and from religion - just to mention a few. These are areas in which the traditional corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology hold strictest stance, and seems unwilling to change.
Disenchanted with Islam’s built-in mechanism’s unwillingness to change, “new” progressive Muslims, many of them are more secular in their view about Islam, seek to deconstruct the traditional corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology. Some had offered unconventional interpretations of the Qur’anic text, while others dismissed vast corpus of prophetic traditions as unreliable and unauthentic. The basic contention of this new progressive Muslims is that Islam, being a universal religion, should accommodate the universalism of the new libertarian human rights discourse. This should be done by deconstructing the traditional corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology, which broadly implies, among other things, legalization of apostasy, repeal of Islamic moral laws, ban on polygamous marriage, allowing women to lead Friday prayers, freedom to practice Islam according to one’s own interpretation of the religion, acceptance of the truth of all religions (religious universalism), etc. Resistance to change means perpetuation of an old religious construct which is oppressive and tyrannical. At its worst, religion is seen as a temporal system of oppression rather than a transcendental system of faith.
It seems that the new progressive Islam - or rather, post-progressive Islam - has traversed the parameters of progressive traditional Islam and modernity and moved into the post-modern realm of hyper realities and radicalism. The question now is not whether Islam should co-exist or operate within the framework of a modern secular state, an issue which permeates Islam and modernity discourse, but whether the whole corpus of traditional Islamic jurisprudence and theology is compatible with the new post-modernization of individualism. It is in this context that the new post-progressive Islam seeks to deconstruct the grand narrative of Islam - its traditional jurisprudence and theology. By doing this, it ignores Islam’s inherent ability to progress, at its own pace, but rather looks upon the new libertarian values as the benchmark for radical change. Within this new perspective of post-progressive Islam, there will be no authoritative interpretation of the religion, since authority represents oppression. In its place is a free for all Islam, in which everybody is entitled to his or her own opinion about the religion, and use it as guide to their behavior. It follows that the quest for absolute truth in and through religion is meaningless because there seems to be so many truths. There is no middle ground within this new vision of post-progressive Islam because its underlying tendency is radicalization of the discourse and deconstruction of the grand narrative, which means pushing its frontiers further left and left.
On the other pole of the politico-religious spectrum are the “old” progressive Muslims as well as broad range of conservatives who are now lumped together and labeled as the Islamists. The intensity of the radicalization of the post-progressive Islamic discourse has led to the convergence of the Islamist force of all persuasions in a common struggle to “defend” the Islamic faith. While the old progressive Muslims are trying to maintain the sweet conjunction between Islam and modernity, and be more moderate and civil in their encounter with the new radical post-progressive Muslims, the rest of the conservatives have shown a particular tendency to move further right. The directive against extending Deepavali greetings to Hindu fellow citizens, a fatwa condemning liberalism and religious pluralism, demonstration against open discussion on religious freedom and a death threat to a lawyer whose client had applied to court for a declaration that she had converted out of Islam are indicative of this move-to-the-right tendency. Adding complexities to this conundrum is the fact that Malaysia’s highly ethnicised politics also has the potential to rear its ugliest head. Thus far, controversies over a number of court cases on the right of non-Muslim/non-converting parent to child custody (Shamala’s case), the deceased’s status of conversion to Islam and the right of burial (Muhammad Moorthy Abdullah’s case) and the Muslim’s right to convert out of Islam (Lina Joy’s case) are sowing the seed of inter-ethnic and inter-religious discontent. Left unchecked, the present Islamic debate has the potential to heighten religious extremism within Muslim and non-Muslim communities alike.
It is quite apparent now that there has been in the past a “progressive” middle ground in the encounter between Islam and modernity in Malaysia. The shifting terrain of progressive Islamic discourse, from one which emanates from the sweet conjunction between Islam and modernity to one which revolves around fierce encounter between Islam and post-modernism, downplays the possibilities of reconciliation between the contending forces. As such, the question to be asked is not whether there is a middle ground, but whether or not the present actors of the Islamic debate are willing to move back to the middle. Moving back to the middle implies de-radicalization of the post-progressive Islamic discourse, as well as increased activism among the old progressive Muslim jurists to deal with the whole range of new issues and concerns.
______________________________________________________
Marzuki Mohamad (marzuki.mohamad@anu.edu.au) is a Research Scholar of Political Science at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. He is currently a member of Central Executive Committee of Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM).
Marzuki Mohamad
Debate on Malaysia’s Islam continues. In my previous posting in Malaysia Today (Zainah Anwar’s Hate Ideology: Desecularization or DeIslamization, or Both?, http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/guests.php?itemid=322), I argue that recent reassertion of religious identity among Malaysian Muslims, or desecularization as some will say, is a response to a particular de-Islamization force, the rise of which relates to a larger socio-political transformation that Malaysians have undergone over the past couple of decades. Suggesting that there has been widening gap between the Islamists and the secularists ever since, with both sides are moving further toward the extreme end of each side of the politico-religious spectrum, I proposed that the actors in the current Islamic debate moderate their stance and move back to the middle.
General responses to my argument, especially in the commentary section of the online news source, are furious, if not hysterical. This is understandable since increased reassertion of Muslim identity, which is often wrongly associated with religious extremism, has always been perceived as a problem rooted in the religion itself, rather than in the “progresses” that the modern society is now experiencing. Self-proclaimed progressive and liberal Muslims and non-Muslims alike could not accept this alternative perspective, let alone the moving-back-to-the-middle suggestion. For them, there is no such thing as the middle ground in Islam since the religion is immutable, non-negotiable, non-compromising, dogmatic and antithetical to the “progressiveness” of modern society. Contrary to what they think, this short article attempts at providing a glimpse of the progressive middle ground in Malaysia’s Islam - of what it has been, why it has changed and how it should fit into the present context of the Islamic debate. In short, it is a modest attempt at relocating the “progressive” middle ground, which is, perhaps, not too far from our historical past.
It is useful to clarify at the outset the contextual meaning of the term “progressive” that is used in this article. As the plain meaning of the word progress implies gradual change from a particular state of being to another, which is often for better, the application of the adjective word progressive to Malaysia’s Islam refers to, among other things, its evolution from a religion clouded by superstitious beliefs and practices to one which is deeply spiritual and highly rational; from largely informal to being essentially formal; and from inwardly conservative and orthodox to being receptive to progressive modern ideas and values.
At the heart of this progress has been a built-in mechanism in the vast corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology which asserts the compatibility of the divine religion with changing times and circumstances. While it inaugurates the Qur’an and the Sunnah as the main sources of Islamic law and theology, or the Shari’ah, it allows ijtihad (human reasoning) on matters which has no clear and unequivocal injunction in both sources. It also accepts new ideas and practices as long as they are not inconsistent with fundamental aspects of the Shari’ah. As Islam responds to changing circumstances but relies on its own internal built-in mechanism to progress, the process of departing from its orthodox past has been gradual and enduring. More important, the religion progresses because it is inherently desirable to do so, rather than being hard pressed to change.
Islam’s inherent ability to progress with changing times and circumstances has made possible the existence of wide space for moderation, or the progressive middle ground, within the religion. Along this middle ground, Islam accommodates new socio-political development while it retains its fundamental doctrines. This is particularly evident in Malaysia’s Islam’s encounter with modernization, the process of which, like progressive Islam, has been gradual and subtle. Along that process, the Islamic legal system has been formally modernized while it retains substantive elements of Islamic jurisprudence. Islamic banking and finance coexist with their conventional counterparts within the larger framework of modern capitalist market economy. Islamic education modernizes with the mushrooming of modern madrasahs and pondoks which incorporate in school syllabuses Islamic revealed knowledge as well as modern acquired knowledge in science and technology, mathematics, English language, geography, etc. From these madrasahs and pondoks, emerged Muslim technocrats and bureaucrats who participated in building the modern state and its economy. Young Muslim scholars - men and women - went to finest universities in the West, and in due course of time, acquainted themselves with the philosophies of Marx, Weber and Hegel. Some even traveled further down the road to find themselves entangled in the thought of Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard. In politics, Islamic parties took part in democratically held, though not necessarily free and fair, elections and, thus far, managed to form government at state level. Of late, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) has been an integral part of societal struggle for a wider democratic space.
Ironically though, government’s Islamization policy, which has been debunked by its secularist critics for its tendency to increase the role of Islam in the state and perpetuate Islam’s domination over the rest of other religions, paved the way for extra state funding for the purpose of modernizing Islamic judiciary and bureaucracy. Shari’ah court judges enrolled in professional judicial courses in which they learned how to hand down decisions based on written statutes passed by modern legislature, case laws and adduced evidences as much as the civil court judges do. Shari’ah prosecutors too were trained to handle cases according to formal court’s rules and procedures. During trials, they examine, cross-examine and re-examine witnesses similar to what public prosecutors do in conventional criminal courts. What determine Shari’ah court judges’ decisions are settled laws and evidences adduced before them in open courts rather than their own arbitrary substantive intuition of what is right or wrong. Islamic religious bureaucrats too were absorbed into the modern public service. They manage various religious departments according to government general orders much like what ordinary public officers do in other government departments.
In short, while Malaysian Islamic judicial system, with its elements of legal predictability, has departed far away from the Weberian vision of traditional Qathi justice system, its religious bureaucracy has also been at ease with Weberian formal-legal bureaucratic model which plays an integral part in a modernizing society. In both areas, there has been a sweet conjunction between Islam and modernity, which symbolizes Islam’s inherent ability to progress without abandoning its fundamental doctrines. Having said this, however, there are still rooms for improvement. Absorption of qualified women personnel into high ranking positions within the system has been slow and halting. Often, for being male-dominated, both Islamic judiciary and bureaucracy failed to escape allegations of gender bias.
While Malaysia’s Islam progresses and moderates, it also pushes to the fringe extreme elements within both the Islamist and the secularist forces. It ignores the conservative Islamists’ call for restoration of a full-fledge theocracy and, at the same time, disregards the secularists’ insistence for complete annihilation of the role of religion in the state. In between the two poles are the moderate and progressive Muslims who, beginning from the 1980s, increasingly played an important part in the government. Among them was Anwar Ibrahim, a former prominent Muslim activist who, before falling out with former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in September 1998, experienced a meteoric rise in the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and the government. Others include the “old” progressive Muslims in the mainstream Islamic organizations such as Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM) and Jamaah Islah Malaysia (JIM), and Muslim intellectuals in the faculties of Islamic studies at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and the University of Malaya (UM). Together with the old progressive Muslims, Anwar helped realize the progressive Islamization project under Mahathir’s administration.
Among important milestones of the progressive Islamization project, which under the premiership of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi assumed a new name of “Islam Hadhari” or civilizational Islam, include formulation of a National Education Philosophy which emphasizes spiritually, physically, intellectually and emotionally balanced education; establishment of Islamic higher education and research institutions such as the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) and Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia (IKIM); introduction of Islamic banking, finance and insurance; and co-option of Islamist organizations into a host of “insiders” and government partners in nation building. This progressive Islamization project has also served as a religious logic of developmental state. With its promotion of economic development as a means to improve Muslim’s backwardness, it gives increasing state role in economic development a semblance of religious legitimacy. In regards to ethnic relations, the progressive and tolerant face of Islam allows harmonious interaction of Muslims with people of other faiths and cultures, making possible a relatively harmonious inter-religious and inter-ethnic relation.
In sum, until the 1990s, the progressive Islamic discourse primarily revolved around these themes: modernization of Islamic judiciary, bureaucracy, education and economy as well as rationalization of ethnic relations. These are the areas in which Islam’s built-in mechanism for progress could deal with swiftly. Along this process of progression, there has been a kind of benevolent ambiguity where it has often been hard to convincingly describe whether Malaysia’s official Islam is fully Islamic or fully modern. The case has always been like it is Islamic, and yet modern; or modern, and yet Islamic. Underlying this benevolent ambiguity has been a working “progressive” middle ground on which Islam encounters and emulates modern values, and yet retains vast corpus of its traditional jurisprudence and theology intact.
By the late 1990s, the terrain of progressive Islamic discourse underwent a tremendous change. The emergence of new universal libertarian human rights discourse and the worldwide Islamophobia posed new questions to and raised new concerns within the Muslim community. While the worldwide Islamophobia had in one sense resurrected the old myth of fictional mahound, the new libertarian human rights struggle emboldened the beleaguered Muslims who are now taking up a struggle to liberate themselves from the tyranny of the new mahound - Islam that is. The much celebrated view that individuals are the ultimate giver of meanings and definer of spiritualism has made the distinction between the image and the reality, the authentic and the aberration imploded in never ending public discourses. Progressive Islam has now to come to grip with, not modernization of Islamic education, economy or administration, but post-modernization of individualism. It has to deal with a whole range of new issues and concerns which primarily relate to the primacy of libertarian values over communitarian mores. These include the question of primacy of private space, legal enforcement of morality, the plight of Muslim gays, lesbians, transvestites and the subaltern, and Muslim’s right to freedom of, in and from religion - just to mention a few. These are areas in which the traditional corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology hold strictest stance, and seems unwilling to change.
Disenchanted with Islam’s built-in mechanism’s unwillingness to change, “new” progressive Muslims, many of them are more secular in their view about Islam, seek to deconstruct the traditional corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology. Some had offered unconventional interpretations of the Qur’anic text, while others dismissed vast corpus of prophetic traditions as unreliable and unauthentic. The basic contention of this new progressive Muslims is that Islam, being a universal religion, should accommodate the universalism of the new libertarian human rights discourse. This should be done by deconstructing the traditional corpus of Islamic jurisprudence and theology, which broadly implies, among other things, legalization of apostasy, repeal of Islamic moral laws, ban on polygamous marriage, allowing women to lead Friday prayers, freedom to practice Islam according to one’s own interpretation of the religion, acceptance of the truth of all religions (religious universalism), etc. Resistance to change means perpetuation of an old religious construct which is oppressive and tyrannical. At its worst, religion is seen as a temporal system of oppression rather than a transcendental system of faith.
It seems that the new progressive Islam - or rather, post-progressive Islam - has traversed the parameters of progressive traditional Islam and modernity and moved into the post-modern realm of hyper realities and radicalism. The question now is not whether Islam should co-exist or operate within the framework of a modern secular state, an issue which permeates Islam and modernity discourse, but whether the whole corpus of traditional Islamic jurisprudence and theology is compatible with the new post-modernization of individualism. It is in this context that the new post-progressive Islam seeks to deconstruct the grand narrative of Islam - its traditional jurisprudence and theology. By doing this, it ignores Islam’s inherent ability to progress, at its own pace, but rather looks upon the new libertarian values as the benchmark for radical change. Within this new perspective of post-progressive Islam, there will be no authoritative interpretation of the religion, since authority represents oppression. In its place is a free for all Islam, in which everybody is entitled to his or her own opinion about the religion, and use it as guide to their behavior. It follows that the quest for absolute truth in and through religion is meaningless because there seems to be so many truths. There is no middle ground within this new vision of post-progressive Islam because its underlying tendency is radicalization of the discourse and deconstruction of the grand narrative, which means pushing its frontiers further left and left.
On the other pole of the politico-religious spectrum are the “old” progressive Muslims as well as broad range of conservatives who are now lumped together and labeled as the Islamists. The intensity of the radicalization of the post-progressive Islamic discourse has led to the convergence of the Islamist force of all persuasions in a common struggle to “defend” the Islamic faith. While the old progressive Muslims are trying to maintain the sweet conjunction between Islam and modernity, and be more moderate and civil in their encounter with the new radical post-progressive Muslims, the rest of the conservatives have shown a particular tendency to move further right. The directive against extending Deepavali greetings to Hindu fellow citizens, a fatwa condemning liberalism and religious pluralism, demonstration against open discussion on religious freedom and a death threat to a lawyer whose client had applied to court for a declaration that she had converted out of Islam are indicative of this move-to-the-right tendency. Adding complexities to this conundrum is the fact that Malaysia’s highly ethnicised politics also has the potential to rear its ugliest head. Thus far, controversies over a number of court cases on the right of non-Muslim/non-converting parent to child custody (Shamala’s case), the deceased’s status of conversion to Islam and the right of burial (Muhammad Moorthy Abdullah’s case) and the Muslim’s right to convert out of Islam (Lina Joy’s case) are sowing the seed of inter-ethnic and inter-religious discontent. Left unchecked, the present Islamic debate has the potential to heighten religious extremism within Muslim and non-Muslim communities alike.
It is quite apparent now that there has been in the past a “progressive” middle ground in the encounter between Islam and modernity in Malaysia. The shifting terrain of progressive Islamic discourse, from one which emanates from the sweet conjunction between Islam and modernity to one which revolves around fierce encounter between Islam and post-modernism, downplays the possibilities of reconciliation between the contending forces. As such, the question to be asked is not whether there is a middle ground, but whether or not the present actors of the Islamic debate are willing to move back to the middle. Moving back to the middle implies de-radicalization of the post-progressive Islamic discourse, as well as increased activism among the old progressive Muslim jurists to deal with the whole range of new issues and concerns.
______________________________________________________
Marzuki Mohamad (marzuki.mohamad@anu.edu.au) is a Research Scholar of Political Science at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. He is currently a member of Central Executive Committee of Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM).
Bumi equity hit NEP target 10 years ago
Bumi equity hit NEP target 10 years ago
Beh Lih Yi
Nov 1, 06 6:29pm Adjust font size:
exclusive A university research paper has found that the 30 percent bumiputera equity ownership as targeted under the government’s New Economic Policy had been achieved about a decade ago.
The research, done by Universiti Malaya academician Dr M Fazilah Abdul Samad, was based on a 10-year analysis of bumiputera equity ownership between 1988 and 1997 of public listed companies on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE), now called Bursa Malaysia.
It found the 30 percent bumiputera equity ownership target was reached in 1997 when it hit 33.7 percent.
According to the 2002 study, the 33.7 percent figure was made up of bumiputera corporate equity ownership (30.6 percent) - which is equity held by bumiputera companies - and individual bumiputera share ownership (3.1 percent).
The remainder were held by ‘others’ (32 percent), those under foreign ownership (24.9 percent) and government-held ownership (9.5 percent).
However, the ‘others’ category consisted not just of non-bumiputera ownership but also nominee companies ownership. A nominee company’s sole function is to hold shares or securities on behalf of someone else.
Many economists would argue that nominee companies are not solely under non-bumiputera ownership as a number of them are held by bumiputeras.
Study by UM’s Dr Fazilah
The ground-breaking research was compiled into a 107-page report entitled ‘Bumiputeras in the corporate sector: Three decades of performance 1970-2000' and was published four years ago.
Dr M Fazilah said in her findings that in 1988, bumiputera corporate equity ownership was way below the NEP target.
The bumiputera share was then 12 percent, of which 11 percent was under bumiputera corporate equity ownership while one percent was under individual bumiputera share ownership.
In contrast, foreign ownership was then 27 percent while non-bumiputeras - which included nominee companies - collectively owned more than half of the total paid-up capital of public-listed companies.
“Nevertheless, the percentage of corporate equity owned by bumiputeras fluctuated between 16 percent in 1999 to 22 percent in 1995 and reached the NEP target only in 1997,” she stated.
Fazilah is also head of the finance and banking department at UM’s business and accountancy faculty.
Her research was commissioned and published by UM’s independent research unit, the Centre for Economic Development and Ethnic Relations.
Remarkable growth
Fazilah also found that bumiputera corporate ownership enjoyed the highest annualised growth rate - 27.9 percent - between 1988 and 1997 compared to that of non-bumiputeras.
The annualised growth rate of the total market was 15.6 percent - with foreign ownership at 18.2 percent, government (16.7 percent) and non-bumiputera and nominee companies (11.8 percent).
The research attributed the remarkable annualised growth rate to the high economic growth registered during the boom years after 1990.
The government’s privatisation programmes, which were actively implemented after 1987, had also given bumiputera entrepreneurs an added boost.
As the 10-year analysis on the bumiputera equity ownership did not cover the post-Asian financial crisis in 1997, it is not known how this has affected the corporate equity ownership since Fazilah’s research.
Nevertheless, the academician said based on monthly stock returns after the financial crisis, it indicated that the “... bumiputera-controlled companies were as badly affected as the rest of the market”.
“Thus, there was actually no ‘cushioning’ given by the government since the government was probably more concerned about the survival of the overall economy,” she argued.
No comment from researcher
Fazilah, when contacted by malaysiakini, declined to comment on her research.
She also refused to entertain questions on the issue of bumiputera corporate equity ownership, saying that as an university staff, she has to comply with the university’s ‘Akujanji’ (pledge of good conduct).
Under the ‘Akujanji’, academicians are barred from making media statements without prior approval from the university’s authority.
The government has always maintained that the country has yet to achieve the 30 percent bumiputera equity ownership target.
It's figure, calculated by the Economic Planning Unit, is based on the par value of shares of 600,000 registered companies.
Critics allege that the government underestimates the bumiputera share of corporate equity - which stands at 18.9 percent - to justify the continuation of the NEP and its related policies which give favourable treatment to bumiputeras.
Academicians also questioned the methodology used in the government’s computation as it is based on par value instead of market value of company shares, the latter generally considered as a more accurate measure of wealth.
Interestingly, the UM equity study was based on the par value of the KLSE companies, not their market value.
Controversial Asli study
In recent months, a study by a local think-tank which estimated the bumiputera equity ownership at about 45 percent - almost double of the government figures - had drawn widespread consternation from the authorities.
The government was quick to dismiss the findings, which was done by the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (Asli)’s Centre for Public Policy Studies. The public was also told not to question the credibility of the figures provided by the authorities.
According to the government, the Asli report’s methodology was flawed as its computation of corporate equity distribution was based on the market value of company shares.
The Asli research, said the government, had also attributed a 70 percent ownership of government-linked companies (GLCs) to bumiputeras.
On the other hand, the government said its statistics were derived from the calculation of par value of shares involving some 600,000 registered companies and this did not include the GLCs as under bumiputera ownership.
At the height of the controversy, the government said it was prepared to reveal its methodology in its computing of the statistics. However, there has been no new development on the matter.
The NEP was enacted in the 1970 as part of a bold blueprint to reduce income disparity among different ethnic groups in Malaysia.
It was given a life span of 20 years but the racially-based affirmative action policies continued after 1990 under a different name, the New Development Policy.
The government has recently announced that the NEP’s racially-based measures will remain for another 15 years until 2020.
Beh Lih Yi
Nov 1, 06 6:29pm Adjust font size:
exclusive A university research paper has found that the 30 percent bumiputera equity ownership as targeted under the government’s New Economic Policy had been achieved about a decade ago.
The research, done by Universiti Malaya academician Dr M Fazilah Abdul Samad, was based on a 10-year analysis of bumiputera equity ownership between 1988 and 1997 of public listed companies on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE), now called Bursa Malaysia.
It found the 30 percent bumiputera equity ownership target was reached in 1997 when it hit 33.7 percent.
According to the 2002 study, the 33.7 percent figure was made up of bumiputera corporate equity ownership (30.6 percent) - which is equity held by bumiputera companies - and individual bumiputera share ownership (3.1 percent).
The remainder were held by ‘others’ (32 percent), those under foreign ownership (24.9 percent) and government-held ownership (9.5 percent).
However, the ‘others’ category consisted not just of non-bumiputera ownership but also nominee companies ownership. A nominee company’s sole function is to hold shares or securities on behalf of someone else.
Many economists would argue that nominee companies are not solely under non-bumiputera ownership as a number of them are held by bumiputeras.
Study by UM’s Dr Fazilah
The ground-breaking research was compiled into a 107-page report entitled ‘Bumiputeras in the corporate sector: Three decades of performance 1970-2000' and was published four years ago.
Dr M Fazilah said in her findings that in 1988, bumiputera corporate equity ownership was way below the NEP target.
The bumiputera share was then 12 percent, of which 11 percent was under bumiputera corporate equity ownership while one percent was under individual bumiputera share ownership.
In contrast, foreign ownership was then 27 percent while non-bumiputeras - which included nominee companies - collectively owned more than half of the total paid-up capital of public-listed companies.
“Nevertheless, the percentage of corporate equity owned by bumiputeras fluctuated between 16 percent in 1999 to 22 percent in 1995 and reached the NEP target only in 1997,” she stated.
Fazilah is also head of the finance and banking department at UM’s business and accountancy faculty.
Her research was commissioned and published by UM’s independent research unit, the Centre for Economic Development and Ethnic Relations.
Remarkable growth
Fazilah also found that bumiputera corporate ownership enjoyed the highest annualised growth rate - 27.9 percent - between 1988 and 1997 compared to that of non-bumiputeras.
The annualised growth rate of the total market was 15.6 percent - with foreign ownership at 18.2 percent, government (16.7 percent) and non-bumiputera and nominee companies (11.8 percent).
The research attributed the remarkable annualised growth rate to the high economic growth registered during the boom years after 1990.
The government’s privatisation programmes, which were actively implemented after 1987, had also given bumiputera entrepreneurs an added boost.
As the 10-year analysis on the bumiputera equity ownership did not cover the post-Asian financial crisis in 1997, it is not known how this has affected the corporate equity ownership since Fazilah’s research.
Nevertheless, the academician said based on monthly stock returns after the financial crisis, it indicated that the “... bumiputera-controlled companies were as badly affected as the rest of the market”.
“Thus, there was actually no ‘cushioning’ given by the government since the government was probably more concerned about the survival of the overall economy,” she argued.
No comment from researcher
Fazilah, when contacted by malaysiakini, declined to comment on her research.
She also refused to entertain questions on the issue of bumiputera corporate equity ownership, saying that as an university staff, she has to comply with the university’s ‘Akujanji’ (pledge of good conduct).
Under the ‘Akujanji’, academicians are barred from making media statements without prior approval from the university’s authority.
The government has always maintained that the country has yet to achieve the 30 percent bumiputera equity ownership target.
It's figure, calculated by the Economic Planning Unit, is based on the par value of shares of 600,000 registered companies.
Critics allege that the government underestimates the bumiputera share of corporate equity - which stands at 18.9 percent - to justify the continuation of the NEP and its related policies which give favourable treatment to bumiputeras.
Academicians also questioned the methodology used in the government’s computation as it is based on par value instead of market value of company shares, the latter generally considered as a more accurate measure of wealth.
Interestingly, the UM equity study was based on the par value of the KLSE companies, not their market value.
Controversial Asli study
In recent months, a study by a local think-tank which estimated the bumiputera equity ownership at about 45 percent - almost double of the government figures - had drawn widespread consternation from the authorities.
The government was quick to dismiss the findings, which was done by the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (Asli)’s Centre for Public Policy Studies. The public was also told not to question the credibility of the figures provided by the authorities.
According to the government, the Asli report’s methodology was flawed as its computation of corporate equity distribution was based on the market value of company shares.
The Asli research, said the government, had also attributed a 70 percent ownership of government-linked companies (GLCs) to bumiputeras.
On the other hand, the government said its statistics were derived from the calculation of par value of shares involving some 600,000 registered companies and this did not include the GLCs as under bumiputera ownership.
At the height of the controversy, the government said it was prepared to reveal its methodology in its computing of the statistics. However, there has been no new development on the matter.
The NEP was enacted in the 1970 as part of a bold blueprint to reduce income disparity among different ethnic groups in Malaysia.
It was given a life span of 20 years but the racially-based affirmative action policies continued after 1990 under a different name, the New Development Policy.
The government has recently announced that the NEP’s racially-based measures will remain for another 15 years until 2020.
Zainah Anwar's Hate Ideology: Desecularization or DeIslamization, or Both?
Zainah Anwar’s Hate Ideology: Desecularization or DeIslamization, or Both?
Assuming that such intolerant attitudes were absent in the past, she blames a host of Islamist organizations for their role in overly asserting Muslim’s religious identity, and in that process, disseminate what she calls a hate ideology. This, which she aptly argues, is a serious threat to national unity. She singles out these organizations as Badan Anti-IFC (Anti-IFC Organization, BADAI), Pertubuhan-Pertubuhan Pembela Islam (Organizations of Defenders of Islam, PEMBELA), Peguam Pembela Islam (Lawyers Defending Islam, PPI), Muslim Professionals Forum (MPF), Allied Coordination Council of Islamic NGOs (ACCIN), Front Bertindak Anti-Murtad (Action Front Against Apostasy, FORKAD) and Mothers Against Apostasy. These Islamist organizations, Zainah believes, are out to create a new Shari’ah-based social contract, replacing the existing secular one, upon which the distinct cultural and religious groups within Malaysia’s plural society lay the basis for national unity. The crux of her argument is that the existing social, legal and political order is essentially secular; national unity is based on continued existence of such secular order; and the Islamist’s crusade against such an order is a serious threat to national unity.
Clive Kessler’s recent posting in Asian Analysis, an online newsletter jointly published by the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University and the Asean Focus Group (http://www.aseanfocus.com/asiananalysis/latest.cfm?#a989), seems to lend credence to Zainah’s argument. Professor Kessler argues in his short article, The Long March Towards Desecularisation, that Malaysia’s progressivist political phase has now come to an end. In its place now is a new Islamist political force, which “has not merely come of age but moves towards and is now capturing the centre of Malaysian political lifeâ€. Like Zainah, Kessler also argues that the existing social, political and legal order is essentially secular, and the new Islamist force is out to desecularize it. He traces the seeds of such movement for desecularization up to the days of contentious Malay politics in the post-independence era, during which “Islamist policy auction†between the Islamist party PAS and the ruling Malay nationalist party UMNO had driven the state to instituting an overarching Islamization policy. Ever since, there has been escalating contest for Islamic legitimacy between the two parties and, in that process, reversed “the implicit secularisation of Malaysian life and the state that the 1957 constitution set in train and intended implicitly to promoteâ€.
While Kessler finally predicts “the return, at the head of the 'new generation Islamist forces', of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to the centre of Malaysian politicsâ€, however incongruent it might be, Zainah on the other hand offers a stereotype understanding of Islam and Islamist organization as heavily orthodox in orientation and totally anti-modern and anti-secular in practice. Unfortunately, by lumping Islamist organizations of all persuasions together, Zainah misses the finer points of Islamist engagement in civil society and acceptance of modern constitutionalism in her picture of the Islamists. The Islamist’s struggle for political, social and economic reform; incessant call for repeal of repressive laws and restoration of judicial independence; involvement in charity and humanitarian relief work; respect for the rights of the non-Muslims to practice their religion in peace and harmony; and acceptance of the Federal Constitution, which is neither completely secular nor fully Islamic, as the supreme law of the land are all missing in Zainah’s depiction of the Islamists.
Zainah also disregards the fact that the more moderate and progressive elements among the Islamists she demonizes have been working very closely with secular civil society actors in a number of significant civil society initiatives such as the anti-ISA movement, campaign for electoral reform, crusade against the University and University Colleges Act, and more recently, protest against the unfair terms of the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the United States. By accusing those opposing Article 11 coalition of rejecting the supremacy of the Federal Constitution, she obviously fails to direct her mind to PEMBELA’s latest memorandum to the Council of Rulers and the Prime Minister on the special position of Islam, which states very clearly the Islamists’ commitment to the supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law, while reaffirming the cultural terms of the 1957 constitutional contract which guarantees special constitutional position for Islam. Failure to consider these salient facts about Islamist’s engagement in civil society and respect for modern constitutionalism cast serious doubt to the validity of the whole of Zainah’s argument.
What Zainah’s “hate ideology†seems to be suggesting is, by highlighting the most extreme elements within the Muslim society, as well as some fringe perspectives which do not in any way reflect the mainstream views, that Malaysian Muslims are growing intolerant and extreme in their approach to religious pluralism and modern liberalism. If numbers do not fail us, recent survey by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research shows that this assumption erred. 97 percent of Muslims surveyed say that living alongside people of other religions is acceptable, though 70 percent identify themselves as Muslim first rather than Malay or Malaysian first. While 98 percent believe that apostasy is wrong, 64 percent want the Shari’ah laws to remain as it is under the modern Constitution. 73 percent think that Malaysia is an Islamic state, but 74 percent reject the Iranian model of theocracy. This shows that although majority of Malaysian Muslims are assertive about their religious identity, they are at the same time tolerant to multiculturalism and modern constitutionalism.
Yet there is another mind boggling conjecture that Zainah believes is the root cause of religious extremism among Malaysian Muslims. Obviously, according to Zainah, it is Islamist organizations’ recent campaign against the so-called Liberal Islam that contributes to alarming religious extremism among Muslims as indicated by the Deepavali greetings saga. But Zainah misses one salient point that the Islamist’s campaign itself is a response to a larger socio political transformation that Zainah herself knows very well.
This socio-political transformation relates to the development in the economic and political spheres. After decades of rapid economic development, massive urbanization, upward social mobility across ethnic groups, and expanding multiracial middle classes, there has been greater valorization of the virtues of democracy and human rights among the multiracial and multi-religious Malaysian public. Up to the 1990s, it is not uncommon to find conventional secular human rights groups to form alliances with Islamic groups in their struggle for greater democratic space, repeal of repressive laws, independence of judiciary, sustainable development, etc. Both Islamic and secular human rights groups find commonality in their goal to dismantle state authoritarianism and promote social justice.
But of late, a new variant of human rights struggle has emerged. Rather than targeting state authoritarianism, this new struggle debunks a particular social construct which its proponents view as unliberating. This includes social practices and mores that lay emphasis on patriarchal traditional values, moral vigilantanism and religious strictures. It seems that this new variant of human rights struggle, perhaps, find affinity with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) libertarian struggle in the West, rather than the anti-apartheid movement for liberation in South Africa. Not surprisingly, the main targets of the new variant of human rights activists have been Islamic religious strictures and its moral code. Campaigns against Islamic and municipal moral laws, Muslim polygamous marriage, state clampdown on deviant teachings, and until recently, prohibition against Muslims to convert are manifestations of this new variant of human rights struggle.
At the heart of this new struggle is a particular notion that the Muslim society needs to be transformed into a fully secular society along the same trajectory that the Christian West had experienced in the past. They need to be able to divorce their religious and moral worldviews from public life. They must also accept the primacy of individuals over the family, the community and the state when it comes to matters of personal faith. What should be the (dis)order of the day is a complete freedom of, in and from religion. In other words, the Muslims must undergo a thorough de-Islamization process before a complete secular life can be set in motion. What appears to be a conventional human rights struggle for individual freedom is indeed a larger cause for complete “Secularization of Islamic Societyâ€. So far, there have been alignment and realignment of positions and alliances between and among the new human rights groups, state sections, international foundations and broader civil society actors in this larger pursuit of secularization.
Looking from this angle, Kessler’s “The Long March Towards Desecularizationâ€, on which Zainah heavily relies in advancing her “hate ideology†thesis, does not tell the complete story of the contest for moral, legal and political authority in Malaysia. It is a story half told. Alongside the long march toward desecularization, there has also been a similar march toward de-Islamization, to which various sections within the Islamist forces are now responding, some are quite moderate and some others are even more extreme in their reactions. The more extreme the de-Islamization forces attempt to bulldoze its secular worldview into the religious fabric of the assertive Muslim society, the more extreme the reaction is from within the Islamist forces. In short, the de-Islamization forces have also had an equal share in triggering religious extremism within the Muslim society.
Given the contest between the two forces has become more acute lately, and the significant impact it bears on Muslim’s as well as non-Muslim’s perspective about politics and society, the government has so far been juggling between the two poles of Islamic conservatism and modern liberalism in making policy pronouncements. While it shot down the liberals’ proposal to form an interfaith commission, the government also reprimanded the conservative Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department for setting up a group of moral vigilantes which was tasked to hunt down moral criminals. It seems that the UMNO and PAS’s contest for Malay votes is no longer the sole determinant of the depth and breadth of government’s Islamization policies. The need to respond to the new de-Islamization forces, the attendant non-Muslim’s sentiments and the international exposes compels the government to be more cautious in dealing with its official policy on Islam. So far, the pattern of government’s responses to the contest has been like a pendulum swing - sometimes to the right (Islamic conservatism) and sometimes to the left (modern liberalism) and then back again, rather than a constant movement in any one direction.
While the divisive tendency of the current Islamic debate continues to gaining steam, it is worth the while of the actors of the debate to sit back and do some sort of soul searching. It is true that both sides of the political spectrum have moved to the far end of each side, widening the gap between the two, and leaving the middle ground seemingly out of everyone’s reach. But as we live in a deeply multi-religious society, where the divisive tendency, once unleashed, can be highly uncontrolled and potentially devastating, it is not too late for everyone to move back to the middle and try to reach out to each other again. It is high time for everyone to once again champion the middle ground.
MARZUKI MOHAMAD (marzuki.mohamad@anu.edu.au) is a Research Scholar of Political Science at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. He is also a member of Central Executive Committee of Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM).
19 October 2006
New Straits Times
Zainah Anwar
Zainah Anwar on Friday: Hate ideology a threat to unity...
The uproar of protest generated by Fauzi Mustaffa’s directive to the staff of Takaful Malaysia forbidding them, in the name of Islam, from extending festive greetings to their Hindu clients provided us some assurance that public opinion in Malaysia will not accept this hostile and aggressive propagation of such understanding of one’s faith.
As a Malaysian, the bigger question remains: What made Fauzi Mustaffa, as head of the Syariah division of Takaful Malaysia, issue such a directive? How could an educated person, working in a global industry such as insurance, hold such a view?
I assume he must be a graduate of Islamic law to head such a department and be the secretary of the company’s Syariah Supervisory Council. He must have learnt the many verses in the Quran that talk about pluralism and differences: How God made us into nations and tribes, so that we may know one another; that if Allah had so willed, He could surely have made us all one single community…. We Muslims repeat such verses again and again, and with pride, to show the world what a tolerant and peaceful religion Islam is.
Perhaps Fauzi’s position and his action are symptomatic of where we have gone with our understanding of Islam, our education system, our socialisation process, our politicisation, and our sense of citizenship within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, that he today not only shows no love nor respect for fellow citizens of a different race and religion, but also feels he has the right to turn his dogmatic personal piety into an office directive for all to obey.
Would he have issued such a directive a year ago? What has changed that emboldened Fauzi to take his hostile ideological viewpoint towards the other from the narrow confines of only those who share his religious fervour to a public space, and then to demand obedience or repentance from those who transgress his orders?
Could it be the company policy that its staff must all mengamalkan Syariah sebagai budaya korporat Takaful Malaysia (put Islamic law into practice as the corporate culture) that provided the opportunity for him to transform his personal belief into a company policy for all staff to follow in Malaysia?
Could it have been the legitimacy provided by the public pronouncement by the conference of ulama that met in Ipoh in June to pronounce liberalism, pluralism, kongsi raya and open house as dangerous to the faith of Muslims?
Or could it have been that Wahhabi fatwa circulating worldwide for years which declared that celebrating the religious festivities of others is tantamount to approving their religious faith, thus constituting syirik (associating partners to God)?
I remember the former Mingguan Malaysia columnist Astora Jabat, now editor of Al-Islam, drawing our attention to this many years ago. But we never paid much attention to it in Malaysia, dismissing it as ridiculous, and feeling sorry for our Saudi Arabian friends. Given our history and our context, we never thought that any Malaysian would abide by such a fatwa.
But we have been mistaken, of course.
Or is it that Fauzi senses a certain shift in the mood on the ground and the demonising in neighbourhood mosques and surau of Malaysians who do not share the Islamist ideological viewpoint, that gave him the impetus to turn from private to public his prejudices and throw it into the boiling pot of the don’ts, the forbidden, the haram, the kafir, the anti-Islam, the anti-God, the syirik, the murtad?
In today’s climate where the ideology of hate and intolerance trump the spirituality and compassion of Islam, is it any wonder that death threats have been issued?
The mood out there is very clear. It is this hate ideology that poses a "clear and present danger" to the Malaysia that we know and love. It comes not from those who believe in upholding the Federal Constitution and the rule of law, but those bent on forcing a rewriting of the Constitution and shifting the consensus for civil and political order in Malaysia.
The tactical sprouting of new Islamist NGOs with names like BADAI (Badan Anti-IFC), ACCIN (Allied Coordinating Committee of Islamic NGOs), Muslim Professional Association, Mothers Against Apostasy, Pembela Islam (Defenders of Islam), Peguam Pembela Islam (Lawyers Defending Islam), FORKAD (Front Bertindak Anti-Murtad — Action Front Against Apostasy) etc, and their alliance with the more established Islamist group, are intended to mobilise Muslim public opinion to halt any further democratisation and liberalising of this country.
In a prescient analysis of the current political climate in Malaysia, the long-time commentator on Malaysian politics and Islam, Professor Clive Kessler, wrote in Asian Analysis on the long march towards "desecularisation" of Malaysian life and state-driven by the pious new Malay Muslim middle-class activists, that is now culminating in moving Malaysia into a post-liberal or post-progressivist political era.
Given the progressive education, lifestyle and values of the current Malaysian political elite, the political will, courage and confidence needed to face off this assault from the Islamist front that claims to speak in God’s name seems frighteningly scarce. The one person with the knowledge and confidence to do this is the Prime Minister himself.
But the clampdown on the public education programme to promote respect for the Federal Constitution by the Article 11 coalition sent the wrong signal. The Islamist supremacists saw it as evidence that their use of mob intimidation and threat of violence worked in coercing the government to silence those committed to upholding the Malaysian Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Now their attention is focused on the judiciary as it deliberates on a number of freedom of religion cases.
Ironically, those who succeeded in their intimidation are the very people who want to throw out the Barisan Nasional Government and draw up a new Constitution and a new social contract — this time unequivocally with Syariah as the supreme law of the land.
The politics of ethnic identity remains the dominant discourse in Malaysia and the lens through which many of us react to public policy. This is further complicated by the merging of Islam with Malay identity. The current provocation finds Umno and its partners in the Barisan Nasional walking a political tightrope.
The government can choose to retreat in the face of this dogmatic ideological fervour and counter-mobilisation, as many failed reformists have done in other countries. Or place its faith and confidence in the millions of citizens who voted for a new Prime Minister who promised to be the leader of all Malaysians.
In the spirit of DeepaRaya, can we please stop shaking our fists at our fellow citizens?
Let’s make a conscious decision to deepen our friendship and understanding and realise that we owe our prosperity and stability to the richness of our diversity.
Assuming that such intolerant attitudes were absent in the past, she blames a host of Islamist organizations for their role in overly asserting Muslim’s religious identity, and in that process, disseminate what she calls a hate ideology. This, which she aptly argues, is a serious threat to national unity. She singles out these organizations as Badan Anti-IFC (Anti-IFC Organization, BADAI), Pertubuhan-Pertubuhan Pembela Islam (Organizations of Defenders of Islam, PEMBELA), Peguam Pembela Islam (Lawyers Defending Islam, PPI), Muslim Professionals Forum (MPF), Allied Coordination Council of Islamic NGOs (ACCIN), Front Bertindak Anti-Murtad (Action Front Against Apostasy, FORKAD) and Mothers Against Apostasy. These Islamist organizations, Zainah believes, are out to create a new Shari’ah-based social contract, replacing the existing secular one, upon which the distinct cultural and religious groups within Malaysia’s plural society lay the basis for national unity. The crux of her argument is that the existing social, legal and political order is essentially secular; national unity is based on continued existence of such secular order; and the Islamist’s crusade against such an order is a serious threat to national unity.
Clive Kessler’s recent posting in Asian Analysis, an online newsletter jointly published by the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University and the Asean Focus Group (http://www.aseanfocus.com/asiananalysis/latest.cfm?#a989), seems to lend credence to Zainah’s argument. Professor Kessler argues in his short article, The Long March Towards Desecularisation, that Malaysia’s progressivist political phase has now come to an end. In its place now is a new Islamist political force, which “has not merely come of age but moves towards and is now capturing the centre of Malaysian political lifeâ€. Like Zainah, Kessler also argues that the existing social, political and legal order is essentially secular, and the new Islamist force is out to desecularize it. He traces the seeds of such movement for desecularization up to the days of contentious Malay politics in the post-independence era, during which “Islamist policy auction†between the Islamist party PAS and the ruling Malay nationalist party UMNO had driven the state to instituting an overarching Islamization policy. Ever since, there has been escalating contest for Islamic legitimacy between the two parties and, in that process, reversed “the implicit secularisation of Malaysian life and the state that the 1957 constitution set in train and intended implicitly to promoteâ€.
While Kessler finally predicts “the return, at the head of the 'new generation Islamist forces', of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to the centre of Malaysian politicsâ€, however incongruent it might be, Zainah on the other hand offers a stereotype understanding of Islam and Islamist organization as heavily orthodox in orientation and totally anti-modern and anti-secular in practice. Unfortunately, by lumping Islamist organizations of all persuasions together, Zainah misses the finer points of Islamist engagement in civil society and acceptance of modern constitutionalism in her picture of the Islamists. The Islamist’s struggle for political, social and economic reform; incessant call for repeal of repressive laws and restoration of judicial independence; involvement in charity and humanitarian relief work; respect for the rights of the non-Muslims to practice their religion in peace and harmony; and acceptance of the Federal Constitution, which is neither completely secular nor fully Islamic, as the supreme law of the land are all missing in Zainah’s depiction of the Islamists.
Zainah also disregards the fact that the more moderate and progressive elements among the Islamists she demonizes have been working very closely with secular civil society actors in a number of significant civil society initiatives such as the anti-ISA movement, campaign for electoral reform, crusade against the University and University Colleges Act, and more recently, protest against the unfair terms of the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the United States. By accusing those opposing Article 11 coalition of rejecting the supremacy of the Federal Constitution, she obviously fails to direct her mind to PEMBELA’s latest memorandum to the Council of Rulers and the Prime Minister on the special position of Islam, which states very clearly the Islamists’ commitment to the supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law, while reaffirming the cultural terms of the 1957 constitutional contract which guarantees special constitutional position for Islam. Failure to consider these salient facts about Islamist’s engagement in civil society and respect for modern constitutionalism cast serious doubt to the validity of the whole of Zainah’s argument.
What Zainah’s “hate ideology†seems to be suggesting is, by highlighting the most extreme elements within the Muslim society, as well as some fringe perspectives which do not in any way reflect the mainstream views, that Malaysian Muslims are growing intolerant and extreme in their approach to religious pluralism and modern liberalism. If numbers do not fail us, recent survey by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research shows that this assumption erred. 97 percent of Muslims surveyed say that living alongside people of other religions is acceptable, though 70 percent identify themselves as Muslim first rather than Malay or Malaysian first. While 98 percent believe that apostasy is wrong, 64 percent want the Shari’ah laws to remain as it is under the modern Constitution. 73 percent think that Malaysia is an Islamic state, but 74 percent reject the Iranian model of theocracy. This shows that although majority of Malaysian Muslims are assertive about their religious identity, they are at the same time tolerant to multiculturalism and modern constitutionalism.
Yet there is another mind boggling conjecture that Zainah believes is the root cause of religious extremism among Malaysian Muslims. Obviously, according to Zainah, it is Islamist organizations’ recent campaign against the so-called Liberal Islam that contributes to alarming religious extremism among Muslims as indicated by the Deepavali greetings saga. But Zainah misses one salient point that the Islamist’s campaign itself is a response to a larger socio political transformation that Zainah herself knows very well.
This socio-political transformation relates to the development in the economic and political spheres. After decades of rapid economic development, massive urbanization, upward social mobility across ethnic groups, and expanding multiracial middle classes, there has been greater valorization of the virtues of democracy and human rights among the multiracial and multi-religious Malaysian public. Up to the 1990s, it is not uncommon to find conventional secular human rights groups to form alliances with Islamic groups in their struggle for greater democratic space, repeal of repressive laws, independence of judiciary, sustainable development, etc. Both Islamic and secular human rights groups find commonality in their goal to dismantle state authoritarianism and promote social justice.
But of late, a new variant of human rights struggle has emerged. Rather than targeting state authoritarianism, this new struggle debunks a particular social construct which its proponents view as unliberating. This includes social practices and mores that lay emphasis on patriarchal traditional values, moral vigilantanism and religious strictures. It seems that this new variant of human rights struggle, perhaps, find affinity with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) libertarian struggle in the West, rather than the anti-apartheid movement for liberation in South Africa. Not surprisingly, the main targets of the new variant of human rights activists have been Islamic religious strictures and its moral code. Campaigns against Islamic and municipal moral laws, Muslim polygamous marriage, state clampdown on deviant teachings, and until recently, prohibition against Muslims to convert are manifestations of this new variant of human rights struggle.
At the heart of this new struggle is a particular notion that the Muslim society needs to be transformed into a fully secular society along the same trajectory that the Christian West had experienced in the past. They need to be able to divorce their religious and moral worldviews from public life. They must also accept the primacy of individuals over the family, the community and the state when it comes to matters of personal faith. What should be the (dis)order of the day is a complete freedom of, in and from religion. In other words, the Muslims must undergo a thorough de-Islamization process before a complete secular life can be set in motion. What appears to be a conventional human rights struggle for individual freedom is indeed a larger cause for complete “Secularization of Islamic Societyâ€. So far, there have been alignment and realignment of positions and alliances between and among the new human rights groups, state sections, international foundations and broader civil society actors in this larger pursuit of secularization.
Looking from this angle, Kessler’s “The Long March Towards Desecularizationâ€, on which Zainah heavily relies in advancing her “hate ideology†thesis, does not tell the complete story of the contest for moral, legal and political authority in Malaysia. It is a story half told. Alongside the long march toward desecularization, there has also been a similar march toward de-Islamization, to which various sections within the Islamist forces are now responding, some are quite moderate and some others are even more extreme in their reactions. The more extreme the de-Islamization forces attempt to bulldoze its secular worldview into the religious fabric of the assertive Muslim society, the more extreme the reaction is from within the Islamist forces. In short, the de-Islamization forces have also had an equal share in triggering religious extremism within the Muslim society.
Given the contest between the two forces has become more acute lately, and the significant impact it bears on Muslim’s as well as non-Muslim’s perspective about politics and society, the government has so far been juggling between the two poles of Islamic conservatism and modern liberalism in making policy pronouncements. While it shot down the liberals’ proposal to form an interfaith commission, the government also reprimanded the conservative Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department for setting up a group of moral vigilantes which was tasked to hunt down moral criminals. It seems that the UMNO and PAS’s contest for Malay votes is no longer the sole determinant of the depth and breadth of government’s Islamization policies. The need to respond to the new de-Islamization forces, the attendant non-Muslim’s sentiments and the international exposes compels the government to be more cautious in dealing with its official policy on Islam. So far, the pattern of government’s responses to the contest has been like a pendulum swing - sometimes to the right (Islamic conservatism) and sometimes to the left (modern liberalism) and then back again, rather than a constant movement in any one direction.
While the divisive tendency of the current Islamic debate continues to gaining steam, it is worth the while of the actors of the debate to sit back and do some sort of soul searching. It is true that both sides of the political spectrum have moved to the far end of each side, widening the gap between the two, and leaving the middle ground seemingly out of everyone’s reach. But as we live in a deeply multi-religious society, where the divisive tendency, once unleashed, can be highly uncontrolled and potentially devastating, it is not too late for everyone to move back to the middle and try to reach out to each other again. It is high time for everyone to once again champion the middle ground.
MARZUKI MOHAMAD (marzuki.mohamad@anu.edu.au) is a Research Scholar of Political Science at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. He is also a member of Central Executive Committee of Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM).
19 October 2006
New Straits Times
Zainah Anwar
Zainah Anwar on Friday: Hate ideology a threat to unity...
The uproar of protest generated by Fauzi Mustaffa’s directive to the staff of Takaful Malaysia forbidding them, in the name of Islam, from extending festive greetings to their Hindu clients provided us some assurance that public opinion in Malaysia will not accept this hostile and aggressive propagation of such understanding of one’s faith.
As a Malaysian, the bigger question remains: What made Fauzi Mustaffa, as head of the Syariah division of Takaful Malaysia, issue such a directive? How could an educated person, working in a global industry such as insurance, hold such a view?
I assume he must be a graduate of Islamic law to head such a department and be the secretary of the company’s Syariah Supervisory Council. He must have learnt the many verses in the Quran that talk about pluralism and differences: How God made us into nations and tribes, so that we may know one another; that if Allah had so willed, He could surely have made us all one single community…. We Muslims repeat such verses again and again, and with pride, to show the world what a tolerant and peaceful religion Islam is.
Perhaps Fauzi’s position and his action are symptomatic of where we have gone with our understanding of Islam, our education system, our socialisation process, our politicisation, and our sense of citizenship within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, that he today not only shows no love nor respect for fellow citizens of a different race and religion, but also feels he has the right to turn his dogmatic personal piety into an office directive for all to obey.
Would he have issued such a directive a year ago? What has changed that emboldened Fauzi to take his hostile ideological viewpoint towards the other from the narrow confines of only those who share his religious fervour to a public space, and then to demand obedience or repentance from those who transgress his orders?
Could it be the company policy that its staff must all mengamalkan Syariah sebagai budaya korporat Takaful Malaysia (put Islamic law into practice as the corporate culture) that provided the opportunity for him to transform his personal belief into a company policy for all staff to follow in Malaysia?
Could it have been the legitimacy provided by the public pronouncement by the conference of ulama that met in Ipoh in June to pronounce liberalism, pluralism, kongsi raya and open house as dangerous to the faith of Muslims?
Or could it have been that Wahhabi fatwa circulating worldwide for years which declared that celebrating the religious festivities of others is tantamount to approving their religious faith, thus constituting syirik (associating partners to God)?
I remember the former Mingguan Malaysia columnist Astora Jabat, now editor of Al-Islam, drawing our attention to this many years ago. But we never paid much attention to it in Malaysia, dismissing it as ridiculous, and feeling sorry for our Saudi Arabian friends. Given our history and our context, we never thought that any Malaysian would abide by such a fatwa.
But we have been mistaken, of course.
Or is it that Fauzi senses a certain shift in the mood on the ground and the demonising in neighbourhood mosques and surau of Malaysians who do not share the Islamist ideological viewpoint, that gave him the impetus to turn from private to public his prejudices and throw it into the boiling pot of the don’ts, the forbidden, the haram, the kafir, the anti-Islam, the anti-God, the syirik, the murtad?
In today’s climate where the ideology of hate and intolerance trump the spirituality and compassion of Islam, is it any wonder that death threats have been issued?
The mood out there is very clear. It is this hate ideology that poses a "clear and present danger" to the Malaysia that we know and love. It comes not from those who believe in upholding the Federal Constitution and the rule of law, but those bent on forcing a rewriting of the Constitution and shifting the consensus for civil and political order in Malaysia.
The tactical sprouting of new Islamist NGOs with names like BADAI (Badan Anti-IFC), ACCIN (Allied Coordinating Committee of Islamic NGOs), Muslim Professional Association, Mothers Against Apostasy, Pembela Islam (Defenders of Islam), Peguam Pembela Islam (Lawyers Defending Islam), FORKAD (Front Bertindak Anti-Murtad — Action Front Against Apostasy) etc, and their alliance with the more established Islamist group, are intended to mobilise Muslim public opinion to halt any further democratisation and liberalising of this country.
In a prescient analysis of the current political climate in Malaysia, the long-time commentator on Malaysian politics and Islam, Professor Clive Kessler, wrote in Asian Analysis on the long march towards "desecularisation" of Malaysian life and state-driven by the pious new Malay Muslim middle-class activists, that is now culminating in moving Malaysia into a post-liberal or post-progressivist political era.
Given the progressive education, lifestyle and values of the current Malaysian political elite, the political will, courage and confidence needed to face off this assault from the Islamist front that claims to speak in God’s name seems frighteningly scarce. The one person with the knowledge and confidence to do this is the Prime Minister himself.
But the clampdown on the public education programme to promote respect for the Federal Constitution by the Article 11 coalition sent the wrong signal. The Islamist supremacists saw it as evidence that their use of mob intimidation and threat of violence worked in coercing the government to silence those committed to upholding the Malaysian Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Now their attention is focused on the judiciary as it deliberates on a number of freedom of religion cases.
Ironically, those who succeeded in their intimidation are the very people who want to throw out the Barisan Nasional Government and draw up a new Constitution and a new social contract — this time unequivocally with Syariah as the supreme law of the land.
The politics of ethnic identity remains the dominant discourse in Malaysia and the lens through which many of us react to public policy. This is further complicated by the merging of Islam with Malay identity. The current provocation finds Umno and its partners in the Barisan Nasional walking a political tightrope.
The government can choose to retreat in the face of this dogmatic ideological fervour and counter-mobilisation, as many failed reformists have done in other countries. Or place its faith and confidence in the millions of citizens who voted for a new Prime Minister who promised to be the leader of all Malaysians.
In the spirit of DeepaRaya, can we please stop shaking our fists at our fellow citizens?
Let’s make a conscious decision to deepen our friendship and understanding and realise that we owe our prosperity and stability to the richness of our diversity.
The “Ugly Malays” Becoming the Norm
The “Ugly Malays” Becoming the Norm
M.Bakri Musa
www.bakrimusa.com
In summoning Klang Municipal Councilor Zakaria Mat Deros to the palace
over the issue of the illegal building of his private mansion, the
Sultan of Selangor did the right thing but to the wrong person. The
Sultan should have summoned the state’s chief executive, Chief Minister
Khir Toyo, instead.
The sultan should demand from Toyo what and when he knew of the
affair, whether he believed it was an aberrant incident or part of a
more extensive pattern, and what he intended to do about it.
Rest assured that such flagrant flaunting of the law reflects long
established behaviors that has been tolerated if not encouraged by the
authorities. It also mirrors the Third World mentality of being above
the law that is so prevalent among our leaders.
Being only the symbolic head of state, there is not much more that the
sultan can do except merely express his displeasure. Were he to go
beyond that, he would risk setting a dangerous precedent and raising
significant constitutional issues, quite part from sidetracking the matter.
There is one act that is well within and sole prerogative of the
sultan. He could strip Zakaria of his datukship, assuming of course
that the sultan awarded the honor in the first place. As Malays are
still very much a feudal bunch, that would carry significant shame.
That such a slimy character was so honored to begin with says much
about the current state of Malaysian, in particular Malay, society.
That however merits a separate discussion!
Curiously “Uncurious” Khir Toyo
That such a huge mansion could have been built to near completion
right in the center of a highly visible part of town is indicative of
the sorry state of Malaysian institutions, in this particular case, the
Klang Town Council.
There are hosts of other associated questions. That he managed to
secure a prime real estate from the council for way below market price
should interest the chief minister and the Anti Corruption Agency. It
would also be very revealing to trace who authorized the
non-competitive sale of that valuable public property.
Of even greater interest is how this previously poor, ill-educated
villager could acquire so much wealth so quickly so as to be able to
afford the mansion. I am certain that if some enterprising journalists
were to demand to see the cancelled checks from Zakaria or copies of
the bills from the contractors and vendors for the work done, there
would be none. This again reflects the pervasive corruption.
The remarkable aspect to the whole shenanigan is the curiously
“uncurious” Khir Toyo. As the state’s chief executive, I would have
expected him to be demanding answers from the Council officials. Alas
we now have the sultan having to take that highly unusual initiative.
This dentist-turned politician of humble beginnings has absorbed only
too well the Sultan Syndrome, enjoying the trappings of his office but
is otherwise clueless about being an effective executive.
The sultan should strip Khir Toyo of his datukship for his
incompetence. That would be a powerful symbolic gesture. The sultan
would effectively be challenging the prime minister to get rid of this
joker. Khir Toyo is obviously fit only to fill in dental cavities, not
the chief executive suite.
Lack of Outrage
Equally shocking is the lack of public outrage, especially in the
Malay community, in particular, its establishment. Malay commentators
and intellectuals showed no interest, much less expressed their
abhorrence. This Zakaria mess (and many more yet to be revealed) is
far more destructive and corrosive to the fabric of our society than
the current wildly publicized tiff between Abdullah and Mahathir.
I can appreciate the reticence of non-Malays to this Zakaria scandal.
For one, there is always the fear of being branded as anti-Malay, a
particularly damaging accusation. For another, they could be just as
guilty in tolerating as well as participating and thus encouraging such
corrupt practices. One wonders how many of the contractors working on
that mansion also have simultaneous government contracts and at what
inflated prices.
For Malays however, the damage is considerable. We are sending
precisely the wrong message to our people. That is, in order to
succeed or afford a mansion and other trappings of the “good life,” we
do not have to study diligently or work hard but merely ingratiate
ourselves to the powerful in order to hog our own little spot at the
public trough.
The message we send to non-Malays is equally destructive. That is, we
Malays are a race of rogues. We tolerate such nonsense because we
harbor our own secret ambition to be like them. This more than
anything is what makes me mad and angry with these scoundrels.
By Aristotle’s Nichomechean ethics, it is not enough to be angry. That
is the easy part. We have to be angry at the right people, at the
right time, for the right purpose, and express that anger in the right
way. Slimy characters like Zakaria and his superior Khir Toyo make it
easy. We cannot be angry enough at their types. We must totally abhor
them. They bring dishonor to our race and nation.
Let me assure non-Malays that the Zakaria Mat Deroses and Khir Toyos
are not representative of my race, at least not yet. These “ugly
Malays,” to borrow Syed Hussein’s phrase, are fast becoming and will be
the norm if we do nothing, by in effect tolerating them. We do have our
share of the hard working, the honest, and the frugal. Yes, we are
fast shrinking, that we sadly agree.
It is in the interest of all, Malays and non-Malays alike, not to
tolerate such sinister and shady characters. Unchecked, they would
soon spread to all Malaysians.
The Sultan of Selangor has conveyed his displeasure. He has no wish to
be the Sultan of the “Ugly Malays.” It is up to us to pick up on that
signal, amplify and transmit it widely. Such slimes are a blemish on
and have no place in our society. They are not to be tolerated. We do
not have to wait till the elections to demonstrate our collective
repugnance.
M.Bakri Musa
www.bakrimusa.com
In summoning Klang Municipal Councilor Zakaria Mat Deros to the palace
over the issue of the illegal building of his private mansion, the
Sultan of Selangor did the right thing but to the wrong person. The
Sultan should have summoned the state’s chief executive, Chief Minister
Khir Toyo, instead.
The sultan should demand from Toyo what and when he knew of the
affair, whether he believed it was an aberrant incident or part of a
more extensive pattern, and what he intended to do about it.
Rest assured that such flagrant flaunting of the law reflects long
established behaviors that has been tolerated if not encouraged by the
authorities. It also mirrors the Third World mentality of being above
the law that is so prevalent among our leaders.
Being only the symbolic head of state, there is not much more that the
sultan can do except merely express his displeasure. Were he to go
beyond that, he would risk setting a dangerous precedent and raising
significant constitutional issues, quite part from sidetracking the matter.
There is one act that is well within and sole prerogative of the
sultan. He could strip Zakaria of his datukship, assuming of course
that the sultan awarded the honor in the first place. As Malays are
still very much a feudal bunch, that would carry significant shame.
That such a slimy character was so honored to begin with says much
about the current state of Malaysian, in particular Malay, society.
That however merits a separate discussion!
Curiously “Uncurious” Khir Toyo
That such a huge mansion could have been built to near completion
right in the center of a highly visible part of town is indicative of
the sorry state of Malaysian institutions, in this particular case, the
Klang Town Council.
There are hosts of other associated questions. That he managed to
secure a prime real estate from the council for way below market price
should interest the chief minister and the Anti Corruption Agency. It
would also be very revealing to trace who authorized the
non-competitive sale of that valuable public property.
Of even greater interest is how this previously poor, ill-educated
villager could acquire so much wealth so quickly so as to be able to
afford the mansion. I am certain that if some enterprising journalists
were to demand to see the cancelled checks from Zakaria or copies of
the bills from the contractors and vendors for the work done, there
would be none. This again reflects the pervasive corruption.
The remarkable aspect to the whole shenanigan is the curiously
“uncurious” Khir Toyo. As the state’s chief executive, I would have
expected him to be demanding answers from the Council officials. Alas
we now have the sultan having to take that highly unusual initiative.
This dentist-turned politician of humble beginnings has absorbed only
too well the Sultan Syndrome, enjoying the trappings of his office but
is otherwise clueless about being an effective executive.
The sultan should strip Khir Toyo of his datukship for his
incompetence. That would be a powerful symbolic gesture. The sultan
would effectively be challenging the prime minister to get rid of this
joker. Khir Toyo is obviously fit only to fill in dental cavities, not
the chief executive suite.
Lack of Outrage
Equally shocking is the lack of public outrage, especially in the
Malay community, in particular, its establishment. Malay commentators
and intellectuals showed no interest, much less expressed their
abhorrence. This Zakaria mess (and many more yet to be revealed) is
far more destructive and corrosive to the fabric of our society than
the current wildly publicized tiff between Abdullah and Mahathir.
I can appreciate the reticence of non-Malays to this Zakaria scandal.
For one, there is always the fear of being branded as anti-Malay, a
particularly damaging accusation. For another, they could be just as
guilty in tolerating as well as participating and thus encouraging such
corrupt practices. One wonders how many of the contractors working on
that mansion also have simultaneous government contracts and at what
inflated prices.
For Malays however, the damage is considerable. We are sending
precisely the wrong message to our people. That is, in order to
succeed or afford a mansion and other trappings of the “good life,” we
do not have to study diligently or work hard but merely ingratiate
ourselves to the powerful in order to hog our own little spot at the
public trough.
The message we send to non-Malays is equally destructive. That is, we
Malays are a race of rogues. We tolerate such nonsense because we
harbor our own secret ambition to be like them. This more than
anything is what makes me mad and angry with these scoundrels.
By Aristotle’s Nichomechean ethics, it is not enough to be angry. That
is the easy part. We have to be angry at the right people, at the
right time, for the right purpose, and express that anger in the right
way. Slimy characters like Zakaria and his superior Khir Toyo make it
easy. We cannot be angry enough at their types. We must totally abhor
them. They bring dishonor to our race and nation.
Let me assure non-Malays that the Zakaria Mat Deroses and Khir Toyos
are not representative of my race, at least not yet. These “ugly
Malays,” to borrow Syed Hussein’s phrase, are fast becoming and will be
the norm if we do nothing, by in effect tolerating them. We do have our
share of the hard working, the honest, and the frugal. Yes, we are
fast shrinking, that we sadly agree.
It is in the interest of all, Malays and non-Malays alike, not to
tolerate such sinister and shady characters. Unchecked, they would
soon spread to all Malaysians.
The Sultan of Selangor has conveyed his displeasure. He has no wish to
be the Sultan of the “Ugly Malays.” It is up to us to pick up on that
signal, amplify and transmit it widely. Such slimes are a blemish on
and have no place in our society. They are not to be tolerated. We do
not have to wait till the elections to demonstrate our collective
repugnance.
"Mr. Erdogan's Turkey"
"Mr. Erdogan's Turkey"
by Michael Rubin
Wall Street Journal
October 19, 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/1036
Five years into the war on terror, inept U.S. diplomacy risks undercutting a key democracy (and ally) that President Bush once called a model for the Muslim world. The future of Turkey as a secular, Western-oriented state is at risk. Just as in Gaza and Lebanon, the threat comes from parties using the rhetoric of democracy to advance distinctly undemocratic agendas. Turkey has overcome past challenges from terrorism and radical Islam; always its system has persevered. But now, as Turkish politicians and officials work to defend the Turkish constitution, U.S. diplomats interfere to dismiss Turkish concerns and downplay the Islamist threat.
A crisis has simmered for months, but earlier this month Ankara erupted. On Oct. 1, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer warned parliament, "The fundamentalist threat has not changed its goal to change the basic characteristics of the state." The next day, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the Oval Office, Gen. Yasar Büyükanit, chief of Turkey's armed forces, warned cadets of growing Islamic fundamentalism and promised "every measure will be taken against it." Usually such warnings are enough to keep those transgressing on the constitutional separation of mosque and state in check.
Enter U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson. At an Oct. 4 press conference he said: "There is nothing that worries me with regards to Turkey's continuation as a strong, secure, stable and secular democracy." He dismissed opposition concern about the Islamism of Mr. Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (known in Turkish as the AKP) as "political cacophony." His remarks were consistent with those of his State Department superiors. Last autumn, Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European Affairs, said "The development of the AKP into a democratic party . . . has mirrored and supported the development of Turkish political society as a whole in a liberal and democratic direction." He described the AKP as "a kind of Muslim version of a Christian Democratic Party."
Why are so many Turks angry at Washington's dismissal of their concerns? While democrats fight for change within a system, Islamists seek to alter the system itself. This has been the case with the AKP. Over the party's four-year tenure, Mr. Erdogan has spoken of democracy, tolerance and liberalism, but waged a slow and steady assault on the system. He endorsed, for example, the dream of Turkey's secular elite to enter the European Union, but only to embrace reforms diluting the checks and balances of military constitutional enforcement. After the European Court of Human Rights upheld a ban on headscarves in public schools, he changed course. "It is wrong that those who have no connection to this field [of religion] make such a decision . . . without consulting Islamic scholars," he declared. Then in May 2006, his chief negotiator for accession talks ordered the removal, from a negotiating paper, of reference to Turkey's educational system as secular.
The assault on the secular education system has been subtle but effective. Traditionally, students had three choices: enroll at religious academies (so-called Imam Hatips) and enter the clergy; learn a trade at vocational schools; or matriculate at secular high schools, attend university and pursue a career. Mr. Erdogan changed the system: By equating Imam Hatip degrees with high-school degrees, he enabled Islamist students to enter university and qualify for government jobs without ever mastering Western fundamentals. He also sought to bypass checks and balances. After the Higher Education Board composed of university rectors rejected his demands to make universities more welcoming of political Islam, the AKP-dominated parliament proposed to establish 15 new universities. While Mr. Erdogan told diplomats his goal was to promote education, Turkish academics say the move would enable him to handpick rectors and swamp the board with political henchmen.
Such tactics have become commonplace. At Mr. Erdogan's insistence and over the objections of many secularists, the AKP passed legislation to lower the mandatory retirement age of technocrats. This could mean replacement of nearly 4,000 out of 9,000 judges. Turks are suspicious that the AKP seeks to curtail judicial independence. In May 2005, AKP Parliamentary Speaker Bülent Arinç warned that the AKP might abolish the constitutional court if its judges continued to hamper its legislation. Mr. Erdogan's refusal to implement Supreme Court decisions levied against his government underline his contempt for rule of law. Last May, in the heat of the AKP's anti-judiciary rhetoric, an Islamist lawyer protesting the headscarf ban shouted "Allahu Akbar," opened fire in the Supreme Court and murdered a judge. Thousands attended his funeral, chanting pro-secular slogans. Mr. Erdogan was absent from the ceremony.
There have been other subtle changes. Mr. Erdogan has replaced nearly every member of the banking regulatory board with officials from the Islamic banking sector. Accusations of Saudi capital subsidizing AKP are rampant. According to Turkish Central Bank statistics, in the first six months of this year, the net error -- money entering the Turkish economy for which regulators cannot account -- has increased almost eightfold compared to 2002, the year the AKP came to power. According to the opposition parliamentary bloc, debt amassed under Mr. Erdogan's administration is equal to total debt accrued in Turkey between 1970 and 2000. Erkan Mumcu, a former AKP minister who now heads the center-right Motherland Party, accused the AKP in June of interfering in Central Bank operations. Accordingly, President Bush's Oval Office statement, based on State Department talking points -- congratulating "the prime minister and his government for the economic reforms that have enabled the Turkish economy to be strong" -- may have hampered transparency, if not reform.
In the past year, the AKP anti-secular agenda has grown bolder. AKP-run municipalities now ban alcohol. Turkish Airlines recently surveyed employees about their attitudes toward the Quran. On July 11, Mr. Erdogan publicly vouched for the sincerity of Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi financier identified by both the U.N. and U.S. Treasury Department as an al Qaeda financier.
When Mr. Erdogan began his political career, he did not hide his agenda. In September 1994, while mayor of Istanbul, he promised, "We will turn all our schools into Imam Hatips." Two months later he said, "Thank God Almighty, I am a servant of the Shariah." In May 1996, he called for a ban on alcohol. In the months before his dismissal from the mayoralty, his cynicism was clear. "Democracy is like a streetcar," he quipped. "You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off."
Diplomacy should not just accentuate the positive and ignore the negative. When a country faces an Islamist challenge, PC platitudes do far more harm than good. At the very least, U.S. diplomats should never intercede to preserve the status quo at the expense of liberalism. Nor should they even appear to endorse a political party as an established democracy enters an election season. It is not good relations with Ankara that should be the U.S. goal, but rather the triumph of the democratic and liberal ideas for which Turkey traditionally stands.
Mr. Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
by Michael Rubin
Wall Street Journal
October 19, 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/1036
Five years into the war on terror, inept U.S. diplomacy risks undercutting a key democracy (and ally) that President Bush once called a model for the Muslim world. The future of Turkey as a secular, Western-oriented state is at risk. Just as in Gaza and Lebanon, the threat comes from parties using the rhetoric of democracy to advance distinctly undemocratic agendas. Turkey has overcome past challenges from terrorism and radical Islam; always its system has persevered. But now, as Turkish politicians and officials work to defend the Turkish constitution, U.S. diplomats interfere to dismiss Turkish concerns and downplay the Islamist threat.
A crisis has simmered for months, but earlier this month Ankara erupted. On Oct. 1, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer warned parliament, "The fundamentalist threat has not changed its goal to change the basic characteristics of the state." The next day, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the Oval Office, Gen. Yasar Büyükanit, chief of Turkey's armed forces, warned cadets of growing Islamic fundamentalism and promised "every measure will be taken against it." Usually such warnings are enough to keep those transgressing on the constitutional separation of mosque and state in check.
Enter U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson. At an Oct. 4 press conference he said: "There is nothing that worries me with regards to Turkey's continuation as a strong, secure, stable and secular democracy." He dismissed opposition concern about the Islamism of Mr. Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (known in Turkish as the AKP) as "political cacophony." His remarks were consistent with those of his State Department superiors. Last autumn, Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European Affairs, said "The development of the AKP into a democratic party . . . has mirrored and supported the development of Turkish political society as a whole in a liberal and democratic direction." He described the AKP as "a kind of Muslim version of a Christian Democratic Party."
Why are so many Turks angry at Washington's dismissal of their concerns? While democrats fight for change within a system, Islamists seek to alter the system itself. This has been the case with the AKP. Over the party's four-year tenure, Mr. Erdogan has spoken of democracy, tolerance and liberalism, but waged a slow and steady assault on the system. He endorsed, for example, the dream of Turkey's secular elite to enter the European Union, but only to embrace reforms diluting the checks and balances of military constitutional enforcement. After the European Court of Human Rights upheld a ban on headscarves in public schools, he changed course. "It is wrong that those who have no connection to this field [of religion] make such a decision . . . without consulting Islamic scholars," he declared. Then in May 2006, his chief negotiator for accession talks ordered the removal, from a negotiating paper, of reference to Turkey's educational system as secular.
The assault on the secular education system has been subtle but effective. Traditionally, students had three choices: enroll at religious academies (so-called Imam Hatips) and enter the clergy; learn a trade at vocational schools; or matriculate at secular high schools, attend university and pursue a career. Mr. Erdogan changed the system: By equating Imam Hatip degrees with high-school degrees, he enabled Islamist students to enter university and qualify for government jobs without ever mastering Western fundamentals. He also sought to bypass checks and balances. After the Higher Education Board composed of university rectors rejected his demands to make universities more welcoming of political Islam, the AKP-dominated parliament proposed to establish 15 new universities. While Mr. Erdogan told diplomats his goal was to promote education, Turkish academics say the move would enable him to handpick rectors and swamp the board with political henchmen.
Such tactics have become commonplace. At Mr. Erdogan's insistence and over the objections of many secularists, the AKP passed legislation to lower the mandatory retirement age of technocrats. This could mean replacement of nearly 4,000 out of 9,000 judges. Turks are suspicious that the AKP seeks to curtail judicial independence. In May 2005, AKP Parliamentary Speaker Bülent Arinç warned that the AKP might abolish the constitutional court if its judges continued to hamper its legislation. Mr. Erdogan's refusal to implement Supreme Court decisions levied against his government underline his contempt for rule of law. Last May, in the heat of the AKP's anti-judiciary rhetoric, an Islamist lawyer protesting the headscarf ban shouted "Allahu Akbar," opened fire in the Supreme Court and murdered a judge. Thousands attended his funeral, chanting pro-secular slogans. Mr. Erdogan was absent from the ceremony.
There have been other subtle changes. Mr. Erdogan has replaced nearly every member of the banking regulatory board with officials from the Islamic banking sector. Accusations of Saudi capital subsidizing AKP are rampant. According to Turkish Central Bank statistics, in the first six months of this year, the net error -- money entering the Turkish economy for which regulators cannot account -- has increased almost eightfold compared to 2002, the year the AKP came to power. According to the opposition parliamentary bloc, debt amassed under Mr. Erdogan's administration is equal to total debt accrued in Turkey between 1970 and 2000. Erkan Mumcu, a former AKP minister who now heads the center-right Motherland Party, accused the AKP in June of interfering in Central Bank operations. Accordingly, President Bush's Oval Office statement, based on State Department talking points -- congratulating "the prime minister and his government for the economic reforms that have enabled the Turkish economy to be strong" -- may have hampered transparency, if not reform.
In the past year, the AKP anti-secular agenda has grown bolder. AKP-run municipalities now ban alcohol. Turkish Airlines recently surveyed employees about their attitudes toward the Quran. On July 11, Mr. Erdogan publicly vouched for the sincerity of Yasin al-Qadi, a Saudi financier identified by both the U.N. and U.S. Treasury Department as an al Qaeda financier.
When Mr. Erdogan began his political career, he did not hide his agenda. In September 1994, while mayor of Istanbul, he promised, "We will turn all our schools into Imam Hatips." Two months later he said, "Thank God Almighty, I am a servant of the Shariah." In May 1996, he called for a ban on alcohol. In the months before his dismissal from the mayoralty, his cynicism was clear. "Democracy is like a streetcar," he quipped. "You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off."
Diplomacy should not just accentuate the positive and ignore the negative. When a country faces an Islamist challenge, PC platitudes do far more harm than good. At the very least, U.S. diplomats should never intercede to preserve the status quo at the expense of liberalism. Nor should they even appear to endorse a political party as an established democracy enters an election season. It is not good relations with Ankara that should be the U.S. goal, but rather the triumph of the democratic and liberal ideas for which Turkey traditionally stands.
Mr. Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
The Charade Of Meritocracy
The Charade Of Meritocracy
October 2006
By Michael D. Barr
The legitimacy of the Singaporean government is predicated on the idea of a meritocratic technocracy. A tiny number of career civil servants play a leading role in setting policy within their ministries and other government-linked bureaucracies, leading both an elite corps of senior bureaucrats, and a much larger group of ordinary civil servants. Virtually all of the elite members of this hierarchy are �scholars,� which in Singapore parlance means they won competitive, bonded government scholarships�the established route into the country�s elite.
Scholars not only lead the Administrative Service, but also the military�s officer corps, as well as the executive ranks of statutory boards and government-linked companies (GLCs). Movement between these four groups is fluid, with even the military officers routinely doing stints in the civilian civil service. Together with their political masters, most of whom are also scholars, they make up the software for the entity commonly known as �Singapore Inc.��a labyrinth of GLCs, statutory boards and ministries that own or manage around 60% of Singapore�s economy.
The basis of the scholars� mandate to govern is not merely their performance on the job, but also the integrity of the process that selected them. The educational system is designed to cultivate competition, requiring top students to prove themselves every step of the way. Singapore�s schools first stream students into elite classes after Primary 3 and 4. They then compete for entry into special secondary schools and junior colleges, before vying for government and government-linked scholarships to attend the most prestigious universities around the world.
These scholarships typically require several years of government service after graduation, and the scholars are drafted into the Administrative Service, the officer corps of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), or the career track of a statutory board or GLC. The government insists that all Singaporeans have equal opportunities to excel in the system, and that everyone who has made it to the top did so purely by academic talent and hard work. Other factors such as gender, socioeconomic background and race supposedly play no more than a marginal role, if they are acknowledged as factors at all.
On the point of race, the Singapore government has long prided itself on having instituted a system of multiracialism that fosters cultural diversity under an umbrella of national unity. This is explicitly supposed to protect the 23% of the population who belong to minority races (mainly ethnic Malays and Indians) from discrimination by the Chinese majority.
But this system conceals several unacknowledged agendas. In our forthcoming book, Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project, Zlatko Skrbi� and I present evidence that the playing field is hardly level. In fact, Singapore�s system of promotion disguises and even facilitates tremendous biases against women, the poor and non-Chinese. Singapore�s administrative and its political elites�especially the younger ones who have come through school in the last 20 or so years�are not the cream of Singapore�s talent as they claim, but are merely a dominant social class, resting on systemic biases to perpetuate regime regeneration based on gender, class and race.
At the peak of the system is the network of prestigious government scholarships. Since independence in 1965, the technique of using government scholarships to recruit cohorts of scholars into the administrative and ruling elite has moved from the periphery of Singaporean society to center stage. Even before independence, a makeshift system of government and Colombo Plan scholarships sent a few outstanding scholars overseas before putting them into government service, including most notably former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. Yet as late as 1975 this system had contributed only two out of 14 members of Singapore�s cabinet. Even by 1985, only four out of 12 cabinet ministers were former government scholars.
By 1994, however, the situation had changed beyond recognition, with eight out of 14 cabinet ministers being ex-scholars, including Prime Minister Goh. By 2005 there were 12 ex-scholars in a Cabinet of 19. Of these, five had been SAF scholars, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. A perusal of the upper echelons of the ruling elite taken more broadly tells a similar story. In 1994, 12 of the 17 permanent secretaries were scholars, as were 137 of the 210 in the administrative-officer class of the Administrative Service.
The government scholarship system claims to act as a meritocratic sieve�the just reward for young adults with talent and academic dedication. If there is a racial or other bias in the outcomes, then this can only be the result of the uneven distribution of talent and academic application in the community. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put it when he spoke on national television in May 2005, �We are a multiracial society. We must have tolerance, harmony. � And you must have meritocracy � so everybody feels it is fair�.� His father, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was making the same point when, in 1989, he told Singapore�s Malay community that they �must learn to compete with everyone else� in the education system.
Yet if Singapore�s meritocracy is truly a level playing field, as the Lees assert, then the Chinese must be much smarter and harder working than the minority Indians and Malays. Consider the distribution of the top jobs in various arms of the Singapore government service in the 1990s (based on research conducted by Ross Worthington in the early 2000s):
• Of the top 30 GLCs only two ( 6.7%) were chaired by non-Chinese in 1991 (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
� Of the 38 people who were represented on the most GLC boards in 1998, only two (5.3%) were non-Chinese (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
� Of the 78 �core people� on statutory boards and GLCs in 1998, seven (9%) were non-Chinese (and one of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
A similar outcome is revealed in the pattern of government scholarships awarded after matriculation from school. Of the 200 winners of Singapore�s most prestigious scholarship, the President�s Scholarship, from 1966-2005 only 14 ( 6.4%) were not Chinese. But this was not a consistent proportion throughout the period. If we take 1980 as the divider, we find that there were 10 non-Chinese President�s Scholars out of 114 from 1966-80, or 8%, but in the period from 1981-2005 this figure had dropped to four out of 106, or 3.8%. Since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been awarded to only one Malay, in 1968. There has been only one non-Chinese President�s Scholar in the 18 years from 1987 to 2005 (a boy called Mikail Kalimuddin) and he is actually half Chinese, studied in Chinese schools (Chinese High School and Hwa Chong Junior College), and took the Higher Chinese course as his mother tongue. If we broaden our focus to encompass broader constructions of ethnicity, we find that since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been won by only two Muslims (1968 and 2005).
If we consider Singapore�s second-ranked scholarship�the Ministry of Defence�s Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholarship (SAFOS)�we find a comparable pattern. The Ministry of Defence did not respond to my request for a list of recipients of SAF scholarships, but using newspaper accounts and information provided by the Ministry of Defence Scholarship Centre and Public Service Commission Scholarship Centre Web sites, I was able to identify 140 (56%) of the 250 SAFOS winners up to 2005.
Although only indicative, this table clearly suggests the Chinese dominance in SAFOS stakes: 98% of SAFOS winners in this sample were Chinese, and about 2% were non-Chinese (counting Mikail Kalimuddin in 2005 as non-Chinese). Furthermore I found not a single Malay recipient and only one Muslim winner (Mikail Kalimuddin). A similar picture emerges in the lower status Singapore Armed Forces Merit Scholarship winners: 71 ( 25.6%) of 277 (as of late 2005) scholars identified, with 69 (97%) Chinese winners to only two non-Chinese�though there was a Malay recipient in 2004, and one reliable scholar maintains that there have been others.
The position of the non-Chinese in the educational stakes has clearly deteriorated since the beginning of the 1980s. According to the logic of meritocracy, that means the Chinese have been getting smarter, at least compared to the non-Chinese.
Yet the selection of scholars does not depend purely on objective results like exam scores. In the internal processes of awarding scholarships after matriculation results are released, there are plenty of opportunities to exercise subtle forms of discrimination. Extracurricular activities (as recorded in one�s school record), �character� and performance in an interview are also considered. This makes the selection process much more subjective than one would expect in a system that claims to be a meritocracy, and it creates ample opportunity for racial and other prejudices to operate with relative freedom.
Is there evidence that such biases operate at this level? Unsurprisingly, the answer to this question is �yes.� Take for instance a 2004 promotional supplement in the country�s main newspaper used to recruit applicants for scholarships. The advertorial articles accompanying the paid advertisements featured only one non-Chinese scholar (a Malay on a lowly �local� scholarship) amongst 28 Chinese on prestigious overseas scholarships. Even more disturbing for what they reveal about the prejudices of those offering the scholarships were the paid advertisements placed by government ministries, statutory boards and GLCs. Of the 30 scholars who were both prominent and can be racially identified by their photographs or their names without any doubt as to accuracy, every one of them was Chinese. This leaves not a shadow of a doubt that those people granting government and government-linked scholarships presume that the vast majority of high-level winners will be Chinese.
October 2006
By Michael D. Barr
The legitimacy of the Singaporean government is predicated on the idea of a meritocratic technocracy. A tiny number of career civil servants play a leading role in setting policy within their ministries and other government-linked bureaucracies, leading both an elite corps of senior bureaucrats, and a much larger group of ordinary civil servants. Virtually all of the elite members of this hierarchy are �scholars,� which in Singapore parlance means they won competitive, bonded government scholarships�the established route into the country�s elite.
Scholars not only lead the Administrative Service, but also the military�s officer corps, as well as the executive ranks of statutory boards and government-linked companies (GLCs). Movement between these four groups is fluid, with even the military officers routinely doing stints in the civilian civil service. Together with their political masters, most of whom are also scholars, they make up the software for the entity commonly known as �Singapore Inc.��a labyrinth of GLCs, statutory boards and ministries that own or manage around 60% of Singapore�s economy.
The basis of the scholars� mandate to govern is not merely their performance on the job, but also the integrity of the process that selected them. The educational system is designed to cultivate competition, requiring top students to prove themselves every step of the way. Singapore�s schools first stream students into elite classes after Primary 3 and 4. They then compete for entry into special secondary schools and junior colleges, before vying for government and government-linked scholarships to attend the most prestigious universities around the world.
These scholarships typically require several years of government service after graduation, and the scholars are drafted into the Administrative Service, the officer corps of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), or the career track of a statutory board or GLC. The government insists that all Singaporeans have equal opportunities to excel in the system, and that everyone who has made it to the top did so purely by academic talent and hard work. Other factors such as gender, socioeconomic background and race supposedly play no more than a marginal role, if they are acknowledged as factors at all.
On the point of race, the Singapore government has long prided itself on having instituted a system of multiracialism that fosters cultural diversity under an umbrella of national unity. This is explicitly supposed to protect the 23% of the population who belong to minority races (mainly ethnic Malays and Indians) from discrimination by the Chinese majority.
But this system conceals several unacknowledged agendas. In our forthcoming book, Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project, Zlatko Skrbi� and I present evidence that the playing field is hardly level. In fact, Singapore�s system of promotion disguises and even facilitates tremendous biases against women, the poor and non-Chinese. Singapore�s administrative and its political elites�especially the younger ones who have come through school in the last 20 or so years�are not the cream of Singapore�s talent as they claim, but are merely a dominant social class, resting on systemic biases to perpetuate regime regeneration based on gender, class and race.
At the peak of the system is the network of prestigious government scholarships. Since independence in 1965, the technique of using government scholarships to recruit cohorts of scholars into the administrative and ruling elite has moved from the periphery of Singaporean society to center stage. Even before independence, a makeshift system of government and Colombo Plan scholarships sent a few outstanding scholars overseas before putting them into government service, including most notably former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. Yet as late as 1975 this system had contributed only two out of 14 members of Singapore�s cabinet. Even by 1985, only four out of 12 cabinet ministers were former government scholars.
By 1994, however, the situation had changed beyond recognition, with eight out of 14 cabinet ministers being ex-scholars, including Prime Minister Goh. By 2005 there were 12 ex-scholars in a Cabinet of 19. Of these, five had been SAF scholars, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. A perusal of the upper echelons of the ruling elite taken more broadly tells a similar story. In 1994, 12 of the 17 permanent secretaries were scholars, as were 137 of the 210 in the administrative-officer class of the Administrative Service.
The government scholarship system claims to act as a meritocratic sieve�the just reward for young adults with talent and academic dedication. If there is a racial or other bias in the outcomes, then this can only be the result of the uneven distribution of talent and academic application in the community. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put it when he spoke on national television in May 2005, �We are a multiracial society. We must have tolerance, harmony. � And you must have meritocracy � so everybody feels it is fair�.� His father, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was making the same point when, in 1989, he told Singapore�s Malay community that they �must learn to compete with everyone else� in the education system.
Yet if Singapore�s meritocracy is truly a level playing field, as the Lees assert, then the Chinese must be much smarter and harder working than the minority Indians and Malays. Consider the distribution of the top jobs in various arms of the Singapore government service in the 1990s (based on research conducted by Ross Worthington in the early 2000s):
• Of the top 30 GLCs only two ( 6.7%) were chaired by non-Chinese in 1991 (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
� Of the 38 people who were represented on the most GLC boards in 1998, only two (5.3%) were non-Chinese (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
� Of the 78 �core people� on statutory boards and GLCs in 1998, seven (9%) were non-Chinese (and one of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
A similar outcome is revealed in the pattern of government scholarships awarded after matriculation from school. Of the 200 winners of Singapore�s most prestigious scholarship, the President�s Scholarship, from 1966-2005 only 14 ( 6.4%) were not Chinese. But this was not a consistent proportion throughout the period. If we take 1980 as the divider, we find that there were 10 non-Chinese President�s Scholars out of 114 from 1966-80, or 8%, but in the period from 1981-2005 this figure had dropped to four out of 106, or 3.8%. Since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been awarded to only one Malay, in 1968. There has been only one non-Chinese President�s Scholar in the 18 years from 1987 to 2005 (a boy called Mikail Kalimuddin) and he is actually half Chinese, studied in Chinese schools (Chinese High School and Hwa Chong Junior College), and took the Higher Chinese course as his mother tongue. If we broaden our focus to encompass broader constructions of ethnicity, we find that since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been won by only two Muslims (1968 and 2005).
If we consider Singapore�s second-ranked scholarship�the Ministry of Defence�s Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholarship (SAFOS)�we find a comparable pattern. The Ministry of Defence did not respond to my request for a list of recipients of SAF scholarships, but using newspaper accounts and information provided by the Ministry of Defence Scholarship Centre and Public Service Commission Scholarship Centre Web sites, I was able to identify 140 (56%) of the 250 SAFOS winners up to 2005.
Although only indicative, this table clearly suggests the Chinese dominance in SAFOS stakes: 98% of SAFOS winners in this sample were Chinese, and about 2% were non-Chinese (counting Mikail Kalimuddin in 2005 as non-Chinese). Furthermore I found not a single Malay recipient and only one Muslim winner (Mikail Kalimuddin). A similar picture emerges in the lower status Singapore Armed Forces Merit Scholarship winners: 71 ( 25.6%) of 277 (as of late 2005) scholars identified, with 69 (97%) Chinese winners to only two non-Chinese�though there was a Malay recipient in 2004, and one reliable scholar maintains that there have been others.
The position of the non-Chinese in the educational stakes has clearly deteriorated since the beginning of the 1980s. According to the logic of meritocracy, that means the Chinese have been getting smarter, at least compared to the non-Chinese.
Yet the selection of scholars does not depend purely on objective results like exam scores. In the internal processes of awarding scholarships after matriculation results are released, there are plenty of opportunities to exercise subtle forms of discrimination. Extracurricular activities (as recorded in one�s school record), �character� and performance in an interview are also considered. This makes the selection process much more subjective than one would expect in a system that claims to be a meritocracy, and it creates ample opportunity for racial and other prejudices to operate with relative freedom.
Is there evidence that such biases operate at this level? Unsurprisingly, the answer to this question is �yes.� Take for instance a 2004 promotional supplement in the country�s main newspaper used to recruit applicants for scholarships. The advertorial articles accompanying the paid advertisements featured only one non-Chinese scholar (a Malay on a lowly �local� scholarship) amongst 28 Chinese on prestigious overseas scholarships. Even more disturbing for what they reveal about the prejudices of those offering the scholarships were the paid advertisements placed by government ministries, statutory boards and GLCs. Of the 30 scholars who were both prominent and can be racially identified by their photographs or their names without any doubt as to accuracy, every one of them was Chinese. This leaves not a shadow of a doubt that those people granting government and government-linked scholarships presume that the vast majority of high-level winners will be Chinese.
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