OPINION | 25 questions over the root cause of Malay (and non-Malay) unease

By P Gunasegaram

What is this unease among Malays that deputy prime minister Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi was talking about as reported in this article titled Zahid highlights Malay unease in their homeland, but stresses on unity?

Can we list 25 groups of questions for Zahid and Umno to answer and clarify things?

1. What is the source of this unease? Will Umno ever be able to do something that will solve the problem of Malay unease, while maintaining unity among all races? And is there only Malay unease? What about other indigenous communities more sidelined than Malays? And even other races?
2. But isn’t the problem that we are rather fixated on races, Zahid? And why is that? Is it because race, (religion and royalty - the 3R’s) are the only factors that Umno can whip up to stay relevant in a changed, rapidly changing environment?
3. Tell us, how is the Malay race, religion and royalty being threatened in our mutual country? Isn't it something else that is being threatened? What is it?
4. Isn’t Umno horribly outdated and outmoded in their approach and has lost its way in the morass of racial politics, incompetence and extreme corruption, offering to the public its trite response for an uneasy Malay population?
5. Would it not be correct to say that Umno is singularly responsible for that state of affairs because it had every opportunity for over 60 years to help Malays, and every other community in this wide, disparate land of ours if it had done its job properly?
6. Didn’t the romance of independence in 1957 and the supremacy of the Alliance coalition led by Umno, MCA and MIC which Malaysians had been voting for in the first dozen years of its existence end in 1969 - not with the riots but the elections that denied the coalition a two-thirds majority initially for the first time?
7. Was it not then that Umno and its allies got a rude awakening but instead of facing up to the new paradigm, fostered a riot which started from the Selangor chief minister’s house in Kampung Baru, resulting in the only mass killing our country has ever known?
8. Wasn't the riot engineered to keep Umno and Alliance in power by striking fear into the hearts of the non-Malays, inciting Malays that the non-Malays were their enemies, and instituting over-ambitious social restructuring programmes resulting in a rapid rise of Malays into positions of power too fast, seriously affecting competence?
9. Didn’t Abdul Razak Hussein, who succeeded the moderate Tunku Abdul Rahman, cobble together a coalition, roping in all opposition parties but DAP which stayed out on principle?
10. Didn’t this coalition win handsomely in 1974, and didn’t Razak include then rebel Mahathir Mohamad, who had opposed Tunku, as a Parliamentary candidate and subsequently made him education minister, the fastest ascendancy of an MP ever? Does that not indicate conspiracy against Tunku?
11. Didn’t Razak put together the New Economic Policy and start other similar programmes? But didn't these programmes get abused, especially with respect to allocation of shares and contracts to bumiputeras, almost exclusively Malays, with Umno cronies getting the lion’s shares?
12. Was this programme accelerated under Mahathir’s oppressive reign for 22 years from 1981 with the rise of Daim Zainuddin as finance minister and economic czar and the cultivation of another group of cronies?
13. Wasn’t it noted that during this time, many ordinary Malays were neglected as was the poor in Malaysia? Was it not true that educational standards declined and quotas forced a drop in quality?
14. Didn't successive Umno regimes ignore the fact that education was among the ways to improve the livelihood for all but it was allowed to deteriorate because there were not enough honest and competent people to stop the rot? Also, did they not permit the excessive Islamisation of education for political reasons?
15. Weren't the politicians too busy cultivating businessmen, taking bribes from them, handing out precious government assets to create millionaires and billionaires to fund them? And was it true that a lot of them simply did not have the capacity to do it, ruining themselves and the country?
16. And then did we not witness the ultimate corruption, when Abdul Razak’s son, Najib, teamed up with young (under 30), brash Chinese businessman Low Taek Jho to steal billions from the country?
17. And for the record, wasn't Najib Umno president then and did you not support him at that time as a vice president and then his deputy? Did he not lose the 2018 elections to put Umno out of power for the first time?
18. When he resigned didn't you take over as Umno president from him? And were you, Najib and numerous other stalwarts charged in court for corruption, including criminal breach of trust and money laundering? And Najib found guilty of numerous charges?
19. Najib went to jail but aren't you and your Umno colleagues almost in one voice baying for a pardon for what is a rather heinous crime against the state while at the time opposing a pardon for his co-conspirator Jho Low in the US? Do you think Najib has paid for his crime? How so?
20. Don’t you think that the only reason you got that ignominious DNAA (discharge not amounting to acquittal) on numerous charges for corruption and money laundering was the inexplicable withdrawal of the charges? Perhaps it was also due to the fact that you are close to Anwar Ibrahim?
21. With that kind of track record, how do you expect to get any support from the Malays, especially with seats in Parliament for Umno going down from 88 in 2013 to 54 in 2018 and a mere 26 in 2022? Don’t you need Harapan more than it needs you to stay alive?
22. Don’t you think that not only Malays but the entire country is in an extreme state of unease because our leaders of major political parties are unfit to lead and Malaysians are terribly afraid of our future? Don’t you think Umno is to blame totally for the Malay unease and that of the non-Malays too, the unease of the entire country?
23. And that the only way to sort this out is to crush corruption, reduce wastage and bring balanced development to all sectors and peoples and to focus on the poor from all communities - if Malays constitute the most, they will be helped most?
24. Don’t you think that Malaysians have to choose between a rock and a hard place - between religious extremism and possible corruption on the one hand and extreme patronage, corruption and incompetence on the other?
25. Finally, don’t you and all your friends at the top right now think that Umno, old and new, has nothing to offer Malaysians and must make way for a new young breed of leaders (and I don’t mean Khairy who is as Umno as they come) to take over if this country is to stop its steady decline?

(P Gunasegaram asks: Can we lift ourselves out of this morass created by Umno? By hook or crook, we must.)

P Gunasegaram (t.p.guna@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!

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