http://www.malaysiakini.com/Column/2001/12/2001122402.php3

24 December 2001

Malaysiakini

Malaise in Malaysia: apartheid in a multiracial society

CHIAROSCURO
M.G.G. Pillai

It is now in the open that Malaysian schools promote students on race not merit. When parents of children at the Sekolah Kebangsaan Pelabuhan Klang, in Pandamaram, Port Klang, went public to demand to know why their children, in the top rank, were not promoted on merit, it affirmed apartheid as a way of life in schools, as indeed in every facet of national life.

The official multiracial society is chipped away, block by block, by those who are to strengthen it.

What shocks is the government's response. It first ignored it. It demanded proof. The education minister, Musa Ahmad, not only knew nothing of it but would not act when he was proven wrong. He explained, instead, why there should be apartheid in schools: merit alone is not enough. Which is fine, if it is made clear from the start.

Instead, The Selangor education department said it did no wrong, with the usual lame bureacratic excuses, to contradict the minister. But it would not go away. The National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) knows of at least 200 secondary and primary schools where this is the norm. There is, must be, more.

That is but the tip of the iceberg. Recently, it became known that students for a public examination were required to state if they were Muslim or non-Muslim. The officials explained, with a straight face, that it was for statistical purposes. If so, why not the individual religion of the non-Muslim? Or is it in line with a plan extant to divide the country into Muslims and non-Muslims? As we already see.

As more comes to light, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, steps, orders an investigation. Others chime in, but not to resolve it. The works minister, and Malaysian Indian Congress chief, S. Samy Vellu, orders the Indians to shut up and let the government handle it: the most affected are Indian students. It is a sign that the matter would not be righted. He wants us to believe the government did not cause it in the first place.

Unmentioned policy

But is it solved? No. Would it be? No. Would the government take steps to see it not ever happen? No. Would those responsible be punished? No. Would it happen again? Yes, quietly, and long after opposition politicians have other meat to gnaw.

This is the malaise in Malaysian society. Look at the recent grades-for-cash scandal in the Certificate of Legal Practice (CLP) examinations. Like now, the government stonewalled it as long as it could, then the ministers promised to move heaven and earth from it ever recurring, and moved on to other storms-in-teacups. The minister in charge of the justice, Dr Rais Yetim, warns the public -- as Samy Vellu the Indians -- not to speculate when the police could not move the courts to remand the man at the centre of the scandal!

At the centre of it all is this unmentioned, undisguised policy of turning Malaysia into a Malay Islamic country. It could do this with impunity when the non-Malay partners in the National Front government are there to be seen and not heard. And allows the UMNO-dominated government the legitimacy to chip away at its public position of multiracialism.

The cabinet ministers would rather cling to office than address the country's problems. And believe all is well when it is not. After all, the Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, says it. So it must be. But it is not. Nothing works. The great divide begins with the chasm between the cabinet and the civil service. And leads to the apartheid in national life, each using it to prove its point.

Deafening silence

Every civil servant wants to move on by making his office more Islamic -- it is already Malay -- than when he came in. So, the apartheid in schools is no abberant waywardness but a coldly calculated act of deliberate policy and political inaction. The BN government, to wean the Malay back into its fold, closes a blind eye; indeed officially plays into his hands to proclaim Malaysia an Islamic state when it is not. To deafening silence from non-Muslim parties in the grand coalition.

The stark reality now strikes home. Many in government fear if a juggernaut is now unleashed. Feeble attempts are made only to backfire. Astro, for instance, now have two Arabic channels, one the Middle East's CNN, Al-Jazeera, the other from Lebanon.

One had King Abdullah of Jordan insisting why, with Christians an important minority, as many as the Chinese in Malaysia, he must fight any attempt at Islamic fundamentalism in his country; another, in a report on Aidil Fitri, had men and women smoking, drinking and dancing away at the Grand Cafe in Lebanon, a far cry from what is considered right and proper behaviour for Muslims in the month of Ramadhan in Malaysia.

But is this how this Islamic march be addressed? But when the government restricts non-Muslim and non-Malay cultural activities because they are not Islamic, when it does not respond to newspaper criticisms, as recently, of Christmas decorations in shopping malls during the fasting month of Ramadhan, it puts multireligious, multiracial Malaysia at risk. The more when it starts in primary schools. And no one dares to right it in fear of the response.