What do the Malaysian Chinese want?

INTRODUCTION

Having failed to achieve total control in Indonesia after the fall of their stooge and protector, the late butcher tyrant president Suharto, the Chinese of South East Asia (the Kuomintang) have turned their sights on Malaysia in a bid to topple its Malay majority government.

The Chinese appear dissatisfied and annoyed with the status of Malays in a nation carefully nurtured and cultivated to its present stage of industrialisation by former Prime Minister Dr. Mahahtir Muhammed.

The Malays of Malaysia are in a majority comprising at least 60% of the population. They are the indigenous people of the country. The Indians (6%) and the Chinese who form the rest of the population are divided along race lines.

Whilst the Chinese were favoured in commerce and trade from the time of the British, a practice which continues to this day, the Indians consist mainly of a few professionals, small business people and the rest largely low paid labourers.

Singapore under its first Prime Minster had designs over Malaysia since its birth all those years ago. In his own words he had ‘dreamed all his adult life of a merger between the two states’. For what reasons he dreamed such a dream is now becoming clearer. The Chinese of Malaysia and Indonesia have great regard for the man. The Malays to a large part see him as a gate keeper of foreign interests (with good reason) and an abject and unmitigated racist.

LANDLESS SINGAPORE’S MALAY LAND GRAB

Singapore of late and with the assistance of the immediate past Prime Minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Badawi, engineered a coup whereby they conveniently renegotiated the supply of Malaysian water to Singapore on unrealistically favourable terms to Singapore, much to the detriment of Malaysia. All of this achieved without debate or disclosure of any real consequence from either side.

Mahathir, an obstacle to Singapore’s ambiitons in the peninsula, had left the stage. They were now free to engage in the politics of intimidation and division and had a ready made chameleon, a spineless, vain and incompetent leader in Badawi.

There was no need to gauge public opinion on something as vital as water or land as is characteristic of Singapore’s style of patrimony, its benevolent dictatorship which they call democratic government down there. Unaccountable and unresponsive to their people as always, self assured in their condescention of their subjects, they assisted Badawi to sell his country’s most precious asset to them for a song. And sell it Badawi did.

More dangerously, Badawi allowed Singapore’s state and private interests to acquire significant tracts of Malaysian land (the Johor corridor) for them to develop a massive industrial complex (proposal) using Singaporean and foreign investments channeled through Singapore and the use of imported Chinese labour from China.

The proposed development and its strategy gives Singapore de facto control over a significant land mass of Malaysia without it having a political mandate from Malaysians to run the area. Very smart, very dangerous. Perhaps the new lingua franca would also be Mandarin to cater for the imported Chinese (non Malay) labour they intend to bring in to create a sphere of an extension of the Pulau Batam experiment. Singapore off shore territory, Malaysia on lease in a Malay neutral cultural vacuum.

STEALTH

There has been no referendum on this re design of the boundaries of Malaysia nor even a cursory impact study of the consequences of such a significant transfer of ownership of land and a bud grafting of an entire new culture of Chinese onto Malay soil. No one has sought fit to seek approval and consents of Malaysia’s most important citizens, its Malay majority.

Nor have the finer terms of this sale or the results of any social or economic impact studies on its mainly Malay population been made public for the people it is most likely to effect to consider. There was no public discussion no consultations with effected groups and communities of any significance so to speak of. Nothing has been done for any meaningful public debate or input to be considered form the effected communities.

Badawi held hands with his Singaporean counterparts in what was clearly a purely commercial deal with political and social implications for Malaysians, especially its Malay population in a majority and to whom the land is inalienable being Tanah Melayu. This appears to be a repeat of the historic handing over of Singapore’s sovereignity to Britain for a pistol and a few trinkets to the Johor Sultanate by Britain all those years ago.

Badawi appears to have done a Habibie on Malaysia. Habibie we recall sold out East Timor to an Australian led force of former Marxist guerillas with Portuguese and Chinese backing under the pretext of a deteriorating security situation.

The security situation was created and nurtured at its inception with Australia’s assistance under Suharto aided then by Australia’s defence aid to Indonesia. East Timor was then carved out of Indoensia into a new independent state during mayhem engineered by the UN, Portugal and Australia.

So it now appears that internationa law does reccognise in its breach the take over of foreign lands not only through conquest but also by treaties that ignore the will of a majority. Necessity and bilateral economic agreements are mere camoflagues to lend a semblance of legitimacy and respectability to appropriation of other people’s land.

A SMEAR FOR DISTRACTION

The smear campaigns have begun. Most of it directed at the most likely candidate capable of galvanising Malay sentiment to tear up these arrangements and the stealthy occupation of Malay soil. Dr. Mahathir Muhammed appears willing to go all the wa on this one.

Singapore acutely aware of his potency in dismantling their plans for occupation by stealth is widely viewed as the source of Malay indignation and Chinese chauvinism in Malaysia. Its campaigns have been to stir the political landscape of Malaysia that has become so divisive and polarized provoked by statements from Singapore of late.

Malaysia’s Chinese are openly looking for Lee Kuan Yew type leadership not for his recorded achievements but for the fact the Chinese will dominate as they have done in Singapore. The Chinese like the Indians of Africa and Fiji are cultural chauvanists not willing to assimilate but to dominate at any cost.

The fact Mahathir has achieved more progress for Malaysia in less time with less pain inflicted on his people appears irrelevant to the Malaysian Chinese and sectors of its Indian comunities. So Mahathir appears now to be their target, the focus of their smear campaigns. Lest he further encourage the Malays to be assertive of their rights and put paid to the Singaporean occupation of a third of Malaysian soil Mahathir has become the pre occupaiton of Singapore and its local Malaysian Chinese supporters.

CULTIVATING A TYRANT-BRITAIN’S AND AUSTRALIA’S CULPABILITY

To achieve their domination of south east Asia and its people, the Koumintang Chinese of Asia have cultivated allies in the west. Through Blades, Alex Josey and other operatives of MI5 and the Special branch in Singapore, prior to independence in the 1950’s, Britain found a willing ally in a brilliant, charismatic, though ruthless and mercenary lawyer in Lee Kuan Yew. The rest as they say is history.

Britain set about cultivating Lee to be leader of an independent Singapore as an measured antidote to nationalism sweeping the region post world war 2. David Barr’s and Rev. James Minchin’s thesis on the man and his policies puts paid to the fiction of that all clean and straight modern day ruler.

Lee’s character flourished on the job. He was in his element supporting tyrants, butchers and undemocratic brutes of the region like Suharto and Marcos benefitting his island state in the process. The two tyrants in Marcos and Suharto were willing to exterminate their own people, paving the way to untold riches with blood, for mercenary Chinese merchants like the Bob Hassan’s and Lim Soei Liem who funded these tyrants, banking their ill gotten gains in Singapore to the delight of Lee and the local Chinese.

A SPY FOR A PRESIDENT

Its is not unusual for a country to appoint a war hero or decorated soldier to high office. Even to that of President. Israel did it with a number of their war heroes elevated to high office in gratitude for their service. But very few countries are known to have rewarded a foreign spy elevating him to such a position or to acknowledge his perfidy with such honour. Singapore did.

To reinforce the point I make about servitude and the interest of foreigners over and above those of Singaporeans or its Malays (its original inhabitants), Singapore appointed as its President an ASIO Spy (Australian Security Intelligence Organization) in SR Nathan.

SR Nathan’s cover as a spy for Australia was his position at head of RTS (Radio TV Singapore) for years whilst he served his masters in Canberra. Alex Josey served MI5 also in the same position previously. SR Nathan, now President of Singapore, assisted the Australian’s and British in their disinformation and propaganda campaigns directed mainly at Malays, Indians and that minority of honourable Chinese who campaigned for an open, independent and free state.

These Chinese were labeled by Lee and the foreigners he served as communists, terrorists, traitors, chauvinists, trouble makers and jailed for long periods without trial. SR Nathan’s appointment is clearly a celebration of the betrayal of Singaporeans and its Malays.

The question that is to be asked is this. Whose sovereignty and interests is it that is being protected by the Lee dynasty in Singapore then? In any other self respecting state a spy in the service of a foreign country would be executed or punished for being in the service of a foreign country against the interests of his own.

In Singapore a foreign spy was made president by a spy who became Prime Minister. Who does Singapore really belong to? who do its people serve? How long will its Malay population remain well fed birds in chauvinistic a Chinese cage?

MORE THAN MERE DOUBLE STANDARDS

“Having taken Japanese lessons since 1942 before Singapore was occupied, he worked as a Military Intelligence Officer to translate Allied wire reports for the Japanese, as well as being the English-language editor on the Japanese Hodobu (an information or propaganda department) from 1942 to 1943.”

Nothing unusual about the standards of political morality Singapore practices when one considers the convenience of opium and heroin money of the likes of Lo Sin Han. The Burmese warlord and drug king’s money when combined with the heady mix of the high morals of Singapore’s rulers is volatile and immoral.

Politics does indeed make some very strange bedfellows. Whilst Lo’s lowly and desperate drug mules are regularly hanged at Singapore’s Changi prison, that state willingly and happily helps Lo manage and launder his ill gotten drug money in commercial partnerships and joint ventures (Helen Vatsikopolous Dateline SBS 2002) through Tamasek.

At the same time whilst preaching security, order, law and good international relations, Charter industries of Singapore, the government owned small arms manufacturer sells to anyone willing to buy. That includes the explosives sold to the Tamil Tigers which they used to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi.

Lo’s army too is a beneficiary of arms manufactured and purchased from Charter industries as do many other clandestine and separatist groups in the region. That’s the morality of the white uniformed PAP who now stand in judgement of Mahathir and the Malays. This is high ground morality of the Chinese of the region who find the UMNO and NEP handouts so immoral and disturbing that they will support Lee in destabilsing Malaysia, in calling for Mahathir’s blood and in agitating for the abolishment of the NEP which the Chinese consider much more immoral than Guns, Drugs and blood money.

LEE’s SINGAPORE AND THEIR PERCEPTION OF MALAYS

Lee Kuan Yew thinks very little of a Malay who is independent and can think for himself. They irritate him. He is unashamedly on record espousing the theories of Nietzsche and Manu in a more distorted way when describing Malays and Indians in comparison to Chinese. His interpretation of Nitszche appears closer to that of Hitler’s interpretations of the concepts of untermenschen and ubermenschen than any others.

A self proclaimed student of genetics and avid believer in the politics of racial superiority, he conveniently places the Chinese squarely over their “inferior” Malay and Indian counterparts using apocryphal documents and theories to justify his pallid position. Why and how Lee believes in these theories of convenience ? David Barr’s thesis reveals the illusions behind the man and how he manufactures evidence in support of his theories shifting it and his position when it suits the occassion and the argument.

A perfect model for understanding Naom Chomsky’s “manufacturing consent”. Lee and his coeterie of bullies have never given up that idea that the federation is their territory. His conduct reveals the delusions of grandeur of the man and his beliefs in a near divine right to rule the area assisted by a willing sea of commercially astute but also ruthless cadre of settled Chinese in the region who act as his fifth coloumn.

Secondly and more importantly it is because of the crude assumption that Mahathir as a Malay could not possible have achieved what he did achieve in his years as a Prime Minister when someone as high profile and Chinese as the late Tan Siew Sin (former Malaysian Finance Minister) failed dismally in all his time at the helm to achieve even a fraction of what Mahathir managed.

THE MYTH OF LEE KUAN YEWS ECONOMIC GENIUS

Contrary to the popularly built up myth of Singapore being the result f Lee Kuan Yew’s genius which he constantly allows his media to spin about him, it was not Lee’s economic genius that made Singapore but that of Dutch economist Albert Winsemius. Lee was merely an enforcer of the designs of Britain and the other foreign investors in Singapore.

Lee shamelessly takes credit for Singapore’s economic successes to this day. Singapore could in truth be run by a combination of South American banana republic dictators and still turn out prosperous because it is a natural port situated at the confluence of the great sea lanes linking east and west north and south and no genius need plan for its prosperity. Certainly not Lee Kuan Yew. And his demise will prove that.

Without wanting to take too much away from Lee and the myths about his genius, the evidence shows that he clearly was a catalyst in a series of events that produced the outcomes that is Singapore today. In reality it was a combination of those factors of politics, position, need and greed both natural and human that conspired to create the island states success. Not the singular work of Lee Kuan Yew.

With Mahathir’s Malaysia the odds were stacked against the Malay. His successes were for most part the efforts of a singular mind. His methods equally Machiavellian but not brutal and inhumane. The odds against him innumerable and immeasurable. But being Malay those odds were even greater. Such achievement by a Malay is considered in the minds of mainly Chinese Malaysians and Singaporeans to be an impossibility. Therefore something had to be wrong and the rumour mill began to run.

THE SINGAPORE CHINESE MYTH

Singapore’s success has nothing to do with Chinese ingenuity, hard work, higher work ethics or superiority over the Malays in commerce. A confluence of vital security, strategic and commercial interests converge out of necessity and convenience at the point of that island state because of its position to make it what it is.

The ruling party of Singapore has a lot to do with a servile mindset that dominates their political landscape like the rusty old retainers of a forgotten colonial past. Minions who continue to serve their white masters dressed in those same white cotton outfits the British forced them wear in the colonial days to make them appear clean (knowing how dirty the Chinese could be physically, metaphorically and morally) when dealing with them. It was symbolic then as it is now. Purely symbolic.

BETRAYAL A SINGAPOREAN STAPLE

How could one forget the betrayal of trust the Sultan of Brunei placed in the late Khoo Teck Puat and Khoo’s theft of hundreds of millions of the Sultan’s money all under the full view of Singapore’s treasury officials who were the Sultan’s technical experts at the time?

From Phillipines to Brunei from Indonesia to Malaysia (his greater China) Lee and his Singapore believe that their economic model is a recipe for self righteous hegemony through the politics of money and the use of intimidation and mischief through Chinese merchants in the area.

Sadly for the delusional Lee that day will not come. Because like all dictators in history, he too will suddenly realise that he is human and fallible (or events ill remind him of the fact) and that not everyone can be bought through fear and intimidation, cleaner streets or better paid jobs. That’s why Lee Kuan Yew is in a hurry to leave as his legacy a Chinese dominated Malaysia, his lifelong dream.

MAHATHIR IS NO LEE AND NEVER ASPIRED TO BE

The Chinese of Malaysia often draw comparisons between Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew without the facts. In order to denigrate the Malays they reinforce their racial stereotyping of Chinese and Malays referring to Lee in glowing terms of the spin that’s become part of the Lee Kuan Yew Myth and Mahathir in terms of the Kuomintang and Singapore fed rumours about the man.

Mahathir does not share a similar vision for Malaysia as Lee does nor does he have a similar mercenary family background to Lee. And nor were or are his people rejects of their own ancestral societies driven to extremes. Mahathir and Lee were moulded out of totally different fires and made of an equally different metal.

Mahathir was educated against all odds as a medical doctor in a society where Malays and Muslims were excluded from any form of social, political, economic or academic attainment unless appropriately socially connected at the time.

He received no patronage like Lee from his mother Chua Jim Neo’s ’special friend’. He did not taunt his classmates before exams so that they possible performed badly (James Minchin: No Man is an Island) allowing him to do better then be called a genius.

DEMOCRACY VS A DICTATORSHIP

Nowhere in this planet is there evidence of an ethnic Chinese running a democratic state. Autocratic, fascist yes. But democratic no. The Malays like their Indian counterparts have long held traditions of collective government. It may not have been referred to in their vocabulary as democracy but the characteristics have always been there. It may sound a bit unkind and I would like to be proved wrong on this score.

The same cannot be said of Chinese communities anywhere who have traditionally succumbed to and strangely thrived under ruthless iron fisted totalitarians and tyrants. And the Kuomintang is no stranger to the politics of fascism and brutality either. Their influence in corrupt government’s of south East Asia that fed a communist insurgency everywhere in the region from Indo China to Indonesia and Malaysia is legend.

The entire idea of Lee Kuan Yew’s hard driving carrot and stick policies is anathema to the soul of the Malays. To the Malays the success of one of their own in the politics of liberal democratic industrialization in the form of Malaysia by Dr. Mahathir is therefore understandably hard for the Chinese to swallow. The Malays are a comfortable blend of both east and west unlike the Chinese at least in south east Asia.

Mahathir could fight an adversary from within and without Malaysia without the need to tie their hands behind their backs to win. He did not jail dissenters simply for being dissenters. He has not used Malaysia as a base to destabilise Singapore nor to benefit financially from the misery inflicted by the tyrants in his neighbourhood on their people.

The same cannot be said of Lee or his Singapore. Mahathir turned out to be more successful in achieving economic, industrial and technical progress for Malaysia within a relatively more advanced pluralistic and democratic framework than Lee could ever have dreamed of. The Chinese of the region are angered by it. It is as painful to them as it is proving to a Christian that the resurrection of Christ never occurred.

Mahathir had 25 Million people in their diverse forms to satisfy and to manage. Lee had a generic class of a mere 3 million mainly Chinese with all of the economic, political and military backing of Britain, Australia, the US and yes even China. Mahathir for his independence in thought and deed stood alone.

The results must have been devastatingly painful to the Chinese psyche. God after all turned out not to be Chinese. Perish the thought. So the Chinese of Malaysia (at least those who will not speak out) have joined this unholy chorus of criticisms against Mahahtir and thinking Malays in an unsubtle demonstration of where their true loyalties lie.

Inspite of the strength of available evidence against them, the same insult on corruption is never applied to any of the non Malays of the region like the Chinese by the so called opposition in the region. So deep run these prejudices that rumour is often the fuel of many a debate in places like Malaysia and Singapore.

All of Malaysia’s dynamic changes, Mahathir achieved in much a shorter time than Lee’s six decades of pain and oppression Lee had inflicted on his people to get his results. Sure Singapore is impressive. But so too is the local Westfield shopping mall when compared to its surrounds the suburbs and the different stimuli and responsibilities and problems that drive each of these. Its like comparing chalk to cheese.

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MALAYS IN LABOUR - WILL IT INCREASE WITH THE JOHOR CORRIDOR?

Malaysia (warts and all) remains an oasis in a sea of cultural chauvanism. Thailand, Indonesia (till only recently) Viet Nam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia all had till recently prohibited the use of Chinese characters in any form from public display. Outside shops, temples or other public places the use of and the displays of Chinese cultural icons and language was prohibited by law. Malaysia remained outside this sphere of intolerance.

Singapore uypped the ante not to be outdone in the field of racial discrimination applying a unique form of racial and cultural discrimination. Created in its attempts to subdue the Malay Nationalism within the island and to render their culture subject to that of the engineered Chinese majority community Singapore introduced Mandarin as its national language alongside the English language. In doing so it achieved its purpose of rendering the entire Malay population culturally and politically impotent.

PORK AND ALCOHOL TWO NON TARIFF BARRIERS TO MALAY EMPLOYMENT

In Malaysia on the other hand as is the case in Singapore, there is significant though subtle discrimination in employment against the Malays even to this day. It manifests itself in non tariff barriers set in employment in one of the largest sectors of the economy and employment, the food, beverages and hospitality industry.

In the context of Asia, food and beverages remain one of the most important and lucrative industries and will continue to outperform most others even in times of economic distress. Food beverages and hospitality are two of Malaysia’s largest employers and contributors to its gross domoestic product. Yet Malay patcicipation in this lucrative field of economic activity is deliberately stiffled and curtailed.

Now here’s the trick. Most restaurants and hotels which are statistically in a majority run by the Chinese, sell or cook food either with pork or pork fat or some element of pork as an ingredient. The manufacture, sale and consumption of alcohol another very significant industry from which the Malays are excluded for religious reasons is also Chinese dominated.

Fully aware of the consequence to Malays of the presence of these ingredients and material in food and beverages, very few previous or for that matter even the current Malaysian government have ever advocated to find alternatives to redress the imbalance created by this non tariff barrier to employment of Malays. The result is that it has become a tool of exclusion preventing and excluding Malays from employment in an important and a vital industry in Malaysia.

Pork is not a life saving necessity nor something that cannot be suitably and painlessly substituted with say,soy substitutes, beef, mutton, venesin or poultry. Yet it is conveniently and widely used in Malaysia by its Chinese population without protest or complaint by it Malay population save in some minority quarters.

The fact they the Malays and their government have not taken any active measures to end Chinese monopoly of this highly lucrative of sectors in the economy although harmful to their culture says a lot about Malay generosity the Chinese are not prepared to acknowledge.

It is examples such as these which conveniently get lost in the heat of arguments against the NEP and Malays. This level of inter racial tolerance is likely to be lost in a Singaporean Chinese dominated Johor corridor. Malays will be further driven into the hinterland or be reduced to being token Chinese like they are in Singapore today.

The consequence of all of the generosity of the Malays and their government is conveniently lost and conveniently forgotten by the Chinese. Whats not remembered is that the Malays in their own country are as they have been for decades, excluded from any form of meaningful employment or participation in an industry so large as the food and beverages sector to which they could contribute more significantly.

Food and beverage is an industry in which the Chinese have a stranglehold and monopoly over which for a long time has underwritten their individual and communal wealth. Entry barriers are low and turnover and profits high.

CONCLUSION

In the earlier days before people like Mahathir intervened, the Chinese middle men reduced Malay rice growers of the north to poverty. It was a feat celebrated by the British as Chinese ingenuity over the Malays. The Malays could do well to demand their government impose a punitive tax on the sale of pork and alcohol in all its forms. It will achieve the necessary balance of allowing the Chinese the freedom to eat pork in public places and others to consume alcohol also in public places for a price. That price has to reflect the disadvantage to the Malay economy.

An opportunity to redress this imbalance where Malays are excluded from places where the the use of pork and alcohol is served can be achieved by imposing license requirements on all premises that sell pork and alcohol which would undoubtedly provide a windfall to government and redressing the imbalance in the process.

More importantly the government of Tun Razak Najib ought to be made to publicly disclose the terms and conditions of the sale of water to Singapore and the sale of the Johor corridor to Singaporeans. And if necessary a referendum on these matters held. If they are found to be not in the interests of Malaysians it ought to be overturned.

The Chinese know that they will not be able to overthrow and set up in its place a non Malay led government. That’s not possible as long as there are sufficient numbers of Malays to constitute a majority in the population.

The Chinese alternative aided by Singapore is now to grab as much land as is possible under terms and conditions that have been kept a secret from Malaysians and to introduce large numbers of imported Chinese labour as has been the case throughout the developing world in Asia and Africa and to spread Chinese economic and cultural hegemony throughout the region.

It will happen. And Lee Kuan Yew wants it to happen before he dies. Bahasa Melayu will be replaced as the main language with Mandarin. If thats taking it the message too far, take a look at Singapore, a former Malay territory and prove me wrong.

Taken from KitaGempur.com