Our "Social Contract" is a Lie
Written by johnleemk on 6:05:59 am May 9, 2007.
Categories: Malaysian Government, Malaysian Politics
Raja Petra Kamarudin, the editor of Malaysia Today, has written a column on the machinations of constitutional law in Malaysia, and how ketuanan Melayu is protected by it.
There are a number of problems with his presentation of the facts, however. It is unquestionably correct that the British started this nonsense about Malay supremacy.
But still, to conclude that it was the British who entrenched Malay supremacy in the Constitution, subjecting things like Article 153 to the purview of the Malay rulers to avoid any change in the situation, is simply wrong.
The Reid Commission which drafted our Constitution actually featured eminent jurists from all over the Commonwealth — not just Britain. But even more damning for Raja Petra's argument, the last thing the Reid Commission wanted to do was to entrench Article 153, which makes it the prerogative of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to protect the native communities of Malaysia.
In their view, Article 153 was meant to be a temporary thing. Like the New Economic Policy, Article 153 has been twisted by the government into becoming a permanent feature of our legal landscape, when the Reid Commission wanted it subject to a 15-year sunset clause.
The entrenchment of Article 153 was thus nowhere in the Constitution for 12 years, from independence in 1957 until 1969. It was only after the May 13 racial riots that our Constitution was amended to prevent the amendment of Article 153 and other portions of the Constitution without the consent of the Malay rulers.
I am not sure if Raja Petra's suggestion that since the Yang di-Pertuan Agong's consent is now no longer necessary for a bill to become binding law, this entrenchment of Malay supremacy is gone. I doubt that this is a correct interpretation of the law, because as long as the Constitution states that the Malay rulers must consent to any amendment which touches on the entrenched portions of the Constitution, then they still hold the power to check attempts to remove Malay supremacy.
What I find truly troubling, though, is the implicit assumption that Article 153 represents Malay supremacy, and that it must be done away with to destroy ketuanan Melayu. Reading this article, it is difficult to see how it can be interpreted as supporting supremacy of the native communities.
After all, as has been astutely noted before, Article 153(1) states:
It shall be the responsibility of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to safeguard the special position of the Malays and natives of any of the States of Sabah and Sarawak and the legitimate interests of other communities in accordance with the provisions of this Article.Article 153 in reality is an article for all Malaysians! The only issue of course, is the "special position" of the native peoples — but what exactly is this "special position"? This is not spelled out by the Constitution.
I personally think that the "special position" is the fact that these communities, like it or not, are part of the country and its backbone. Much of our identity, like it or not, comes from them and their traditions. Our head of state, our flag, our state religion, our national language — they are all derived from the Malays.
With this in mind, it makes perfect sense to protect the people who gave our country its name and its initial identity, to ensure they are not left behind by economic development. This interpretation — that Article 153 is meant to give the Bumiputras parity, not supremacy — sounds very strange to our modern ears.
But this is the interpretation I believe that would be favoured by the Reid Commission, which saw Article 153 as a temporary means of helping the Malays catch up with the non-Malays, and to prevent their rights as equal Malaysians with an equal right to participate in the economic life of our country from being infringed.
The idea of course was that at some point this would be unnecessary — but I would not object to maintaining Article 153. All we have to do is understand that it protects these communities, who have a special position in our country's history, from being treated unfairly. This is borne out by the fact that Article 153(1) seeks to protect all Malaysians, holding the Yang di-Pertuan Agong responsible for protecting the legitimate interests of the other communities as well.
The "social contract" as it is understood by our government, and accepted by people like Raja Petra, is completely and totally flawed, and must be thrown out. The true meaning of our social contract is to give all Malaysians a fair stake in our country and its socioeconomic life. That is the point of our Constitution and our social contract, and to understand it otherwise is to do a disservice to our founding fathers and the Constitution they gave us.
Here are the most popular articles in Malaysian Politics:
If you'd like to keep informed about updates to the site, consider subscribing to our web feed:
(Infernal Ramblings is a Malaysian website focusing on current events and sociopolitical issues. Its articles run the gamut from economics to society to education.
Infernal Ramblings is run by John Lee. For more, see the About section. If you have any questions or comments, do drop him a line.
Comments
Thoughts? Comments? Discuss this and other ramblings at the forums.
(Alternatively, contact the author privately.)
| Related comments from forum thread "Celebrate National Day By Tossing Out the Social Contract": | |
|---|---|
|
johnleemk
Infernally Rambling Thoughtless Mind Head Administrator Posts: 949 IP Logged | Posted at 10:03:58 am Aug 15, 2005
I knew it! Gerakan is a bloody good political party after all! Finally, somebody says what I've been feeling all along! http://www.jeffooi.com/archives/2005/08/we_are_16_days.php "How do you expect non-Malays to pour their hearts and souls into the country, and to one day die for it if you keep harping on this?The guy just said my feelings exactly. I know our national day is coming up, but in the past few years I've become more and more cynical about national day. In 2002 (before I even bothered to think about politics), I satirised the patriotic song "Keranamu Malaysia" by talking about how the "buruh nelayan dan juga petani, gaya hidup kini masih sama" and "anak-anak terhapus mindanya, mati generasi bijak bodoh". (To spice it up I also threw in the non sequitur "biar di kota ataupun desa, kita semua pasti dibom Osama". This year I finally completed my new "song" by adding lines like "limpah bumi hanya hak bumiputra". Each year I get more and more fed up with this country. It's not that I hate Malaysia. I stand straight proudly whenever I sing Negaraku, because whenever I think of "my country" Malaysia, I think of the people, and not the government. For the same reason I don't blame Americans for Dubya's actions, I don't disrespect the national anthem because I think the politicians have f***ed the country to pieces. Nevertheless, I do think it's about time we buried the hatchet into the social contract. I always get pissed about it whenever somebody brings it up, because my grandfather and father were born in this country. I, my brother, and one of my sisters were all born Malaysian citizens (albeit abroad because my father had to work/study). My youngest sister herself was born here - a third generation Malaysian, and yet we are still considered as foreign guests. You know how some ultras love to use the analogy of "We let you stay at our house when you were in trouble, and now you want to sleep in our bedroom and raid our refrigerator!"? Well, to that I say, "Yeah, buddy. You see the deed here? It says the citizens of this country are Malay, Chinese and Indian. No ifs, ands or buts about that." I've had enough of this f***ing social contract. It was useful to lock in those Chinese chauvinists who harboured dreams of returning to China (and I still know one or two who feel they have an emotional bond with China and not just Malaysia), but it's long past its "use by" date. Let's place the social contract where it belongs - six feet under. Edit: Jeff Ooi has reposted portions of the Reid Commission's Report. If you can't be bothered to read it, allow me... The difficulty of giving one community a permanent advantage over the others was realised by the Alliance Party (the forerunner of Barisan Nasional), representative of which, led by the Chief Minister, (Tunku Abdul Rahman) submitted that – “in an independent Malaya all nationals should be accorded equal rights, privileges and opportunities and there must not be discrimination on grounds of race and creed...” The same view was expressed by their Highnesses (the Malay Rulers) in their memorandum, in which they said that they “look forward to a time not too remote when it will become possible to eliminate Communalism as a force in the political and economic life of the country”. The Islamic part was tacked on because I think it's important, if irrelevant nonetheless towards the social contract (which, I should add, has never been put down in writing). The social contract is outdated, outmoded and an anachronism in this modern day and age. It belongs in the trashbin of history along with apartheid, Nazism, radical nationalism, etc. (I am not comparing the social contract to those atrocities, as even the social contract pales in comparison to them.) What angers me the most is that in spite of all my ties to this country, in spite of the fact I don't want to live in China or Singapore or India or renounce my citizenship, in spite of the fact that my emotions and memories are invested in this nation and its wonderful people, in spite of the fact that I and my family know no other place to live, the Malays are still of the opinion that "hit the road to the mainland [China] if you feel that you ve been treated as 2nd class citizen!!!" (Real comment taken directly from Malaysia Today.) Words cannot describe the anger that burns inside me when I read that blatant disregard for my citizenship. Words cannot describe the sorrow I feel when I think of my sister, who loves this country and what it stands for far more than any shallow-minded Malay, Chinese or Indian chauvinist could ever do, and how she would feel if she read the insult cast on our loyalties towards this country. Words cannot describe the temptation to behead a chauvinist (any chauvinist, regardless of race; I'll decapitate a Ku Klux Klan member if you like) with a rusty, blunt, butter knife that I feel when I read Malays tossing sentences like "I have yet to read up any history book telling of a famous Chinese dying for this Peninsula" (real comment from Wikipedia) and daring me to express my loyalty to this country by dying for it, when in true fact, these same Malays have just told me this is not my country! It's a paradox of twisted consequences: "Get out of this country you no good disloyal traitor! P.S. Please kill those invaders on your way out." I cannot understand what goes on in the minds of my fellow citizens who dare to think these words. It is not that I do not believe they have not the right to say it; rather, it is that they can have the gall to tell me to die for a country that is not mine! "So what if you're second class? Better being second class than not a citizen at all!" What is this supposed to imply? That Chinese settle for a social contract that the commission that helped write our constitution says is not even meant to be in use right now? I don't know about you, but I am not a sucker. I may be a Malaysian, but I do not let you call me a traitor to my face and ask me to die for this country in the same breath. You know what? I don't need to take this. Not from a**holes like these Malays who think they are the only bloody owners or citizens of this land. Not from these a**holes who evaluate Chinese (and conveniently forget the Indians) based on imagined, stereotyped greed and disloyalty. I'm not a pawn of the Chinese chauvinists who use this as an excuse to bully the Malays around. I'm a Malaysian, with Malaysian friends, a Malaysian home, and a Malaysian family, and if you don't like it, you can shove your bloody racist words up your own ass, ba*****s. I am not a traditional opposition member, because unlike most of these pricks with no principles, or if they do have any, no courage to stand up for them, I was raised with principles that I believe in and will stand up for. I also spent my formative years (age 0 to 6 years) outside the country; according to a friend of mine, due to these years he is now no longer disturbed by the taunts of chauvinists, Malay or otherwise, because he has been desensitised to them. I have not. Most of my friends, and I believe, opposition members, attended vernacular schools and did not mix with those of other races in their early years. I attended a national school, and made many friends there, including Indonesian squatters, rich Malay boys, middle-class Chinese, and Indian squatters. I believe that that latter factor has had the most profound effect on my views towards this social contract, because in national school, I was brought up to believe I, and all my friends, are regarded as equals, and are the same. Although our teachers were predominantly Malay, including the headmistress, when it came to sending students for quizzes and other inter-school competitions, we bucked the trend and sent the best of the best instead of the best Malay, best Chinese, etc. to appease the special interests. We grew up together, sharing the same jokes, same teachers, same disasters, playing the same games (one of my most enduring memories of my last year of primary school was playing football with a crushed tin can with friends from all races, including Malays). To find that there are Malays who consider this meaningless and see no value in treating the non-Malays as any better than pendatang is to me, an insult to everything that my childhood stood for. My principles, my beliefs, and my friendships, led me to have faith in a country that would ostensibly treat each and every one of us as equals, the same way we treated each other, even to the extent of openly discussing religion. That my cherished friends can have compatriots of the same race spewing divisive rhetoric accusing the Chinese of betraying a country that isn't even ours is an insult. It insults my friends, and it insults me. You bigots can bicker all you like about Lim Keng Yaik and how evil a man he is for suggesting a rethinking of how we look at "Bangsa Malaysia", but for me, there is nothing to argue about. My friends and I are Bangsa Malaysia, and you can't take that away from us. We are all Malaysians. And so with that, I bid you adieu, farewell, and, as Bart Simpson would say, eat my shorts, you pathetic losers. |
| Last five replies (1 comments not shown): | |
|
johnleemk
Infernally Rambling Thoughtless Mind Head Administrator Posts: 949 IP Logged | Posted at 1:15:06 pm Aug 15, 2005
The way I see it is that the cronyist discriminatory policies only enrichen the already rich Malays and their cronies. If you're not connected like the rural Malays or the poor urban workers, then sorry buddy. That and the fact that we never managed to eradicate the identification of race with economic function (imagine the typical civil servant, soldier or policeman) are two of the things that really piss me off about the discriminatory policies. I think the NEP was fundamentally a good idea, just abused by politicians who used it to strengthen their power base in the powerful and wealthy Malays. It really disturbs me that although I want to be a loyal citizen and stand by my country, I can't. I may be a citizen, but I'm not a chump. I'm not going to let you say "Hey, you, you're not a real Malaysian, because you're not Malay!" and get away with me paying taxes for the privilege of being a "citizen" or defending my non-existent equality with my fellow citizens. I try to be a loyal citizen, but I can't help myself. I've seen some Malays equate this with stereotypical Chinese greed and disloyalty. Yeah, and you would be so hyped up about your country if you saw members of a particular income and/or ethnic group getting way ahead of you while you bear the burden of supporting their subsidies with your taxes. |
|
johnleemk
Infernally Rambling Thoughtless Mind Head Administrator Posts: 949 IP Logged | Posted at 10:50:15 am Nov 3, 2005
Check out this quote from Lee Kuan Yew in the Malaysian Parliament 40 years ago: How does the Malay in the kampong find his way out into this modernised civil society? By becoming servants of the 0.3 per cent who would have the money to hire them to clean their shoe, open their motorcar doors? ... Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) - how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company? F***ING BRILLIANT |
|
Smithie
Member Posts: 3 IP Logged | Posted at 10:31:54 pm Aug 17, 2007
Much like our education system, our national anthem is rammed down our throats without much thought. I remember belting out Negaraku (and a few other patriotic songs) every week of school. I knew the words well before I was 7 but never gave them much thought until I was in my 20s. It absolutely stunned me when I got to the US and more than half my friends didn't know the words to the Star-Spangled Banner. Looking back now, I can't imagine why I was so mortified. What does knowing or not knowing the words to the national anthem really mean and what is it a measure of? Absolutely nothing. A few years ago, it occurred to me to start collecting wine of the 1957 vintage. After scouring auctions in New York and Europe, I've managed to amass all 5 left bank Bordeaux premier crus, and a few from the Domaine de la Romanee Conti as well. Despite the fact that 1957 was an overall bad wine year, I figured it was still worth it because Malaysia turning 50 is an exciting, once-in-a-lifetime event. I was going to invite my wine kaki and have a dinner while I regaled them with stories about Malaysia. Recent events in the country have soured things somewhat and taken the wind out of my sails. What do I tell my friends about? The O/ISA, the treatment of refugees, institutionalized racism? These aren't things I'm proud of. What am I celebrating really? The Malaysia I once knew? Maybe the Malaysia that I thought I knew was a complete illusion to begin with. Or am I celebrating what Malaysia could potentially become while hoping the country does not implode in the near future? In the words of our Prime Minister, "I dunno." For this Independence Day, I wish you all good cheer, drink up (unless you are Muslim or under 18/21, whatever the legal age is), and it'll make everything seem a lot better. |
|
johnleemk
Infernally Rambling Thoughtless Mind Head Administrator Posts: 949 IP Logged | Posted at 1:00:25 pm Aug 18, 2007
For me, when I'm optimistic, I like to think I celebrate what Malaysia can be. When I'm pessimistic, I guess I assume I'm celebrating that things aren't as bad as they could be. Oh yeah, and the legal age is 18. (It doesn't keep many people from drinking anyway.) |
|
Viola
Member Posts: 2 IP Logged | Posted at 5:56:23 am Sep 2, 2007
One does not choose the circumstances of one's birth, one may only strive to be what one desires to be with his own bare hands. To generalize all Malays are NEP totting fools who wants nothing more but to leech off the prosperity of the country irrespective of the feelings of their dan lain-lain counterparts is a gross insult to those who do believe same as you and wish that things could be different.  In this particular issue I believe we should be more sensitive to such statements. After all, if you drive around UiTM and see the multicolour so-called 'Malays' you'd figure out that the process of assimilation has already begun. We cannot help that the system is as screwed up as it is, but you continuously use the 'us' and 'them' implied terms it would be unproductive, and you'd be no better than the UMNO wankers. I believe that it's not the fallacies that's the problem. What we need to tackle is awareness of these issues. Instead of going 'let's rally us 2nd citizens of Malaysia, we should go all communal. I do not believe that the bonds of friendship is irrevocably severed. It may be so politically, and what we see or hidden in the news, but not in real life. We still would work together for common goals, and common goals is what we should concentrate at. Make these makcik pakcik kampung be aware of what's going on, and that there are more things that's important than we should be grateful to BN and UMNO for all they've done' bs. We should turun padang and directly reach out towards the youths in particular, since if you haven't noticed yet the youth are forcefully indulged and dictated to serve the current ulterior motives of the powers that be. If you wish to say that some Malays is bakabuta (stupid pig) enough to assume that the other races are lesser versions of homo sapiens, remind them of the common human values that we should all cherish. Change should be gradual, each and every one of us must practise what we preach. I used to have many non-Malay friends, but since all these ruckus kicked up I find myself in a fix. If I support UNDHR values, I would be called murtad Melayu. If I support this...apparent hatred in labellings and so forth, well, I'm still an official Malay (nvm my Chindian blood). We need to find a middle ground which can give birth to a win-win situation. |
