Oleh/By : DATO SERI DR MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : SUNWAY LAGOON RESORT HOTEL,
KUALA LUMPUR
Tarikh/Date : 29/07/2002
Tajuk/Title : THE HARVARD CLUB OF
MALAYSIA DINNER
Versi : ENGLISH
Penyampai : PM
"THE NEW MALAY DILEMMA"
I wish to thank the Harvard Club of Malaysia for
inviting me here tonight to speak on "The New Malay
Dilemma".
2. The Malays are among the few people whose race is
legally defined. Thus the Malaysian Constitution
states that a Malay is one who habitually speaks Malay,
professes the religion of Islam and practises Malay
customs. There is nothing said about the definitive
culture of the Malays. It follows that changes in
culture does not make a Malay person a non-Malay.
3. Culture is made up largely of the value systems
accepted, even if not actually practised by a people or
a race. Observations have shown that the culture of a
people determines whether they are successful or they
fail. Actual race or ethnicity or the colour of the
skin or the domicile, temperate or tropical, are not
factors which determine the performance of people. Thus
there are Europeans who fail to make progress although
generally Europeans are considered as successful and
progressive people. One must not forget that in the
Middle Ages the Europeans were backward relative to the
Arab Muslims who built the Great Islamic Civilisation.
On the other hand, many Asian races have been
successful in the past and also presently, while others
remain backward and primitive.
4. Even black Africans have been successful e.g. the
Abbysinians, although most are unable to make any
progress.
5. Europeans, Asians, Africans and Amerindians can
all be successful and can all fail. It is therefore
not the race or ethnicity which determines success. It
is the culture. The greatest European nations of the
past were the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Today they
are far behind the other Europeans. As I said it is
not race or ethnicity but the culture which determines
the performance of any race or people i.e. the value
system that they believe in and adhere to at a given
time.
6. When I wrote the Malay Dilemma in the late 60s I
had assumed that all the Malays lacked the
opportunities to develop and become successful. They
lacked opportunities for educating themselves,
opportunities to earn enough to go into business,
opportunities to train in the required vocation,
opportunities to obtain the necessary funding, licences
and premises. If these opportunities could be made
available to them then they would succeed.
7. And so I thought the solution lies in affirmative
action or positive discrimination in their favour. I
am told by those who drafted the New Economic Policy
(at that time I was out of favour and had been expelled
from UMNO) that they used the Malay Dilemma to plan for
affirmative action for the Malays and other
Bumiputeras. Whether it is true or not it is not
important. But their proposals seemed quite similar
with what I wrote.
8. Implementing affirmative action was not as easy as
planning it. Capital, licences and permits, premises
etc were made available and later contracts and shares
were given to aspiring Malays. The Government set up
agencies to represent the Malays to improve their
capacity to take advantage of the affirmative actions
of the NEP. When the idea of privatisation was
espoused it was natural to give many of the
opportunities to Malays.
9. In education, quotas and scholarships were created
to provide the opportunities for them to gain the
required knowledge in all fields so as to ensure their
upward mobility.
10. It was assumed that the Malays would all grab at
these opportunities. Initially they did. The early
scholarship students studied very hard and qualified
themselves especially for employment in the Government.
But today the attitude has changed. Getting
scholarships and places in the universities at home and
abroad are considered a matter of right and are not
valued anymore. Indeed those who get these educational
opportunities for some unknown reason seem to dislike
the very people who created these opportunities. Worse
still they don't seem to appreciate the opportunities
that they got. They become more interested in other
things, politics in particular, to the detriment of
their studies.
11. In business, the vast majority regarded the
opportunities given them as something to be exploited
for the quickest return. Very early on they had sold
off their opportunities in order to become sleeping
partners in an arrangement cynically known as "Ali
Baba", in which Ali merely obtains the licences,
permits, shares or contracts and immediately sell these
off to non-Malays, mainly Chinese. They learn nothing
about business and become even less capable at doing
businesses and earning an income from their activities.
They become mere sleeping partners and at times not
even that. Having sold they no longer have anything to
do with the business. They would go to the Government
for more licences, permits, shares, etc.
12. Admittedly a few of them were serious and some of
them succeeded. But the majority contributed nothing
to the NEP target. The NEP quota of 30 percent would
have been achieved long ago had all the shares,
licences, contracts, etc been used by the Malays fully.
13. Why has this thing happened? The answer lies in
the culture of the Malays. They are laid back and prone
to take the easy way out. And the easy way out is to
sell off whatever they get and ask for more. This is
their culture. Working hard, taking risk and being
patient is not a part of their culture.
14. It should be remembered that in the past the
Malays were not prepared to take up the jobs created by
the colonial powers in their effort to exploit the
country. Because the Malays were not prepared to work
in rubber estates and the mines, the Indians and
Chinese were brought in. At one time the migrants
outnumbered the Malays. Had they continued to
outnumber the Malays, independent Malaya would be like
independent Singapore. But the Malays have apparently
learnt nothing from the near loss of their country in
the past. Today they are still unwilling to work and
foreign workers are again flooding the country. And
because they are not equipping themselves with the
necessary education and skills they have continued to
depend on others.
15. Their political dominance will protect them for a
time. But that dominance is fading very fast as they
quarrel among themselves and break up into small
ineffective groups. Their numerical superiority means
less today than at the time of independence. But they
are not quite conscious or they choose to ignore this
fact. Their "tidak apa" attitude lulls them into a
feeling of security that is not justified.
16. The Malays together with the other Bumiputeras
make up 60 percent of the country's population. But in
terms of their political clout it is now much less than
60 percent. They are now more dependent on non-Malay
support, both the Government party and the oppositon.
17. Economically of course they have less than half
the 30 percent share that has been allocated to them.
If we discount the non-Malay contribution to the
nation's economy, Malaysia would be not much better
than some of the African developing countries.
18. To succeed the Malays must change their culture.
They must look towards work as a reward in itself.
They must regard what they achieve through work as the
true reward. There should be some financial reward but
this must not outweigh the satisfaction obtained from
the result of their work. They must have proper work
ethics which involve taking pride in the result of
their work rather than the monetary reward alone.
19. The races which take pride in their work and its
results are the most successful people. The idea of
quality is not commonly understood by Malays. The
result is shoddy work. There is no pride. And without
this, without the desire to continuously improve the
results, there will be no progress.
20. Changing culture is far more difficult than
changing the policies of Government. It is easy enough
to propose affirmative action but it is not easy to
implement it. The recipients must have the right
attitude if the results are going to be obtained.
21. Once it was realised that creating opportunities
was not enough, attention shifted to changing
attitudes. Courses and lectures were given on values
and culture. It was necessary to point out the dangers
faced by the Malays. They are still not out of the
woods yet. Today they can lean on the crutches of
Malay privileges to protect them. But crutches
invariably weaken the users. To be strong and to be
able to fend for themselves the crutches must be
discarded.
22. Unfortunately their view is that their crutches
are symbols of their superior status in the country.
The sad thing is that they are not even using the
crutches properly. As a result they gain nothing or
very little from the availability of these aids.
23. Dependent as they are on these crutches they will
remain weak. Yet they have the capacity to acquire the
necessary strength so as to throw away the crutches.
All that is needed is to change their wrong perceptions
and to change their culture. If they do this, in
stages perhaps, then they would be able to straighten
up and to stand tall like the others.
24. So what is the New Malay Dilemma? Their old
dilemma was whether they should distort the picture a
little in order to help themselves. The new dilemma is
whether they should or should not do away with the
crutches that they have gotten used to, which in fact
they have become proud of.
25. There is a minority of Malays who are confident
enough to think of doing away with the crutches, albeit
gradually. But they are a very small minority. Their
numbers are not going to increase any time soon. They
are generally regarded as traitors to the Malay race.
26. Perhaps because I am trained as a doctor of
medicine I look at crutches differently. There was a
time when doctors expected crutches to be used for
life. But today doctors get their patients on their
feet as soon as possible. Physiotherapy has been
developed into a science with the aim of rehabilitating
the incapacitated. Prosthesis have been perfected so
that even those without legs can walk normally and
those without hands can handle things like their
fortunate colleagues.
27. We see today people born without hands actually
painting and writing with their feet. And the results
they achieve are as good as those of well-endowed
people. Necessity and sheer grit enable them to do
this. It is clearly possible to minimise dependency
on aid and to achieve normalcy almost.
28. Among Malays the sense of pity is very strong.
They would not want a handicapped person to overcome
his handicap. They would rather openly and loudly
sympathise with him. "Kasihan" is the word they utter
frequently. And they would help the handicapped by
doing things for them. They would not want to get the
handicap to overcome his disability himself. Certainly
they do not think that the handicap should earn his way
in life by acquiring some marketable skills. Pitying
the handicaps, they want them to remain dependent.
29. There will be a host of protest over this
generalisation about Malay attitude. We read almost
every day about blind Malay people and other
handicapped Malays graduating with university degrees
or driving cars or doing all kinds of work. This does
not prove that the generalisation that I make is wrong.
These are exceptions. They only prove that if the
right attitude or culture is adopted, even the
handicapped can succeed.
30. I have seen the effect of being over sympathetic
towards the handicapped, including old people. They
become even more handicapped, even more dependent.
They seem to wallow in this pity for them. And they
will never be able to overcome their handicaps.
Charity is fine. We should all be charitable. But we
should help with our charity to make the handicapped
less dependent on charity and pity.
31. This is not the attitude of the Malays. They like
to express pity, often in front of the subject. It
undermines the spirit and prevents the development of a
positive attitude and attempt to recover.
32. Given a positive attitude and strong determination
all handicap persons can achieve a degree of
improvement and become as nearly normal as possible.
33. The dilemma faced by those few who want to build a
strong, resilient and independent Malay race without
crutches is that they are most likely to end up
becoming unpopular and losing the ability to influence
the changes in the culture and the value system which
is necessary. It seems that they should not try and
yet they know that without the cultural changes the
Malays are going to fail.
34. But this is not the only dilemma faced by the
Malays now. The emergence of the Islamic Party has
resulted in the struggle to build the resilience of the
Malays being deflected by the so-called religious
imperatives invented by political Islam.
35. The Malays are deeply religious but they are not
knowledgable enough about Islam to distinguish between
what is Islamic and what is not. Religious piety is
highly valued by the Malays but they equate piety with
outward appearance and not the true teachings of the Al-
Quran and the true tradition or Hadith of the Prophet.
This simple perception of their religion open
opportunities for the unscrupulous to exploit religion
for their own purpose.
36. Religion is not a matter of common sense. It is a
matter of belief, of faith. Trying to argue on the
basis of common sense or logic is not going to get one
anywhere.
37. But if it is the true teachings of religion it
does not matter if it is logical or not. Islam for
example teaches only good things, good values which can
ensure Muslims become good people and their society is
stable, well-governed and prosperous. The fundamentals
of Islam can help build a successful and healthy
civilisation. This was what happened to the ignorant
Arabs who embraced Islam 1400 years ago. This wild,
unprincipled feuding Arab tribes united and developed a
Muslim civilisation which lasted 1300 years. It
collapsed only after the Muslims deviated from the true
teachings and returned to their pre-Islamic ignorant
Jahilliah ways.
38. In Malaysia today we are seeing the abuse of the
teachings of Islam. Using Islam as its name and
shamelessly misinterpreting it, the politicians of the
so-called Islamic Party have cashed in on the deep
faith of the Malay Muslims to trap them and close their
minds to anything else other than what they have been
taught by these politicians.
39. For example it is normal for people to be grateful
for what they get. In Malaysia the development
brought about by the Malay dominated Government must
surely earn the thanks and therefore the support of the
Malays.
40. Seeing this the religiously trained teachers in
the Islamic Party actually taught their captive
followers including children in the kindergarten not to
be thankful to the people who gave them anything. They
are taught that in Islam there is no need to thank the
Government which helps them. They are taught that this
is the duty of Government and any Government would do
this. They have only to be thankful to Allah and not
to the Government for the bounties that they get.
41. This is totally against the teachings of Islam but
such is the faith in these political Islamic leaders
and their interpretations of Islam that the recipients
of Government help will actually curse and condemn the
very Government which had been generous to them.
42. On the other hand, any obvious misdeeds by these
so-called Muslim politician is justified or forgiven or
overlooked. Thus their leaders can commit khalwat, or
surreptitiously marry outside the country, or curse and
swear or claim that Allah also curses and swear, even
expose themselves to women, or break up the Malay
Muslim community by having separate prayers,
threatening to divorce their wives should their wives
reject their unprincipled behavior or support other
parties, rejecting imams on political grounds through
boycotts of any villager who does not support them, but
still their leaders will be considered as good Muslims
whom they must follow.
43. Democracy is mainly about the people choosing the
Governments to rule the country. It is assumed that
the people will choose the good people, the right
people who can form a good Government, delivering to
the people both their material and spiritual needs,
developing the country and defending the country
against foreign hegemony. But sometimes the majority
of the people may not be able to choose wisely because
they have been completely brainwashed.
44. In Malaysia many of the Malays have had their
minds controlled through the abuse of religious
teachings. Today in Malaysia many Malays, not really
understanding Islam, have been mislead by the seemingly
pious turban and Arabic dress of the Islamic Party
leaders. They fanatically follow the dictates of this
party even when this leads to the country becoming
misgoverned, to practices and values against the
teachings of Islam. It is not far-fetched to say that
for many Malays their Malay and Islamic values have
been destroyed. Such is the deviation from Malay and
Islamic culture that many Malays are willing to vote
and support a Party which advocates and practises
violence, which curse and swear and lead by immoral
leaders. The end result of the deviation must be the
election of a bad Government and the stoppage of the
efforts to ensure that the Malays remain politically
empowered and economically as advanced as the other
races.
45. Malaysia is committed to Democracy. We are not
liberal democrats but we certainly uphold the most
important element of democracy, the right to elect our
Governments through voting into power the party we
think will best serve us. But because of what I have
mentioned regarding the brainwashing by the so-called
Islamic Party, there is every danger of the wrong party
being elected and forming the Government. We have seen
this happening in many countries where populist parties
which promise all kinds of impossible things have been
elected by a gullible electorate. It is possible for
this to happen to Malaysia. It is entirely possible
for all the prosperity, the stability and the racial
harmony to be destroyed.
46. The dilemma that the Malays and the peoples of
Malaysia face is whether we should in the name of
democracy, allow the country to be destroyed or we
ensure that people are not subjected to manipulations
to the point where they will use democracy to destroy
democracy.
47. It has to be remembered that most democratic
countries are mindful of this possibility. Many so-
called liberal democracies do not allow Communists and
fascists to participate in their elections. They do
this because they believe that if these parties win a
democratic election they will put an end to democracy.
48. Can we take a leaf from their book and risk
condemnation for not being democratic?
49. That is the second dilemma facing the country and
in particular the Malays. The danger for the Malays is
that their development and empowerment would be so
retarded that they will never be able to gain their
rightful place in their own country. They will be
impoverished economically and also politically. Their
empowerment at this point in time will wither away.
And they will be the deprived in their own country.
50. You have asked me to talk about the New Malay
Dilemma. As you can see I have identified not one but
two new Malay Dilemmas. I leave it to you to digest
this view and I hope by diagnosing the diseases we can
help to prescribe the remedies. I wish you all the
best.
Sumber : Pejabat Perdana Menteri
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