An open letter to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

By P. GUNASILAN

An open letter to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad,

When I was in school, I admired you for your radical thoughts. In 1969, you wrote that outrageous book ‘The Malay Dilemma’. I read it, even though it was banned.

I admired your tenacity and your fanaticism for your race. You fought to become prime minister.

You achieved your goal, but did you build a united Malaysia or a Malay-centric Malaysian society?

Re-reading ‘The Malay Dilemma’ recently showed it was written by a man who was jealous of those who created wealth through their hard work and tenacity.

You were lamenting the Malays for being lazy, too easy-going, but most of all, you hated their tidak peduli attitude. That was your basis – jealousy.

You must understand why the Chinese and Indians had to be hardworking – the Chinese came to Malaya with nothing but the clothes on their backs, with no capital and only their bodies to toil for survival.

The Indians came as indentured labourers. Some were criminals brought here as forced labour.

The Chinese and Indians started working on rice plantations. My history tells me that the Yunnan Chinese taught the Malays about planting paddy. Paddy was not indigenous to Malaya.

Due to the high mortality rate from malaria, snake bites, and other calamities, many died, but many stayed on until the discovery of tin and the growth of the rubber industry.

The Chinese turned to mining and growing rubber in clearings bordering the jungles.

Chinese labourers worked as tin miners in opencast mines since British companies owned dredging ships. Imagine Chinese men and women in straw hats toiling in the sun, rain and elements in open cast mines.

The Indians toiled in the estates, rising early every morning to tap rubber. Many suffered from malaria, cholera and snake bites. Some did not survive.

This short synopsis illustrates that no Indian nor Chinese stole anything from the Malays. The only thing they did was work in two economic sectors that the Malays were never in.

They did not deprive the Malays but opened for them a new path to wealth which later Malays did follow.

Did you ever wonder why the Malays were like that? The answer is simple: they were the landowners – planting paddy and earning a living from their smallholding.

They were landowners and hired workers, including Indians and Chinese, to work for them, so why do they need to work hard? They were already well taken care of. They earned income by growing rubber, fruit trees and paddy.

In my opinion, they were wealthier and better off. You failed to compare the Chinese and Indians of that time to the Malays of the same era.

You started your comparison from the 1960s and 1970s when the Chinese had already prospered. They did not deprive nor steal anything from anyone.

You also blamed the British colonial masters for depriving the Malays. But in reality, the colonial masters left the Malays alone and never stopped them if they wanted to mine tin or plant rubber.

Do tell me, Dr Mahathir, who was at fault?

The Malays were never lazy or indolent. They were landowners and never had a need to compete with the Indians and Chinese.

Tell this to today’s landless B40 Malays so that they understand why they do not own land while the government-linked corporations (GLCs) and Bumiputera corporates own millions of hectares of land.

Today you cry out to save the Malays, but from whom? It is the elite Malays and the GLCs, who now own enormous tracts of land.

When you became prime minister for the first time and occupied the seat for 22 years, you knew you were the only one who could create a generation of Malays, Chinese, and Indians united within a cohesive Malaysian society. You had that chance to leave this legacy as a statesman in the mould of the nation’s third Prime Minister, Tun Hussein Onn.

Yet, you chose not to and lost that chance forever. Instead, you interpreted the New Economic Policy (NEP) to further your agenda.

The NEP was to restructure society in such a way as is possible within an expanding economy – not a redistribution of wealth in a static economy. Not to take the wealth from the Chinese and Indians and give it to the Malays.

You wanted to create instant Bumiputra millionaires, so you instigated the game popularly known as privatisation.

Why privatise? You saw it as an opportunity to create overnight Malay millionaires and billionaires, whom you handpicked to form the core of the Malay elite, who today control the ‘wealth of the Malays’ – which the Malay B40s have no share of.

The non-Malays are not the threat.

So as Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said, there must be an effort and transparent policy approach to redistribute wealth from the elite Malays to the poor Malays.

Stop the private monopolies. The government must think of ways to redistribute wealth back to the Malays, especially in the rural hinterlands of Malaysia.

There are enough corporate Malays who can meritocratically hold their own in business, and hold the key to redistributing the wealth taken from poor Malays.




P. Gunasilan

Datuk P. Gunasilan is a veteran town planner and fellow of the Malaysian Institute of Planners