Malaysia Dilutes Its System of Ethnic Preferences

By THOMAS FULLER

BANGKOK — Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, announced Tuesday a major rollback in the system of ethnic preferences that has defined the country’s political system for almost four decades.

The new policy would severely weaken a requirement that companies reserve 30 percent of their shares for ethnic Malays, the country’s dominant ethnic group.

The 30-percent rule was once considered politically untouchable, and Mr. Najib described the change in policy as a “tricky balancing act.”

Malaysia has long given ethnic Malays and members of other indigenous ethnic groups — known as bumiputra, or sons of the soil — political and economic privileges. But that system has come under strain amid growing resentment by minority groups and poorer Malays.

The government offers bumiputra discounts on houses, scholarships and other perks. But some benefits, like government contracts and stock-market allocations, have been beyond the reach of working-class Malays.

Anger among Chinese and Indians, the country’s main minority groups, over the ethnic preferences was perhaps the main reason that the opposition made large gains in elections last year that nearly dismantled the governing coalition led by Mr. Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organization.

“We want to be fair to all communities,” Mr. Najib said in a speech in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. “No one must feel marginalized.”

Mr. Najib’s success in rolling back the ethnic preferences will depend in large part on his ability to hold together his coalition and fend off a resurgent opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim, a former finance minister.

Mr. Anwar, who leads a diverse group of opposition parties, has promised to undo the system of ethnic preferences.

By positioning himself as a reformer, Mr. Najib, who came to power in April, appears to be calculating that he can stave off opposition advances and be seen as an agent of change.

“The world is changing quickly, and we must be ready to change with it or risk being left behind,” he said Tuesday.

The change would leave some ethnic preferences intact and come with caveats. But it would dilute one of the most important components of what is known as the New Economic Policy, introduced in 1971: the requirement that companies listing on the stock exchange sell 30 percent of their shares to ethnic Malays.

That requirement was scrapped for companies already listed on the stock exchange and reduced to 12.5 percent for initial public offerings. The requirement will remain in place for “strategic industries” like telecommunications, water, ports and energy.

Mr. Najib also said he would lower barriers for foreign investors. The government would eliminate a special vetting process for foreign companies wanting to invest in, merge or take over a Malaysian company, he said.

“The global economic crisis is amplifying the need to be a preferred investment destination,” he added.

Malaysia’s trade-dependent economy is expected to contract by 5 percent this year.

Singapore Promotes First Muslim Malay Army General

Associated Press
June 26, 2009
Singapore

By ALEX KENNEDY


SINGAPORE'S military promoted a Muslim Malay to the rank of general for the first time since the predominantly Chinese city-state broke away from Malaysia 44 years ago.

Army Colonel Ishak Ismail, 46, will become a one-star brigadier general on July 1, the Defense Ministry said in a statement late Thursday, June 25, Ismail is currently commander of the 6th Division.

The government strictly regulates public speech on race and religion, fearing any hint of sectarian conflict could undermine stability and prosperity in the tiny, multiethnic island and strain relations with neighboring Malaysia, where Malays are a majority. Political parties based on race or religion are not allowed.

Malays, who comprise about 14 percent of the 4.8 million population, trail ethnic Chinese in education and income. About 5.4 percent of Malays attend public university compared to 30 percent of Chinese, and Malay households earn a median monthly income of S$3050 (US$2093), a third less than the S$4570 average that Chinese families make, according to the Education Ministry and Statistics Department.

Muslim Affairs Minister-in-charge Yaacob Ibrahim, who is also Environment and Water Resources Minister, told the state-owned Straits Times that the promotion showed that hard work and playing by the rules would bring rewards in a meritocratic society, the newspaper reported.

"No Malays should now feel like they can't do it," Ibrahim said, according to the paper.

Ibrahim declined further comment on the promotion through his spokesman Peer Akbur.

Malays are making strides in the security, education and health care sectors, said Jufferie Rashid, a spokesman for leading Malay association Yayasan MENDAKI.

"The promotion is the armed forces' recognition of his contributions," he said. "We are confident that with the improving educational profile, we will see even more Malay Muslim professionals in the future."

ICG - Recruiting Militants in Southern Thailand

Asia Report N°170
22 June 2009

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

While Thai leaders are preoccupied with turmoil in Bangkok, the insurgency in the South continues to recruit young Malay Muslims, especially from private Islamic schools. These institutions are central to maintenance of Malay Muslim identity, and many students are receptive to the call to take up arms against the state. This is not a struggle in solidarity with global jihad, rather an ethno-nationalist insurgency with its own version of history aimed at reclaiming what was once the independent sultanate of Patani. Human rights abuses by the Thai government and security forces have only fuelled this secessionist fervour, and policies that centralise power in the capital have undermined a regional political solution. Changing these policies and practices is essential as the government tries to respond to the insurgents’ grievances in order to bring long-lasting peace to the region.

Related content Thailand: Political Turmoil and the Southern Insurgency, Asia Briefing N°80, 28 August 2008 Southern Thailand: The Problem with Paramilitaries, Asia Report N°140, 23 October 2007 CrisisWatch database: Thailand All Crisis Group Thailand reports

The Islamic schools in which pious young Muslims are recruited and radicalised are generally the larger, more modern and better-equipped institutions in a complex educational system that ranges from secular state school to traditional Muslim boarding schools (ponoh). The classroom is the point of first contact. Recruiters invite those who seem promising – devout Muslims of good character who are moved by a history of oppression, mistreatment and the idea of armed jihad – to join extracurricular indoctrination programs in mosques or disguised as football training. As recruits are drawn into the movement, they take an oath of allegiance followed by physical and military training before being assigned to different roles in village-level operations.

Islamic schools are not the only place where young Malay Muslims are radicalised, nor should all such schools be stigmatised as militant breeding grounds. Even in schools where insurgents are active, not all school administrators, teachers and students may be aware of what is happening, let alone consent to it. But these schools are rich in opportunities for recruiters. Religious young males – the natural foot soldiers of the insurgency – are found in academies numbering thousands of students. These crowds provide natural cover, especially for a movement that draws heavily upon teachers to do its covert recruitment.

The Thai security forces and some independent analysts believe that the insurgency is largely under the leadership of the National Revolutionary Front-Coordinate (Barisan Revolusi Nasional-Coordinate, BRN-C). It uses a classic clandestine cell network, in which rank-and-file members have no knowledge of the organisation beyond their immediate operational cluster. It also appears to be highly decentralised, with local units having a degree of autonomy to choose targets and carry out political campaigns. This structure has allowed it to remain active despite crackdowns by security forces.

Policymakers should be cautious of quick fixes to what is a highly complex conflict. This struggle, nominally between a Thai Buddhist state and a Malay Muslim insurgency, targets civilians of all religions. More than 3,400 people have been killed since the violence surged in 2004. There are more dead Muslim victims than Buddhists, and many of the slain Muslims were marked as “traitors” to Islam. Insurgents draw on local culture to invoke traditional oaths to discipline their own ranks, though such practices alienate them from the religious purists attached to the global jihad. Ancient charms and spells are applied to protect fighters from harm, co-existing with YouTube videos and propaganda circulated on VCDs. Despite the leap into cyberspace, the insurgency has, for the most part, restricted itself to the geographic boundaries of the three southernmost border provinces.

As earlier Crisis Group reports have stressed, the movement shows little influence of Salafi jihadism, the ideology followed by al-Qaeda and the Indonesia-based regional jihadi group Jemaah Islamiyah. Some insurgents follow a mystical variant of Shafi‘i Islam and are actively hostile to the puritanism of what they term “Wahhabis”. Although a few Malaysians have been arrested in southern Thailand for trying to join the struggle, there is no evidence of significant involvement of foreign jihadi groups. While politically distinct, the movement uses the language of Islam and jihad to frame its struggle, as such words resonate with its membership and the constituencies it seeks to sway.

Even as the political battle between the government and supporters of ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra – in itself violent – plays out in the capital, Thailand needs to address the political grievances that have long fuelled resentment: the disregard for Malay ethnic identity and language, the lack of account­ability for human rights abuses, and the under-representation of Malay Muslims in local political and government structures. Without such measures, harsh suppression and attempts at instilling Thai nationalism in Malay Muslim radicals through re-education will only generate more anger that will in turn ensure a steady flow of recruits committed to an enduring struggle.

Bangkok/Brussels, 22 June 2009

Malay Language Chauvinism Breaks Out Again in KL

Sadly, Malay-language chauvinism never seems to die in Malaysia, even when it has been in the ascendancy for decades. Today, diehards held a large protest rally (much YouTubed) in Kuala Lumpur, calling for the end of a minor sensible policy concession proposed by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and implemented from January 2003 which mandated a gradual switch in instruction medium for science and mathematics from Malay to English from the first year in so-called national (Malay-medium) schools. Mahathir's rationale, widely considered to have merit, was to remedy serious decline in English competence (especially among Malay students), a handicap to future economic prospects. The policy change has improved this awkward situation somewhat in just the half-dozen years it has been in effect.



Well-organized segments of Malay teachers and Malay student leaders have always opposed any change to Malay as the main medium of instruction, even to the point of making it sole medium in the education system. Many in the raucous demonstration today (over 124 arrested by national police officers, according to The Star) were precisely these large factions of Malay teachers and other Malays vested in current language policies premised on the assumption that Article 152 of the Federal Constitution dictates those policies, an argument impossible to sustain rationally. Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan proclaimed the procession illegal as he justified repeated use of tear gas and water cannons against more rowdy marchers. Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who will likely give way to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak in just weeks, made his usual apologies for doing nothing by blaming the Ministry of Education for dilly-dallying in its consideration of the established policy and the current newly aroused highly politicized opposition to it. (This Ministry implements primary and secondary education policy, while tertiary education policy is guided by a new Ministry of Higher Education established in 2004.) It is possible the march was planned in part as a warning shot for Najib, who would likely not make any significant alteration to medium of instruction policy.

The huge crowd, estimated from "hundreds" (by the fairly cautious Singapore-based Channel News Asia) to "at least 5,000 ethnic Malays" (AFP) to "8,000" (Malaysiakini) to even higher numbers was physically led by opposition PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang, prominent Malay literary figure (Sasterawan Negara) A. Samad Said, 76, and former Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka director Hassan Ahmad. They worked under the formal demonstration sponsor, GNP, Gerakan Mansuhkan PPSMI (Movement to Abolish PPSMI), a coalition of 14 NGOs. PPSMI is the Malay acronym for Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Sains dan Matematik, the policy protested today. A memorandum was successfully delivered to the State Palace (Istana Negara), official residence of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (always a Malay), popularly known in English as 'king.' The march had begun at Masjid Negara, another potent symbols of Malay political hegemony.

Perhaps surprisingly to some, PKR Supreme Council member Badrul Hisham Shaharin in the opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat, also participated, evidently in his private capacity. While PAS is regarded rightfully as the more conservative Malay Pakatan member, PKR is seen as its more open multi-racial though predominantly Malay component. There were no reports of participation by members of Pakatan's third partner, DAP, an outspoken proponent of multi-lingualism in medium of instruction and in official languages since its founding

Background:
Education in Malaysia
List of political parties in Malaysia