i am out 38

The day I was proud to be Malaysian Chew Swee Yoke Sep 2, 05 3:52pm


I would like to echo Dr Mohd Rafick Khan Abdul Rahman’s call to Hishammuddin Hussein to start emphasising Malaysian rather than Malay. This is the Age of the Internet and the Global Village and we need all the resources we have on our Malaysian soil to compete with the rest of the world. It reminds me of a story which I’d like to tell to show that if you leave it to the ordinary Malaysians instead of politicians with skewed vision, Malaysia would do very well indeed. Years ago, I acted for a Malay kampong somewhere in Kuala Lumpur on behalf of the Bar Council Legal Aid Centre (LAC). Hundreds of Malay settlers were being threatened by the government-controlled developer, a company which was run by Malays. The settlers were called squatters whereas the late Tun Razak had invited them to be the settlers to clear jungle and develop it as part of the Green Book Plan in the 1970s. In the long saga of court proceedings on behalf of the settlers, LAC lawyers were fighting bulldozers and ‘samseng’ characters as well as the police who arrested the ketua kampong (village head) a few times and put him in the lock-up only to be rescued by mostly non-Malay LAC lawyers. I remember attending a few meetings called by Barisan politicians who tried to settle the sticky issue between the settlers and the developer. At one memorable occasion, the politician in attendance was an Umno MP for the area and every time he asked a question or suggested a settlement term, the ketua kampong turned to me and asked me what he should say. After a while, the Umno MP raised his voice in frustration and asked the ketua why he had to ask me, a Chinese, when Umno was the umbrella of the Malay race! The ketua politely told him that to him and the other settlers, I was not Chinese, I was a Malaysian and their lawyer, and they trusted only me. That was the day I truly felt proud to be a Malaysian.

This is what I considered one race one vision one unity. It is the political party which made it into a racial party which divides the society. Every time a politician opens his mouth he talks about his race not about the country or her people. "I want this for my race" One day I hope it will change otherwise another Majapahit Empire eh?