With the end of the Deepavali-Raya holidays, millions of Malaysians will go back to their daily grind and deliver a better tomorrow for themselves. They don't usually complain.
One because they believe their fate in their own hands - which is nice and life-embracing. The second reason however, is tragic. They don't think it is their place to complain.
That is Malaysia 2005 (actually that has been Malaysia for a long, long time).
S Samy Vellu gets up and spews a bit of rhetoric, and action is called for. Suddenly, Indians in Malaysia are now high up on the agenda - well at least till the holidays end.
Umno's 'designated Malays' are now closer to their equity goals. But does that explain the huge numbers of unemployed Malaysians, a substantial number of them Malay? Race skews the answer. Many Malays need help, but not every Malay needs help. Umno chooses the path that leads the ringgits to their building.
Using race statistics to plan policy is reasonable, but using it alone shafts the process. A thousand Malay millionaires do not explain the lack of income for a Felda settler's family, and leveraging the information against each other only leads to flawed data.
The whole problem lacks definition and dimension, and shockingly, the Barisan Nasional government likes the lack of definition and dimension. Poverty and disenfranchisement has no colour, just bodies. You have to be fairly daft to think that the presence of Chinese-owned anchor banks proves the financial liberation of everyone Chinese in Malaysia.
You are one step closer to ending poverty when you identify the people to help, the impoverished. That requires a paradigm shift in Malaysia but the prime minister and everyone in the Cabinet does not have the gumption to do the right thing. History will judge them poorly, but since we live in the present, we'd look abysmal doing nothing about it.
Poorer Malaysians need a world-class education system. Not just lip service. All the shares in the world will not make an Indian family fed on TV better. Replace Indian with Malay, Iban or any one of the 33 official ethnic groups listed by Barisan, and you end up with the same summation.
Why don't we try wealth creation by industry rather than hand-outs? Nobody needs any preferential discount to buy a house worth half a million ringgit . If they did, they are selfish. And if they did not know it is selfish, then they are ignorant, which is pitiful.
They closed the estates. Not a global conspiracy, just economical reality. We still make rubber goods, we just don't grow them as much. But the Cabinet should have seen it coming. What was the exit plan for the rubber tappers? Move to palm oil estates, or light industry employees, or IT training. If you lose the housing in the estate, where are you expected to go?
Did the minister for primary industry consider that then? Is he considering it now?
The new economy demands entrepreneurs, how are we engendering that? And when they fall from grace, how do we help them? Hand-outs or opportunities?
Local councils have the most proximity with the urban poor but do they have the mandate or ability to make plans? Or should it be spelt out that employees with no direct connection to the locals are never going to go that extra mile?
The cruel thing about the present globalised economy is that more wealth can be generated without actually increasing the number of people who benefit from it all. The economy figures lie when manipulated, and perpetuate wrongs.
Without a willingness to define the problems as they should be - as class issues - then not much will be done for the very people who need help. But I do not think this is news to those who govern, which upsets me even more.
In a devious structure like Malaysia, some benevolence is necessary to evade irreversible future idiocies. It is not forthcoming; the new administration is trying to mollify things by saying they are different from the administration prior, but that is where the effort ends.
The situation is only going to get better, when the rakyat learns to ask the right questions, and when not answered, to complain. Then repeat the exercise until the change comes.
