Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in a rare moment of anger, once said ‘This is stupid politics. They want to destroy MIC’. What do you expect after 51 years of Umno’s permanent colonialisation of the Indian Malaysians? With MIC being destroyed, that ‘show piece’ power sharing would be destroyed and Indians will seek to deal directly with Umno’s prime minister, deputy prime minister, chief ministers and ministers and not through the MIC’s mandor (supervisors).
Umno would then lose the ‘buffer’ that it has been behind for the last 51 years and now have to face the reality in directly handling the Indian dilemma and their very critical state of affairs which Umno has avoided over the last 51 years.
There are RM130 billion PNB shares but only 0.1% Indians have benefitted (estimated). PNB today has eight unit trust schemes and 8.8 million share holders through the Amanah Saham Nasional scheme. The quota for non-Malays were almost all snapped up within one hour of being traded believed to be the result of either insider or selective trading. This to the exclusion of almost all poor Indians.
Under this scheme, low income Malays are given loans without interest of RM5,000 per person which is managed by PNB and paid back from the annual returns. In fact, each and every Malay member receives at least RM5, 000 worth of free shares which climb in value every year. What about the poor Indians?
The Public Services Department gives out 2, 000 scholarship worth RM91.74 million but almost 99% of deserving Indian Malaysian students are denied these scholarships to study both locally and overseas. They are given to almost wholly to Malay students. Why this racism?
Poor Malays are helped by Umno.What about the poor Indians? For 20 years as a livelihood, Ahmad Osman worked a small vegetable and sugar cane plot next to his dilapidated house in Gelugar Tasek. Umno’s second finance minister assured that the government-linked Bank Simpanan Nasional and Bank Islam would help this poor family.
Both banks have allocated a total of RM950 million to repair 150 houses nationwide. Fifty of the houses were in Tasek Gelugar with 20 have already been repaired. After 50 years, why can’t all poor Malaysians be helped instead of almost always excluding the poor Indians?
Indians in Malaysia do not earn more than the Malays. Indian households earn RM 3,799, Chinese earn RM 4,853.00 and Malays earn RM3,156? My estimate is that 80% of Indian households in Malaysia do not earn RM3,799 per month.
These figures given by the EPU director-general are merely to justify the continued racism by Umno in direct contravention of Article 8 of the Federal Constitution (equality before the law).
RM50 million has been set aside for research centers and RM291 million allocated under the Ninth Malaysia Plan to enable 86 projects under the Agriculture and Agro-based Ministry for rearing of Boer goats.
Well, will Umno advertise this in all of the country’s three Tamil dailies for at least a week to also enable the poor Indians to participate in this scheme? There is always a first time.
