I refer to the Malaysiakini report ‘Social contract’: Fantasy to fiction .

It was the turn of the Bar Council this time to host a public forum in Kuala Lumpur on the ‘social contract’. In the end, no surprises were in store. The four panelists were evenly split.

Academician Dr Mavis Puthucheary and political scientist Dr Kua Kia Soong called it a piece of fiction. Constitutional lawyer Tommy Thomas and political scientist Dr Farish Noor disagreed but in more polite terms.

This is an endless debate and we can be sure the Bar Council forum won’t be the end of the matter. Every schoolboy in Malaysia has been well-fed in the early years of independence with tons of material on the ‘social contract’. It’s the younger generation that seems perplexed. Hence, the issue is revisited at regular intervals and the debate continues.

If memory serves us all correctly, the ‘social contract’ is a simple unwritten arrangement fostered between Malays and non-Malays by the founding fathers, brought about a rare unity among the multiracial peoples of British Malaya and expedited the advent of independence on Aug 31,1957.

The ‘social contract’ also paved the way for the inclusion of Singapore, Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei in an enlarged federation within just six years of the midnight air ringing with shouts of ‘Merdeka’ in Stadium Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur. Brunei stayed out over oil revenues and Singapore was soon booted out. The ‘social contract’ remained intact.

Independence saw the Malaysian economy held almost 29 percent by the Chinese; less than 2 percent by the Malays who were largely outside the money economy; less than 1 percent by the Indians and about 69 percent held mostly by the British and other foreigners.

(Malaysia introduced the 20 year 1070-90 New Economic Policy in late 1969. The NEP pledged to eliminate the identification of race with economic function and place of residence; eradicate poverty irrespective of race, colour and creed; and ensure that the Malays and other indigenous races own, control and manage at least 30 per cent of the nation’s corporate economy by 1990.

But deviations soon set in and there was rampant nepotism, cronyism and corruption to sabotage the NEP and send the economy into a tailspin by the early 1980s. The NEP had to be scaled back to bring the economy out of a recession in the mid-1980s.)

The thrust of the contract was simple - since the Chinese, of the towns in particular, had considerable economic power in comparison with the largely rural-dwelling Malays who saw themselves as the indigenous people of the country, it was felt that it was only right that the Malays held the reins of political power firmly in their hands in a quid pro quo .

This power they would then share with the non-Malays and thereby underwrite the continued economic success of the country. Malay hopes - unlike the disastrous route taken by economic nationalists in so much of Africa, in Myanmar and Fiji - hinged so much on the economy going right. Had the Malays been overwhelmingly in the majority, its unlikely there would have been a ‘social contract’ of any sort.

The founding fathers, perhaps in a stroke of sheer visionary genius, saw no reason for a time- frame bound ‘social contract’, nor did they see any reason for preserving the arrangement in print for posterity. The ‘social contract’, it was foreseen, would serve the nation well and melt away when its time came.

As the nation ends its celebration of its 50th anniversary of independence - an important watershed when we look back at this moment in history in the years ahead - the thinking among many Malaysians is that the ‘social contract’ has entered the history books as a minor footnote.

They point out that not only have Malay numbers increased significantly but the community itself has considerable leverage in the economy of the nation within and without the context of an expanding economic pie.

The levers of the economy at the policy level are almost totally in Malay hands, albeit because of their sheer numbers, although the community continues to be edged out at the retail level. The market is a different ball game altogether.

Not so, scream a vociferous minority, who not only see the ‘social contract’ as far from having outlived its purpose but insist that it also includes other aspects like the granting of citizenship status to hundreds of thousands of stateless and immigrant non-Malays and their descendants; the position of the Malay rulers, the position of Islam as ‘the religion of the Federation’ according to Article 3 of the Federal Constitution; the position of Bahasa Melayu as the basis of Bahasa Malaysia, the national language, and the sole medium of instruction in education; and the special privileges of the Malays, and by extension, other indigenous peoples of the federation in the peninsula and Borneo.

This revisionist approach among a diehard Malay nationalist core hasn’t gone down well with the Indians and Chinese in particular and they have made no bones about it in the vernacular media and other channels.

Malay moderates feel it’s high time to take the debate behind closed doors, not so much to re- negotiate the ‘social contract’, ‘but to remind community leaders about the history of the past so that they can re-assure themselves and their people once again and renew their faith in the nation and a common destiny, sharing and caring alike’.

(Article 3 of the Federal Constitution states that ‘Islam is the religion of the Federation but other religions may be practised in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation’. Wanita Umno called on Nov 7, 2007 at the Umno Assemby for the insertion of the word ‘official’ before the word ‘religion’ to prevent any ‘misunderstanding’.)

Essentially, the various issues being bandied about outside the ‘social contract’ are either well covered in the federal constitution or backed by social convention. Hence, the question of including these in an unwritten political arrangement like the ‘social contract’ should not arise at all. Generally, non-Malays are even more for the Malay rulers and see the institution as an important bulwark

Again, the country is definitely multiracial, multi-religious, multilingual and multicultural, as anyone with eyes can see, and nobody can take that away – ‘Malaysia Truly Asia’ runs the official tourism theme proudly all over the globe.

Shifting mindsets even among the religious moderates can best be seen as their coming to terms slowly and painfully with secular Malaysia and preaching a brave, new way to combat the dangerous mix of politics with religion. Religion is religion, and politics is politics, and never the twain shall meet in Malaysia.

A simple reading of history and the demographics shows that the Malay factor will henceforth continue to be an important aspect of the nation’s politics unlike in the early days when the community genuinely feared being swamped by the immigrants from India and China and their descendants.

No longer can a non-Malay be the prime minister of Malaysia, for example, unless with the consent of the governed, predominantly Malay and other indigenous peoples. Malays have also entered the money economy in a big way as a community and made considerable gains as well in this field.

As the Malays prosper, and emerge more educated and universal in outlook, having a stranglehold on politics will be less and less the community’s main pre-occupation and obsession.

Herein lies the demise of the ‘social contract’ despite having served the nation well. Its unlikely, too, that the Chinese parties in government will ever contemplate leaving the ruling coalition and should they do so, as was the case with MCA in the aftermath of the May 1969 polls, they would not be wooed back.