I refer to the letter Stop Bashing UiTM.

To the writer,

I take issue to several points you put up to ‘rebut’ the ‘hateful comments, biased judgments and racist opinions’'

1. You say you are unafraid of competition and you seem to state the fact that you are in a company where your race is a minority as evidence. That does not prove anything. If your company engages in racial discrimination with it employment patterns, I urge you to report it to the relevant authorities so this would be corrected.

If it engages in fair employment, then you should be proud of your achievements and the fact that your ‘kind’ is the minority should not matter much as you and your colleagues are actually one and the same with regards to your skills – and that is why you were hired.

2. You say ‘However, one shall not forget that the Malays are at an disadvantage economically. Thanks to UiTM, the status of the poor Malay students from the kampung have indeed improved.’

What do you mean by ‘Malay’? Is ‘Malay’ all the Malays from Abdullah to Zakaria and to the kampung Malays? Are they all ‘at an disadvantage’? If that is your point, then I disagree with you. For it would be ridiculous to say that Malays in the upper-middle class to the upper-class are at a disadvantage (you mean to tell me they're worse off than a Chinese hawker stall operator?)

If you say that the poor Malays are at an disadvantage economically, which seems to be closer to what you mean as seen by your next sentence, then I agree with you. But so are the poor Indians and so are the poor Chinese. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the poor are at an disadvantage? Or that the poor Malaysians are at an disadvantage?

3. You then say ‘We give cheaper education to these people to uplift their status. Imagine if UiTM was a full-fledged university that imposes standard fees like other universities. Where would these students go?’

I agree 100% with this statement. We need to give ‘these people’ the chance to uplift themselves. But we differ on who ‘these people’ are.

4. ‘We need UiTM to help the Malay and bumiputera students who didn't make it to the law faculty due to a weak command in English, communication and confidence. Don’t you think these people deserve a second chance to achieve their ambitions?’

UiTM serves a great purpose in helping people who ‘didn't make it to the law faculty due to a weak command in English, communication and confidence’. But are only Malays, or poor Malays, who got rejected due to these weaknesses? Are you telling me poor Chinese and Indians don't suffer from a weak command of English, communication and confidence?

Do only Malays deserve this second chance? Do you just say to the ‘others’, ‘Sorry, too bad you were born the wrong color in the wrong country. Go be content with your blue collar job’? If that is so, then you are indeed rather cruel.

5. ‘We are very much marginalised as the economy is monopolised by certain people in Malaysia since Merdeka . And it’s definitely not us.’

Again who are ‘we’? And what benchmark are you using to measure ownership? International publications categorise Malaysia as an economy that is very aggressively steered by the government and the public sector. That is why political turmoil translates into economic uncertainty. That is comparing to Thailand whose economy is largely private, and a military coup affected the Thai economy very minimally.

You tell readers to be more understanding and less racist and less stereotypical. But you are being unfair too by engaging in prejudiced and baseless statements. ‘Monopolised by certain people since Merdeka. And it's definitely not us.’

What are you implying? That all the people you refer to in ‘us’ are people that have been grovelling since Merdeka and that all the ‘certain people’ have been wallowing in piles of cash since Merdeka ? Do you see the ridiculousness of your generalisations?

6. ‘We just need affirmative action to fast-track our competitiveness. Look at China, after much isolation and discrimination in their economy for many years, they are now ready to open up because they have achieved their mission to prepare their citizens to compete globally.’

I agree. All the rich that have it good have to bear the cost of helping this country and this society. All disadvantaged people should be given a chance to climb the economic ladder. Affirmative action for the poor is great. Affirmative action for the poor of a certain colour is pretty cruel to the people who were not lucky enough to be born Malay or be born rich.

And a note, if you read Raja Petra's article on uni's, Beijing alone has 100 universities. If Malaysia had a 100 universities, we would be able to fit in every student in this nation into a uni and Malaysia would be trying to attract foreign students to fill in the overcapacity. In China, they have more than enough unis that all its people including the Han Chinese or other minorities, the disadvantaged economically are all helped by the government.

They even have spots to admit in large numbers students from Africa. They don't have this problem of not being able to allow some 10% of their own citizens to enroll. And that is why China is ready for the world, and why America and the West have been able to stay ahead. Anybody with talent regardless of colour is cultivated and nurtured so that the whole society will be able to get the maximum amount of talent to progress its society.

7. ‘I just wish the name-calling and unkind remarks against UiTM will cease. We have never looked down upon other private colleges initiated by the rich which only provide sub-standard education with lowly-qualified lecturers, doubtful examination systems, shorter teaching hours, lack of basic facilities,’ shop lot degrees’, etc.’

I don't like those shams either. Anybody without the right information to be cheated by these programmes is a very sad thing. I don't know why you and ‘your people’ don't look down on it because I and I think ‘we’ would look down on it because those of ‘us’ that are disadvantaged will have the chance of being tricked too. If this is a devious plan of the ‘rich’, then they should be punished.

So to recap, affirmative action to the disadvantaged, I agree. But to say that all Malays are disadvantaged and all Indians and Chinese are not disadvantaged is just patently untrue. And that only Malays need UiTM and no Indians or Chinese in this country needs their own UiTM is a very silly thing to believe in.