Kit Siang & Ridhuan Tee: The Improbable Brothers
Earlier on Wednesday, this blog blurbed a posting that had appeared in Shuzheng’s blog on Tuesday titled Why Malaysian First Can’t Sell, Kit Siang & Ridhuan Tee: The Improbable Brothers.
Our regular readers would know that we’ve put in some effort to occasionally translate here the more outrageous of the Icker-Tee’s sh*t-stirring so that the non-Malay reading public is aware of what’s going on in Utusanland, which on Sunday extends to an estimated 1.8 million people (readers).
We gave a thumbs-up and recommended Shuzheng for your reading because he is able to lend a more “erudite” — to quote one of his blog reader’s description — diagnosis to the Icker malady.
However, from our monitoring, we find a number of Malaysians complaining that they don’t get what Shuzheng is saying.
And sadly for the country and its citizens, these Malaysians (who consider themselves shining, spotless liberals — in their own eyes, at least) are quick to rubbish what they cannot understand. And to trash what is not within their own narrow understanding by ragging the author rather than looking at their personal shortcomings.
We found today on Saturday this interpretation — below — of the Shuzheng article published in the Human Rights Party (the political arm of Hindraf) website, which is an annotation of sorts, if you can call it that. HRP, at least, takes the effort to decipher an intellectual and scholarly writing piece of writing.
Which should tell us something about who shouts “I’m … soooo liberal – clap-clap for me, ain’t I great?” the loudest and who truly practises it in the quiet.
The interpretation is reproduced in full with permission by HRP.
Making sense out of Shuzheng
This article [by Shuzheng] is a thought provoking article as it puts forth some interesting new ideas into our discourse to help us to figure out a more robust basis for our Malaysian society. However the article is quite difficult to read for the ordinary reader –let me try to paraphrase the key points in the article as I understand them. I have included some interpretation on my part to help with the paraphrasing.
1) Malaysian society today is being framed in a way that will in time superimpose Malay ethnicity over Indian and Chinese ethnicity and eliminate the Chinese and Indian root altogether. This is where the Ketuanan Melayu ideology meets the “Malaysian First” ideology. This framing is happening on both sides of the political spectrum – on the UMNO side consciously for some time and on the DAP side in recent times as a result of its “beyond race” brand of politics .
2) That the Ketuanan Melayu ideology presupposes this is no real surprise.
3) What requires some explanation is how the “Malaysian First” ideology of the DAP underlies this. The “Malaysian First” Concept embodies ideas of two classes of Malaysian – one like Guan Eng and Ridhuan Tee who are “Malaysian Firsters” and others like Muhyiddin and Ibrahim Ali, who are not . Whichever the class they say they belong to, they are of the same coin – they are just on different sides of that coin . And this coin analogy unites their interpretation of Malaysian Society a la the common approach to the framing of Malaysian society.
4) The two classes above is also expected to overlay with the classes of Malay/Muslims on the one hand and the Chinese and Indians on the other.
5) Malay/Muslims do not have to be “Malaysians First” to be Malaysians. But Indians and Chinese must be “Malaysians First” to be Malaysians.
6) There are no Malaysian Malays, there are only Malays.
7) The Malay does not deal with a Malaysian Indian or a Malaysian Chinese, they deal with a Chinese or an Indian in the country.
8 ) The Chinese and Indians first require converting to a race that does not yet exist, the “Malaysian First” race. This is happening due to a perceived requirement for the Indians and Chinese to become bona fide inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula, so that history will finally accept them as its natural inhabitants Then when you are “Malaysian First” you do not have anywhere else to go back to just like the Malay.
9) Converting implies the existence of mutually exclusive ethnic domains. Converting, like to another religion – you have to completely denounce your past faith as you assume the new. Similarly in converting to “Malaysian First” you have to give up your past identity altogether as Indian or Chinese..
10) Unfortunately being “Malaysian First” without rejecting the past does not really help the Chinese and Indian cause to be Malaysian either, as this does not take away the insecurity of the Malays which is in the first place the reason for all of this mish-mash.
11) The insecurity of the Malays ( the reason for Article 153) arises out of the existence of the Chinese and the Indians in the first place. Being “Malaysian First” without rejecting the past does not allay that feeling of insecurity.
12) Ridhuan Tee, who is the most famous “Malaysian Firster” is appreciated not for the Islam he embraced (there are many like him) but for the Chinese that he rejected.
13) To suggest that the Indians and Chinese banish their identity for the sake of an ‘inclusive’ Malaysian-ness is to invent, for the second time, another ’social contract’;The first was special position of the Malays for the citizenship of the Chinese and the Indians.
Now, here is the article proper. A condensed version appeared in the Letters section of Malaysiakini yesterday Friday and we encourage our readers to participate in the debate on that page (click to go).
hartalmsm.wordpress.com 
just abolish all malay school, chinese and tamil schools and create new English schools for all…like in singapore.
If any students want to learn other languages, go ahead…. enough of these type schools….
just think…there is no country in the world where the original rakyat simply allow more than two million pendatang to be their fellow citizens. the malays were and are still very generous but like any sane human, they expect some kind of gratitude and kindness. the malays now know very well that chinese people are only nice to you when they want something from you or when they want to make profit out of you. chinese companies, shops and factories will not hire qualified malays, or indians too, except for lowly-paid jobs. chinese traders also sell goods at higher prices to malays and often they cheat the malay customers and traders through sly means. the chinese are greedy and think nothing about monopolising everything. the chinese are so kiasu and now that they stay in big houses and posh condominiums they campaign for gated communities so that they can live in their own special world and prevent the poor malays from even passing through the roads. the chinese are rude drivers and when they drive big cars, think nothing about tailgating other drivers who drive smaller cars who often happen to be malays.
when chinese are bosses, they treat the lowly workers with contempt and shout obscenities at them. they give lesser pay to the malays, who are more experienced and qualified than the chinese. in TAR ollege, the malay lecturers are not promoted although they deserve it whereas many inferior lecturers, much junior and less experienced, got their promotiions faster.
in the civil service or some quasi-governnment bodies like the jabatan hasil dalam negeri, the minority of chinese staff will push for themselves to be promoted though so many other malays deserve the promotion. the chinese monopolise the transport business and they the lorries until the roads and highways are easily damaged. the chinese commit traffic offence so balatnatly and with money, are eager to bribe the poor policemen to get their way out of trouble. and this is a business fact, no chinese will buy insurance or unit trust from a malay agent if they can find other chinese agents.
the chinese are so bad, arrogant, rude in so many things and so many ways.
the chinese are allowed their own schools and use of their mother toungue, yet they still want to corrupt the malays. only a minority of chinese go to national schools and they always talk bad about the governemtn, the malaysian civil service and the malay politicians. the chinse newspapers are full of lies and misrepresentation of facts. the chinese always blame the new economic policy but it was the pilicy which benefited them the most. if not how can tycoons like YTL like vincent tan and the gang rise up.
About the brain drain? Good riddance, because the malays too have many intelligent people among them.
The clear fact is that if the chinese and the indians had not come to tanah melayu, the country would be very rich and unpolluted today. the tin and the timber will still be there, and so are the fertile lands.
the rivers would be clean and full of fish. now, the rivers are full of filth because of the wanton pig-rearing by the chinese. the country would not have loan sharks, gangsters, rapists and kidnappers and killers. Not many malays would be drunkards or 4D gamblers or the women forced into prostitutions all these evil activities were and are being actively promoted by the non-malay crooks and conmen.
gunse007,
When that happens MCA and DAP would not have anything to fight for !
It should have happened at the time of Merdeka.
I have lost all respect for DAP save for 3 individuals who are beyond reproach.
Their astounding metamorphosis from a grand social justice party to one that parties with the rich (Kampung Buah Pala) developers was a huge eye opener to many amongst us of things to come if they are ever in power.
And Lim Jr has the unmitigated gall to talk grandiosely about transparency but dares not take up the mosquito-like Tsu Koon’s challenge to release the pertinent documents regarding the sad and controversial KBP episode.
Someone kidded that DAP is MCA without the money.
Sounds about right to me.
A PKR MB for Penang please.
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Hartal MSM: About declassifying the Kg Buah Pala papers, we commented on that in September last year. See,
Guan Eng, don’t “cakap tak serupa bikin!”
it’s all quite quite simple….all UMNO wants to achieve is like all South East Asian nations with minorities, esp Chinese….eg Phillippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos,Vietnam,Cambodia,,,,,to ‘blend’ with the majority and indigenous race,with the ‘imbedded’ dominant one, if you will…….is that so hard to understand? or accept? why you all like that one?
adopt the language of the dominant race, adopt the religion, change your name so we are all the same, yippeeee, we are all One Malaysia, savvy? comprehendo?
why you all so stupid one? so difficult to undersand what UMNO wants, meh? why all this arguing, and fighting…just come out and say lah….so now we know , ok or not? goode….we are all One Malaysia….kakakakaka