How the Malay elite hijacked Malaysia

The Rukun Negara or national principles is the declaration of a formal national philosophy, proclaimed on Merdeka Day in 1970. The five Rukun Negara principles are belief in God, loyalty to king and country, supremacy of the constitution, sovereignty of the law, and courtesy and morality.

However, Malaysia has been heading down an Islamization path since the 1970s. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the education system. Education has been one of the major contributing factors in creating an Islamic identity within Malays. Over three generation this has led to a greater division of the community, which was up until the 1970s, an inclusive multi-cultural one. The former prime minister Mahathir Mohamed and his then deputy Anwar Ibrahim Islamized the civil service during the 1990s. Syariah laws have been strengthened and the Malaysia Islamic Development Department or JAKIM was formed in 1997 under the Prime Ministers Office to centralise bureaucratic control over Islamic affairs. The freedom of non-Muslims to express their respective faiths has been whittled away over the last two decades.

During the 1990s when UMNOs electoral nemesis was the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia or PAS, Mahathir declared that Malaysia was an Islamic state. Within the public sector, military, higher education, and across Malay led state governments, most employment positions exclude non-Malays. Even other Bumiputeras were at a disadvantage in career upward mobility, unless they were Muslims themselves. The community gulf between Muslims and non-Muslims is wider than ever. Malays themselves are under strong pressure to conform and be compliant to the exclusionist culture that has been developing over the last two decades.

The dismantling of secularism has enhanced the power of the Malay elite. The authority of the establishment is almost unquestioned today openly. Its not impossible to question the role of Islam in government and society. There is now little separation between Islam and government, with a state defined Islam forced upon the citizenry. Islam in Malaysia is not a spiritual undertaking, but a matter of compulsory adherence.

The great divide

The tangibles from the Malay establishment hijacking Malaysian politics, economics, and society have been to create a land of the privileged. The product of this is the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting relatively poorer. Islam and racial politics have just hidden the real divide, that being of class.

The Malay-centric political parties have been fighting for the spoils of office, while the country is facing health and economic crises. People are becoming destitute, even those who see themselves as middle-class. Many are struggling to even find enough food to eat, while the government through the 12^th Malaysian Plan is planning to pump even more money into a bloated bureaucracy, and crony businesses. The 2022 budget has been il-designed to deal with rampant inflation and rising unemployment.

Privilege is the nation’s number one enemy. This is the source of corruption, crony capitalism, abuses of power, and denying equal economic opportunity to all in Malaysia. This is the cause of an unprecedented rise in poverty. None of the new political movements or those advocating a reset for Malaysia have even identified this as the key problem to solve.