---

The Chinese Dilemma

Many years ago, when our soon to retire PM was in the "wilderness" after being retired from UMNO, he wrote the book called The Malay Dilemma. This book hightlighted his concerns for the Malay race and some of his solutions for this dilemma. This book was initially banned but later on became a must read for all, especially those in politics.
Recently there were two articles on the Net with regard to another Malaysian dilemma, that of the Chinese.
The Chinese community "many weaknesses" have shaped the dilemma of the Chinese. Though having economic knowhow and powess and are good at making money, the older members are still largely indifferent to politics, democracy, justice, culture and social issues. The postmerdeka segment of the community possess less of these indifferences but have also been relatively inactive concerning these issues when compared to the other communities.For the Chinese communitry to advance, it must participate more and take its proper position as wholly Malaysians in the nation. The leaders of this nation must also at a faster pace liberalise the restrictions of the new economic policy and share political power more evenly among the various communities of this nation. See the first article on the Chinese Dilemma here.
Sim Kwang Yang, a former DAP MP and now a freelance writer in the Chinese-language press, has also touch on this subject but from a different angle, that of the next elections. He writes :: " If only the Chinese themselves would dare to dream of it – the Chinese voters can play a king-maker role in determining which of the emerging Malay forces (UMNO and PAS) shall come to power in Malaysia. He says that having more babies need not be the answer to the Chinese having more political power. He points out :: "What these Chinese do not realise, is that they will never enjoy the full rights of citizenship in a modern state, if the racial frame of reference persists in colouring their political judgement. In the reality of bio-power, where democracy has often degenerated into a tyranny of the majority." With electoral gerrymandering, outcome in many Chinese-majority seats is often determined by a small band of fence-sitters numbering less than ten percent of the total number of voters in any constituency. This also happens in Malay-majority constituencies too. So ironically, it is often that this small band of fence-sitters eventually get to determine the destiny of Malaysians in general. But I digress, Sim has more to say, so for the entire article by Sim read this.

[NB. To read Sim's article to have to be a Malaysiakini subscriber, if you are not, isn't it time to be one? Rm1 = 24 hours of Malaysiakini, cheap? Tonight you also get to chat with PKR leaders, as a bonus]