WHAT THE CHINESE IN MALAYSIA REALLY WANT

INTRODUCTION

Having failed to achieve absolute control by proxy in Indonesia  following the downfall of their stooge & protector, the late tyrant Suharto, the Chinese of South East Asia (the Kuomintang) have turned their sights on Malaysia in a bid to topple the Malay majority government there.

The Chinese appear dissatisfied and annoyed with the status of Malays in a nation carefully nurtured and cultivated to its present stage of industrialisation by former Prime Minister Dr. Mahahtir Mohamed.

The Malays of Malaysia are in a majority comprising at least 63% of the population. They are the indigenous people of the country. The Indians (6%) and the Chinese who form the remainder are the second largest ethnic group. The nation is divided along race and religious lines.

Whilst the Chinese were favoured in commerce and trade from the time of the British, a practice which continues to this day, the Indians consist mainly of a few professionals, small business people and the rest largely low paid labourers.

Singapore under its first Prime Minster had designs over Malaysia since its birth all those years ago. In his own words he had ‘dreamed all his adult life of a merger between the two states’. For what reasons he dreamed such a dream is now becoming clearer.

The Chinese of Malaysia and Indonesia have great regard for the man Lee Kuan Yew. The Malays to a large part see him as a gate keeper of foreign interests (with good reason) and an abject and unmitigated racist. The Chinese of south east Asia see the area through Lee Kuan Yew’s prism of greater China and with it a right to dominate the place as if it were naturally theirs to dominate.

LANDLESS SINGAPORE’S MALAY LAND GRAB

Singapore of late and with the assistance of the immediate past Prime Minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Badawi, engineered a coup whereby they conveniently renegotiated the supply of Malaysian water to Singapore on unrealistically favourable terms to Singapore, much to the detriment of Malaysia. All of this achieved without debate or disclosure of any real consequence from either side.

Mahathir, an obstacle to Singapore’s ambitions in the peninsula, had left the stage. They were now free to engage in the politics of intimidation and division and had a ready made chameleon, a spineless, vain and incompetent leader in Badawi.

There was no need to gauge public opinion on something as vital as water or land as is characteristic of Singapore’s style of patrimony, its benevolent dictatorship which they call democratic government down there. Unaccountable and unresponsive to their people as always,  self assured in their condescension of their subjects, they assisted Badawi to sell his country’s most precious asset to them for a song. And sell it Badawi did.

More dangerously, Badawi allowed Singapore’s state and private interests to acquire significant tracts of Malaysian land (the Johor corridor)  for them to develop a massive industrial complex (proposal) using Singaporean and foreign investments channeled through Singapore and the use of imported Chinese labour from China. Along with Badawi was a convenient acquiescing Sultan of Johor, who consented to the appropriation of land within his state by Singaporean Chinese interests.

The proposed development and its strategy gives Singapore de facto control over a significant land mass of Malaysia without it having a political mandate from Malaysians to run the area. Very smart, very dangerous.

Perhaps the new lingua franca in this land mass would also be Mandarin in future to cater for the imported Chinese (non Malay) labour they intend (and have already begun to) to bring in to create a sphere of an extension of the Pulau Batam experiment. Singapore off shore territory, Malaysia on lease in a Malay neutral cultural vacuum.

STEALTH

There has been no referendum on this re design of the boundaries of Malaysia nor even a cursory impact study of the consequences of such a significant transfer of ownership of land and a bud grafting of an entire new culture of Chinese onto Malay soil. No one has sought fit to seek approval and consents of Malaysia’s most important citizens, its Malay majority.

Nor have the finer terms of this sale or the results of any socio economic impact studies on its mainly Malay population been made public for the people it is most likely to effect to consider. There was no public discussion no consultations with effected groups and communities of any significance so to speak of. Nothing has been done for any meaningful public debate or input to be considered form the effected communities.

Badawi held hands with his Singaporean counterparts in what was clearly a purely commercial deal with political and social implications for Malaysians, especially its Malay population in a majority and to whom the land is inalienable being Tanah Melayu. This appears to be a repeat of the historic handing over of Singapore’s sovereignty to Britain for a pistol and a few trinkets to the Johor Sultanate by Britain all those years ago.

Badawi appears to have done a Habibie on Malaysia. Habibie we recall sold out East Timor to an Australian led force in support of former Marxist guerillas with Portuguese and Chinese backing under the pretext of a deteriorating security situation.

The security situation was created and nurtured at its inception with Australia’s assistance under Suharto aided then by Australia’s defence aid to Indonesia. East Timor was then carved out of Indonesia into a new independent state during mayhem engineered by the UN, Portugal and Australia.

So it now appears that international law does recognise in its breach  the take over of foreign lands not only through conquest but also by treaties that ignore the will of a majority. Necessity and bilateral economic agreements are mere camouflages to lend a semblance of legitimacy and respectability to appropriation of other people’s land.

A SMEAR FOR DISTRACTION

The smear campaigns have begun. Most of it directed at the most likely candidate capable of galvanising Malay sentiment to tear up these arrangements and the stealthy occupation of Malay soil. Dr. Mahathir Muhammed appears willing to go all the way on this one.

Singapore acutely aware of his potency in dismantling their plans for occupation by stealth is widely viewed as the source of Malay indignation and Chinese chauvinism in Malaysia. Its campaigns have been to stir the  political landscape of Malaysia that has become so divisive and polarized provoked by statements from Singapore of late.

Malaysia’s Chinese are openly looking for Lee Kuan Yew type leadership not for his recorded economic achievements but for the fact the Chinese will dominate Malaysia as they have done Singapore. The Chinese like the Indians of Africa and Fiji are cultural chauvinists not willing to assimilate but to dominate at any cost.

The fact Mahathir has achieved more progress for Malaysia in less time with less pain inflicted on his people appears irrelevant to the Malaysian Chinese and sectors of its Indian communities. So Mahathir appears now to be their target, the focus of their smear campaigns. Lest he further encourage the Malays to be assertive of their rights and put paid to the Singaporean occupation of a third of Malaysian soil Mahathir has become the pre occupation of Singapore and its local Malaysian Chinese supporters.

Part I of III