MCA Leaders Welcome Umno Apology
September 4, 2008 by admin
NILAI, Sept 3 (Bernama) — MCA president today welcomed the apology made by the Umno leadership following the racially-charged statement made by Umno Bukit Bendera division chief Datuk Ahmad Ismail recently.
Ong, however, did not say if he was satisfied with the apology but hoped that all quarters would look forward and that those who made mistakes would be aware of their actions on the racial sensitivities in the country.
He asked that in the future political leaders would not question the position of any race in the country to the extent of hurting their feelings when the government was urging all races to be united.
“I appreciate the action of deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak who apologised on behalf of Umno and surely it will placate the feelings of non-Malays,” Ong told reporters after officiating the 15th annual general meeting of 2008 Annual Education Conference of the Heads of Secondary Schools Conforming Malaysia at the Inti International University College here.
During a ceramah in Permatang Pauh on Aug 25, Ahmad was alleged to have said the Chinese were mere squatters or temporary residents of the nation and therefore, it was impossible to achieve equal rights amongst races in the country.
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The Malaysian Government has done everything they could to help the Malays to compete with other races since the day Malaysia achieved independence. This favouratism policy has been implemented for the past 50 years. Malays enjoy their special rights on all aspects right from education to work. These special rights have enabled many Malays to successfully obtain higher education and better jobs, which would not have happened if otherwise, thus help improve their wealth position tremendously in the past 50 years. Even though the Chinese and Indian have always opposed to the favouratism policies, they acknowledged appropriate level of helps must be extended in order to help create a more balanced society. Everyone knows this does not happen in other countries but only Malaysia. My Chinese and Indian friends work hard to come to where they are today, without much help from the government. I like the fact that Chinese and Indians treat Malaysia as their own country. They did not snatch nor robe anything from their Malay compatriots but what they did was working hard. And that brings them to where they are today. I wish to ask the Malaysian Government a question, is there anything wrong with working hard? As far as I know, in other countries full of immigrants such as Australia and New Zealand, there is no policy to protect so called white citizen from non-white citizen. Everyone is equal and everyone has to work hard if they want to be successful. So why can’t there be fair competition in Malaysia now, after 50 years of the implementation race-based policies? Can someone tell me what happen in these 50 years that have passed? What has the Malay leader done for the race in these 50 years? Isn’t he supposed to build a stronger race that has the ability to stand on their own feet and to weather the storm with their own hands? 50 years of special treatments are still not adequate to bring up the Malays?
Whether we like it or not, in the very short years to come, the Malays are not facing competitions from their own Chinese and Indian fellows but the China Chinese and India Indians as a result of the effect of globalisation. Can the race that has been showered too much with all the special rights have the ability to compete with people from these countries? We from the West does not think the policies that the Malaysian leaders have for the Malays are very wise. In fact, it will spoil them in the long term. This is like giving too much to your son and eventually he becomes lazy and becomes a spoilt child. Has the Malaysian leaders thought about this at all? I can see the way they are doing right now is expediting the race to self destruction.