Malaysian Pretensions

There was a news article that irritated me to the bone when I read it some time back. For various reasons, I chose not to comment on it publicly.

But here it is: Malaysia Willing To Offer Help Where Malays Are A Minority

Obviously, even the Malays in Malaysia are beyond help - they have been given special privileges for about 30 years now and yet nothing much has improved - so what makes our government think it will be making progress in helping a bunch of insipid foreigners?

Most of us probably took it in a light vein.

Philip Bowring is evidently not as nonchalant. In his Opinion piece, he implies that our Malaysian Pretensions are worthy of criticism from human rights groups and other governments.

Malaysian pretensions could be dismissed as hot air. But official discrimination against non-Malays in the country was eventually going to attract criticism from human rights groups and other governments. It is hard to argue that the numerically dominant Malays, who control most of the political, judicial and bureaucratic levers of power and many of the country's major corporations, need help. Yet Malaysia's leadership continues to claim that the Malay race and religion would be threatened by removal of privileges.

I don't know if China and India would intervene.

But we've tried to fight this battle on our own and failed.

Repeatedly.

Perhaps as Bowring says, it's time for the outside world to speak up in support of equality for non-Malay Malaysians as well as for Malay minorities elsewhere.