For my son, when he grows up, this site will be my legacy for him. The decisions his mother and I made for him, to understand them, to learn from them and to lead a life without prejudice and to succeed in it on his own merit.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

First Among Equals

A tale of 2 nations
Dr. Hsu,
Whenever I gather with Malaysian and Singaporean family and friends at reunion dinners and parties, inevitably our conversations drift to the “tale of 2 nations” as you so aptly described. We Malaysians no doubt often debate and ponder the “what-ifs” and “what-could-have been” hypotheses with our Singaporean counterparts. We also lament the sorry state of affairs in our homeland. We then reflect on why these 2 nations, both arising from the same page and time in the chronicles of World History, but yet 50 years onwards, one has achieved First World status while the other is still mired in Third World status and mentality.
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Ironically, both nations share one thing in common – its people. We originate from the same biological stock and share the same gene pool. Sometimes, when my inebriated Singaporean friends tried to put on airs about their superiority, I never fail to remind them that their ancestors were once Malaysians. That their great Minister Mentor was once an upstart in Malaysian politics. And not to forget the thousands of Malaysian professionals who today make Singapore their land of milk and honey, courtesy of Malaysia’s perpetual “brain drain” exporting machine.
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One can easily imagine what a great nation Malaysia could have become if only we have better stewards to lead and govern the country. Malaysia has many times more human capital, land capital, and natural resource capital than Singapore. Presumably, one can envision the combined economies of the 11 states in peninsular Malaysia to be as vast as 11 Singapore economies put together.
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There is so much that Malaysians are capable of achieving. Yet today, according to IMF 2008 data, our GDP per capita is ranked #60 compared with Singapore’s GDP rank of #4. World Bank 2007 data ranks Malaysia’s GDP per capita at #48 vs #3 for Singapore (source: Wikipedia).
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Malaysia is forever handicapping itself if its leaders continue to govern on the basis of race and religion. The country cannot aspire to greatness if they make laws and formulate policies that is akin to “Cutting off the nose to spite the face”. They need to stop protecting and upholding one race to the detriment of others.
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Our Malay friends and neighbors should learn from a telling observation readily apparent to them. Whereas your Chinese and Indian friends are bilingual, trilingual, or polyglot, with much thanks to BM being the official language, are you not embarrassed to only speak one language?
To the young Malay professional, think of how much more marketable you can become in the global economy if you are multilingual. So why let your own government handicap you in the guise of protecting your native language? Why not join the non-Malays to become champions for fairness and equality?
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Realize also that, as much as the government makes life difficult for the non-Malays, they only succeed in making them more resilient, enterprising, and adaptable. You can be just like them too if you tell the government to stop the pampering and spoon-feeding.
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Far from envying Singapore’s achievements, I can only hope for a better future for Malaysia if our leaders wake up to smell the roses. Alongside the mantra of “Malaysia Boleh” let us also practice the Cantonese motto “yow fook toong heong, yow lan toong tong” meaning “we prosper we share together, we suffer we bear together”. Perhaps if we practice and combine this saying with the famous motto “all for one, and one for all”, maybe then the true meaning of 1Malaysia will emerge and become a blessing to all Malaysians instead of just an empty slogan.
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MM Lee Kuan Yew’s visit to Malaysia, as he has said, is to feel the pulse of the people. Well, as an experience politician, who was once fighting within the system here, he is perhaps the best qualified of all SIngapore politicians to judge how and where Malaysia is heading.

I still remember 1964, when I was a primary school boy, following my father to the Esplanade in Penang to listen to the speech of Lee, who was then campaigning hard for PAP’s candidates in the 1964 General Election. The field was full of people (at that time, political rally was allowed), and what I remember was the thunderous claps that Lee received throughout his speech.

I cannot remember how many seats PAP contested in Penang then, since I was too young, but apparently, despite the huge turnout of people, PAP did not win any seats in Penang, where it fought against Alliance, United Democratic Party of Tun Dr Lim CHong Eu, and the Socialist Front . DR Lim of course won his Tanjung parliamentary seat , despite the many cornered fights. If I have remembered correctly, PAP won only the Bangsar seat with Devan Nair as the sole PAP MPs.

I suspect MM Lee must be secretly laughing inside now. In 1965, when Singapore was forced to go separate ways, after Lee trying to galvanise opposition parties such as UDP, PPP (under D.R. Seenivasagam), and parties from East Malaysia into a loose association, and this action was seen as challenging the Ketuanan supremacy.

At that time, economically SIngapore was at the same level as Malaysia. In fact, when I was studying in University of SIngapore in the 70s, Malaysian ringgit at one time was bigger than Singapore Dollars in exchange rate.

Now that Singapore has attained a first world standard in economy as well as many other aspects, Malaysia is far behind in many aspects, not only economically, but in the fields of education, excellence, governance.

He must be secretly gladful that SIngapore came out of Malaysia in 1965. 51 years after Independence, Malaysia is still embroiled in race politics. In everything and anything, race is the prime consideration, and that has really hampered the advance of the nation as a whole and polarise the people . Because of the ‘clutch’ mentality, everything in Malaysia has degraded from excellence to mediocrity. Even in sports such as football, we are now in the lowest hierarchy.

During my time, University Malaya and University of Singpaore were ranked as equal , as with University of HOng KOng — especially the rankings of the 3 medical schools. It is now so different; while Univeristy of HongKOng and University of Singapore are consistently ranked among the top universites in the world and Asia, ours is now ranked low down in the list (some may say it is not even on the list).

Incidentally, I think this university ranking can be taken as representative of everything comparative among the 2 countries.

It is true that economically we have also progressed, but the point of contention is we could have progressed much much more, if a different approach has been taken instead.

Imagine, if we could have progressed much more, and is as rich as Australia, even the poorest among us will be living a better life than now. All of us, regardless of colour, would have a better life than now.

A comment by Clarence

1 comment:

  1. charis said...
    Dear all. I'm Charis, currently a 3rd year Edinburgh medical student.

    I'm writing this as I'm absolutely saddened and disgusted by the rumours spread about my coursemate Nur Amalina Che Bakri or more popular known on the net as the 17A1 scorer. To clarify, she is doing very well and is actually doing an intercalated honours degree in Pharmacology with Industrial Experience. She did not fail her second year but actually did quite well. That intercalated degree is a very competitive one and she obtained it by her merit (with Bank Negara's funding). If I'm not mistaken, she has also obtained an ERASMUS transfer programme where she can do part of that course in a partner European university. She will be returning to 3rd year medicine in 2010, and if all things go well, graduate in 2013.

    I understand that there is widespread dissatisfaction about the allocation of scholarships in Malaysia. However, whether it is just or not, I think that Nur Amalina or other scholars should never be victimised by false rumours. It is NOT their fault, whatever it is. Leave her alone, please. If your anger or frustration is meant to be at the scholarship-givers, i.e. the government or other organisations giving out scholarships, let it be directed at them and them only, and voice out your concerns and frustrations in a manner worthy of a concern citizen. There are flaws to the system, no doubt. There's the question on whether such a heavy cost of sending a scholar overseas is justified. Then, there is the issue of scholars who 'disappear' after graduating. There are scholars who fail year after a year, costing taxpayers a huge sum of money. And there's always that talk about the unclear criteria of selection for scholarships. But let's get our facts right before pointing our fingers, and perhaps check who we are pointing our fingers at, lest we wrongly defame and even character assasinate young scholars with great potential.

    Your fellow Malaysian,
    Charis Wong
    C.H.L.Wong@sms.ed.ac.uk

    ReplyDelete