Same old, same old in the peninsula as well as the east
As much as the East Malaysians complain about being a colony of Peninsular Malaysia, I think all of us really live in a colony of Barisan Nasional. So my Malaysia Day wish this year, just as it has been for the past few National Days, is that we put an end to this oppression and imperialism by finally showing Barisan Nasional the door — for as long as we let them stay in Putrajaya, nothing about the sad colonial state we live in is going to change.
By John Lee, The Malaysian Insider
Our 46th Malaysia Day has passed. Very often, it is the day East Malaysians bemoan the neglect of the federal government. But I think it is rather inaccurate to paint East Malaysians as the sole victim of such neglect. This is not a Bornean problem, it is a Malaysian one.
What the Borneans’ complaints are should be obvious to anyone. The indigenous people who live off the land do not have their traditional rights acknowledged. The lack of development in the two states is staggering — as advanced as the towns may be, the rural areas where many East Malaysians live are mired in tragic poverty. The rights of the state government are not respected, with the federal government riding roughshod over the states at its leisure. The compact which rests at the heart of the foundation of Malaysia has not been respected.
The East Malaysians have actually quite rightly fought all this, rejecting Barisan Nasional’s rule. The problem of course is that Barisan doesn’t tolerate such dissent — the last time the people tried this with Parti Bersatu Sabah in the 1990s, Barisan toppled the state government. When the Sarawakians tried something similar in the 1960s, the federal government actually declared a state of emergency just so they could topple the state government. You can’t accuse the East Malaysians of not trying.
But I think what I have just outlined ought to strike a chord for any Peninsular Malaysian. After all, these are our problems and complaints too. And the Barisan government in Putrajaya has been about as attentive to our rights and our issues as it has been to East Malaysian rights and issues. I feel certain that someone must have noticed this before — and yet whenever we talk about politics, it seems that we compartmentalise these problems and isolate them.
The problems are the same, surely. The Orang Asli in our interior face exactly the same problems as the other orang asal in the interior of East Malaysia; in some aspects they are worse off, as in the case of the Orang Asli who see their houses of worship being torn down by the government. While quite a few Peninsular Malaysians live in luxury, most of us struggle to put food on the table, facing impossibly high living costs in the cities and a dearth of economic opportunity in the villages.
When it comes to state rights, my state can’t even get anything done because the key civil servants are controlled by the federal government. And speaking of the federal government violating fundamental agreements, I see Barisan treating our national Constitution like a piece of toilet paper.
And when we in the peninsula stand up for our rights, what happens? Kelantan tried it in the 1970s, and it got the same treatment as the Sarawakians did when they tried it in the 1960s: the federal government declared an emergency in the state and romped into power.
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