PR Manifesto Mentions all Races except Indians
The Indian community has been conspicuously totally disregarded in most aspects of the PR manifesto under the pretext of open non discriminatory society. In fact any implementation of policies needs to consider the discriminated and marginalized society first to bring it with the rest of Malaysian society.
Paraman Subramaniam
PKR director of strategy Rafizi Ramli is unapologetic that the PR manifesto makes no specific mention of Indian Malaysians, despite the brickbats from the community.
However, being a key member of the manifesto committee, he is silent about the fact that virtually all races in Malaysia are mentioned in the manifesto except the Indians.
Even though PR prides in the fact that its policies are mainly on needs basis, it however fails to justify the introduction of specific programs that are pointed and targeted to particular racial groups.
The abolishment of PTPTN loans will effectively wipe out billions of hard earned tax payers money that have been used over the years for Malay students predominantly. Though it may save them money for the future, it is silent about the existing loans that have not been paid up yet by some of these Malay students.
Other policies like doubling the Tabung Haji Fund, more allocations for Islamic religious departments, Justice for Felda settlers, adding value to wakaf land and GLC’s to be tuned to produce more viable Bumiputra entrepreneurs are all catered for predominantly the Malay race. Extra allocation of funds is also proposed for specific civil servant government sections that consist predominantly of Malays only.
The manifesto has also crafted policies that are pointed and targeted for all races in Sabah and Sarawak.
1) Raising oil royalty from 5% to 20%.
2) Appointment of Sabahans and Sarawakians to lead and hold office in the government.
3) Cleaning up citizenship registry list.
4) Recognition of customary land rights.
5) Raising the level of infrastructure development in Sabah and Sarawak.
The Chinese community stands to benefit by the recognition of the certificate for Combined Chinese Secondary Schools for the purpose of furthering academic admissions to higher education institutions. This primarily strengthens all Chinese Secondary schools existence in this country.
The manifesto does not fail to mention the Orang Asli community. It proposes:
1) Preserving Orang Asli customary land rights and welfare.
2) 141,000 hectares of land to be reserved.
3) Water and electricity to be supplied to Orang Asli settlements.
4) 5000 educational scholarships for Orang Asli students, which is baffling as it is also mentioned elsewhere in the manifesto that education will be free for all.
The Indian community has been conspicuously totally disregarded in most aspects of the PR manifesto under the pretext of open non discriminatory society. In fact any implementation of policies needs to consider the discriminated and marginalized society first to bring it with the rest of Malaysian society. If at all the manifesto hopes the Indian community to gain through trickledown economics at the most. This has in the past, time and time again been proven to be a failure.
What is most surprising is that PR prides in itself of having many Indian representatives but the glaring omission of the Indian community’s critical needs like statelessness and fully aided Tamil schools to say the least, in their manifesto has exposed their lack of tooth within the corridors of power of the PR leadership. A clear line of demarcation between Indian representatives versus Indian representation is visible for all to see now. Could self preservation of their positions and future seat allocation be a reason for this?
HINDRAF has expressed its total disappointment with PR for not including critical Indian needs into their manifesto as what they had done for all other races.
Considerable pressure has been mounted and PR has scrambled to do damage control by having a meeting recently to reluctantly include some Indian issues into their manifesto. In any case it will be seen as an afterthought and PR’s image among the poorer section of Indian voters has taken a severe beating. More so HINDRAF’s blueprint has been totally ignored thereby giving the impression that PR is only interested in the Indian votes but not their representation making it not very much different from UMNO.
