Don: National reconciliation goes beyond ethnicity

(fz.com) – Shamsul Amri believes that the media and public need to take a broader view of the terms ‘Chinese tsunami’ and ‘national reconciliation’.

As midnight crossed over into early morning on May 6, two clear outcomes emerged from the freshly-delivered GE13 results.

 

The first was that Barisan Nasional would not be vacating Putrajaya. And the second was that a startlingly high number of Chinese Malaysian voters had appeared to shun BN.

 

In a kneejerk response, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak branded the latter outcome a “Chinese tsunami” and pledged to embark on a national reconciliation process to heal the perceived racial and political divisions.

 

His statements elicited mixed reactions that ranged from agreement to indignation and even derision. Pakatan Rakyat strategists and political analysts would later debunk the “Chinese tsunami” claim with statistical evidence of strong Malay support towards the Opposition.

 

As for the national reconciliation plan, many called it a sequel to the 1Malaysia concept and prematurely deemed it rhetorical and a likely failure.

 

But according to the National Council of Professors (MPN) deputy chairman, Datuk  Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, the meaning of “national reconciliation” in the post-election context may have been misconstrued.

 

He believed that part of this misinterpretation rested with BN repeating the same oversight that initially plagued the 1Malaysia concept.

 

Shamsul recalled that Najib only defined and explained the 1Malaysia concept almost a year after it was introduced. In that span of time, Malaysians interpreted the concept based on individual perspectives.

 

“The term ‘national reconciliation’ was verbalised with clarity by Najib that night but was never explained or defined clearly,” he reminded fz.com in a recent interview.

 

“Pundits and reporters immediately and conveniently linked ‘national reconciliation’ and ‘Chinese tsunami’ to mean that in spite of BN winning by a comfortable majority there was now, from Najib’s viewpoint, a major rift between the Chinese and the BN government.”