Ketuanan Melayu : What’s it worth, and at what price?

GUEST COLUMNISTS

By admin-s On Nov 7, 2014

Malays must decide if they are Muslims or racists

Haris Ibrahim, The Rakyat Post

I did well in my Lower Certificate of Education (LCE) examination.

Then I got cocky and bought into the notion that Form 4 was a honeymoon year.

And live it up that year we did, my friends and I.

And the next year, too.

Before we knew it, the Malaysia Certificate of Education (MCE) examination was upon us.

The two preceding years of fun and frolic showed in our results.

I missed Grade 1 by a point.

My buddy, SM, a Chinese, made it to Grade 1 by a whisker.

Enter the New Economic Policy and its quota system.

I got into Form 6, but SM did not.

SM refused to speak to me anymore after this, as did his family.

And the other non-Malay students never allowed me to forget that I was in Form 6 not on merit but by reason of a quota system.

My Higher School Certificate (HSC) results, after 2 years of Form 6, were not good enough to get me into the Law Faculty at the University of Malaya so an aunt advised me to apply to the Arts Faculty and, six months later, when there were dropouts from the Law Faculty, I could apply to get in.

I declined.

I did not wish to have it said that I was a lawyer because of a quota system.

So I worked a few years, purged as many of the wild demons in me as I could, sat for my A-levels, and, in 1984, went off to England to read law.

No-one could now pin my law degree on a quota system!

Or could they?

I came back from England end of 1988 and commenced the Certificate of Legal Practise course in 1989.

Results were out in August, 1989.

I passed.

And then I heard it again.

“Haris passed because of the Malay quota”.