The flagrant symbol of discrimination in the heart of KL

(Sin Chew Daily) – This has far exceeded the confines of patronage policy, which is itself questionable. It is very much a manifestation of generalized racism.

If Mara Digital is just another ordinary mall, whether it will eventually prosper and pose a serious challenge to Low Yat Plaza will not be a matter of importance to all of us.

Commercial competition is the norm and the market will decide who should eventually thrive and who should be wiped out.

But, Mara Digital’s background is very much more complicated than this. it is a by-product of the country’s ethnic politics and has not been created in response to market driving force. To put it simply, Mara Digital was born out of a handphone theft with a heavy racist hue.

After the July fracas, rural and regional development minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob proposed to set up a bumi-only digital mall that would only allow the bumi dealers to do business at the mall. Drawing more widespread controversy has been the rent waiver advantage for the first six months.

A competitive mechanism is very much present in the market and it will be best for the government to stay out of the business lest it will disrupt the normal functioning of the market, which is a universally accepted view.

Unfortunately our government has tried to put a hand into the civilian’s business, and do so from a racist perspective. Such a move is not only contrary to the principle of fair competition, but will even jeopardize the existing market mechanism.

It is very unfair for the government to make use of the country’s resources to help the bumi traders by exempting their half-year rent requirement in a bid to lessen their cost burden. And this has far exceeded the confines of patronage policy, which is itself questionable. It is very much a manifestation of generalized racism.

The question now is the future prospects of Mara Digital but the fact that such a blatant act of racism has been allowed to take place openly in this country.

In America, even if a person is discriminative against the African Americans, he or she would never openly admit this, because they are well aware that this is both immoral and shameful.

But in Malaysia such a taboo is non-existent, and it appears to me that anything that has bumiputra written over it will be automatically justified, overriding all moral arguments and ethics.

And today our minister is still shamelessly calling himself a Malay hero in defense of his Mara Digital initiative, which of all the things is the most alarming.

The world we are living in is no Utopia and in real life our principles are at times compromised, but along the way, it is imperative that we still safeguard our value system and not to paint the wrong as right and vice versa.

The government’s patronage policy was conceived to rectify the phenomenon of social inequality and restructure our society, and because of that we have been excessively tolerant to the discriminative policies in the name of helping the underprivileged bumiputras.

That, nevertheless, must not be construed as we approve the legitimacy of discrimination, and that all forms of discrimination are acceptable and logical. No one shall receive differential treatment just because of his or her skin color!