Dr Maszlee & Pribumi leaders must cease racial profiling Chinese as wealthy

Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik must stop emulating his mentor Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammad’s racist profiling that “Chinese are well-to-do” or that the “private sector denies job opportunities to Bumiputera as they do not know Mandarin,” lest he wants his legacy to be remembered as the “racist-black-shoes-Minister.” Taking the easy way out of blaming his critics or the media as misinterpreting his words does not assuage public grievance over Dr Maszlee’s handling of this issue, but rather fuels further lack of confidence that his future policies will be race-centric.

Dr Maszlee can only refer to the written reply in Parliament on 26 Nov 2015 which showed that Bumiputera households make up the majority of the country's top 20 percent income earners (T20). The said written reply also reported that “bumiputera make up 53.81 percent of the T20 category, followed by Chinese at 37.05 percent, Indians at 8.80 percent and others at 0.34 percent (Malaysiakini, 26 Nov 2015). 

The T20 group is defined as having a median income of RM11,610 or a mean income of RM14,305.

Data from the Economic Planning Unit in 2014 also showed that intra-ethnic income gap is the highest among the Chinese compared with the bumiputeras and the Indians. The income gap between Malaysian Chinese increased from RM5.80 in 2014 to RM6 in 2016. This is the only ethnic group that experienced a widening of the income gap between the rich and poor — the biggest compared with the others — between 2014 and 2016 (The Edge Weekly, 16 Nov 2017).

Citing data from the Statistics Department in 2016 which showed that 70% of the Chinese were working class, compared with 72% Bumiputera and 83% Indians, economist Dr Muhammed Abdul Khalid affirmed that “the majority of Chinese are working class (The Malaysian Insight, 20 Jan 2018).”

There are many, irrespective of race, living on the brink of poverty. Among the Chinese, half of those who work earn a monthly salary of less than RM2,350. The majority earn low salaries, not between RM5,000 and RM6,000 (Figures cited from The Malaysian Insight, 20 Jan 2018).”

To all other Ministers in Cabinet – Do you all share Dr Maszlee’s perception that “the Chinese are generally well-to-do” and thus unanimously agreed to the Cabinet decision to retain the 90:10 Bumiputera quota despite having slammed such affirmative action policies when still in the Opposition for decades?

Voters believed in Pakatan’s clarion cry for a “New Malaysia”, “reforms”. They voted in a new Pakatan Harapan government with a common identifier as Malaysians, and certainly not through racial lenses, and therefore expect genuine Malaysian-centric reforms. But if Dr Maszlee, Tun Dr Mahathir and other Pribumi cohorts continue with the racial quotas policies, voters should vote them out of office.

Nicole Wong Siaw Ting
MCA National Youth Chairperson

-MCA online-