STOPPING RACIAL RHETORIC
Dr Syed Husin Ali
Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) welcomes the call by DPM Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi
that everyone should put a stop to racial rhetoric. I suppose he refers not only
to members of certain organisations and certain media but also those holding
certain high positions in government who have been indulging in it.
Before the general elections a year ago the Suqiu made several appeals. At that
time the governing parties agreed with them, some without reservation, in order
to get Chinese support, as admitted by the Prime Minister recently. But now,
especially after the BN defeat in Lunas, the Suqiu leaders have been branded as
extremists, communists and likened to the Al-Maunah.
Of course it is wrong and unfair for top government leaders to go on branding
others this way. The right thing for them to do is to discuss whatever views,
appeals or even demands put up by the people. As we know, there are many in the
Suqiu appeals that are reasonable and that can easily be agreed upon. If there
are some among them that are controversial, then the government leaders should
engage the Suqiu leaders in reasonable and level headed dialogues.
Likewise, GPMS should be accorded the right to present its appeals to the
government as well as the people as a whole. But unfortunately, until now the
GPMS has not disclosed yet its hundred demands. I hope if these demands do
indeed exist, GPMS will soon make them available to the public, so that they can
be reasonably and sensibly scrutinised and discussed. I hope nobody will
straightaway brand the GPMS as chauvinists, fascists and so forth.
I am sure by now leaders of GPMS are already regretting for making their unknown
demands, because they have been knowingly manipulated by certain
unscrupulous people and media. The unscrupulous have always tried to threaten
some groups of non-Malays with fear, to increase the siege mentality among some
groups of Malays, and thereby to exacerbate ethnic tensions in order to harvest
political gains for themselves.
I used to be active in GPMS as its Secretary General and later Deputy President
during its early days. Later Abdullah Badawi was its President. Right from the
time of its founding by Aminuddin Baki, who later became the first Malayan
(then) Education Advisor, GPMS was truly a student organisation, involving
itself mainly on issues in education.
But now, if you ask any university, college or secondary student whether or not
he is a GPMS member, you will be lucky if you get one out of fifty, or even a
hundred, answering in the affirmative. It is misleading to claim that GPMS now
has a membership of 400,000 students. Although the true membership is
certainly much fewer, I nevertheless appreciate that a good number of them are
actively involved in giving tuition and other educational help to school
students.
Since a few years back, GPMS membership and leadership have ceased to be
student. A large number of its leaders and members now are working people, many
of them closely affiliated with UMNO. Certain leading lights among them have
been or are still involved with KEMAS and BTN, which are well-known institutions
used by UMNO for promoting its own political objectives. I hope they will
constructively work towards ethnic harmony instead of conflict and national
unity instead of disunity.
18th December 2000