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