Ali, Ah Chong and Muthu

Anyone growing up in the 1980s would be familiar with these three outstandingly famous Malaysians.

Often quoted in innumerable local textbooks – ranging from the much loved authority on moral dualism Pendidikan Moral Tahun Empat to the popular magnum opus of English texts, KBSM English Year 6 – Ali, Ah Chong and Muthu have dispensed both sage advice and anecdotal parables that have guided the collective social conscience of Malaysians on a wide range of important local issues as national unity, governance, friendship and the polite way to eat banana leaf rice.

Now well into their 40s, the three compatriots sit down and share with us their thoughts of the state of worsening race relations in Malaysia today.

Ali: Selamat pagi, lama tak jumpa!

Ah Chong: Ali, how are you?

Muthu: You two look so old.

Ali: Alhamdulillah, all good. My eldest son with PTD, my second son with PDRM, my third daughter with Bank Negara, my youngest just got accepted into IPTA.

How are your children, Ah Chong, Muthu?

Ah Chong: My eldest daughter is in Australia, my second daughter is in Canada, my third daughter is in Singapore and my son is working as an engineer for an American company while applying for his US scholarship.

Muthu: My only daughter is in university, studying medicine, after scoring 21 A1s for SPM. But only after five different political parties and nine NGOs highlighted her case in three Tamil papers and two English papers and one Chinese paper.

Ali: Why so bad nowadays? Those days we don’t need paper also. Now I see people with three, four papers also difficult to find work. Remember the good old days, after SPM we could all work.

Ah Chong: It’s different for you. Your kids get so many university places because of the quota system. We non-Malays need to work really hard to put our kids into private colleges and if possible send them overseas.

Muthu: And when we send them overseas to do medicine, and they come back, their degrees are suddenly not recognised.

Ali: But this divide wasn’t completely our fault .Who started with the vernacular schools? And you, Muthu, no more courses other than medicine is it?

Ah Chong: We send our kids to Sekolah Kebangsaan like you, then what happened? Sejarah suddenly became about one race, one religion. English levels dropped. The standards got lower, our kids didn’t get places in any boarding schools. It’s not the same.

Ali: But don’t you think by separating them earlier and earlier, it’s worse? As it is, those days we lived, studied, worked together, only separated when time to be buried.

Then we lived and studied together, and non-Malays join private, Malays join government. Now our kids don’t even study together.

If we don’t do anything together anymore, are we really one people or multiple peoples sharing common borders?

If the teachers and those deciding syllabus stop seeing non-Malays in Sekolah Kebangsaan, then they would be even more skewed to writing even more about only their race and their religion, don’t you think?

Muthu: At least you can afford it Ah Chong, Indians cannot. Tamil schools are practically dilapidated huts with electricity and a sign post.

Ali: And who asked non-Malays to not join civil service. Or army? Or police? If there are many complaints about all three, join and make it better lah.

Ah Chong: We want to, but no promotion prospect! And the pay is so little.

Ali: If 10% of the civil service comprises non-Bumiputera, of course only one in 10 of the DGs and the generals will be non-Malays, simple logic, no?

Also, there’s no quota for pay. It would also improve the suspicion between races now. Some Malays may view the non-Malays reluctance to join the armed forces and civil service as pushing the buck on nation building. They don’t see the ‘sacrifice’.

Ah Chong: We sacrifice a lot already. We build businesses and provide employment to so many.

Ali: Yes, thank you. But it’s still lacking, that’s why the civil service needs to absorb so many graduates.

Ah Chong: But why? Look at Singapore, they could manage to be so productive and have a strong civil service. Ours is so bloated and ineffective. Half the time system down. The other half the time, only half of the counters are open.

Ali: True, but it came at a cost. They didn’t permit vernacular schools. All charities come under strict government scrutiny. All Singaporean men need to serve in the military. Are you willing to undergo that? Even our much more watered down version of National Service had so much resistance.

Muthu: Yes, well, I would prefer my children dying in actual service for the country, as opposed to a bacterial infection. Poor Indians. Already we are a minority. Now we have been overtaken by foreign workers.

Ah Chong: Yes! There is another reason I want my kids to get out of this country. This country has nothing for them anymore, Ali. I went marching from Bersih 1, 2, 3… nothing happened. Still same thing.

Ali: Yes, well, if our local employers are willing to pay more for locals, our restaurants would have fewer Myanmar employees, our construction sites less Bangladeshis and our software houses less Indians. It took them over 40 years to screw this country up. You haven’t even walked four times, you expect miracles?

Ah Chong: That’s not true! Our workers are lazy and unmotivated. That’s why we hire outsiders.

Muthu: But if they are lazy and unmotivated here, how come they can get hardworking and motivated working odd jobs in Singapore and Dubai? Wasn’t your kid a JPA scholar? Didn’t your daughters get some free courses from MDEC and HRDF?

Ah Chong: Not the same! Ali’s sons all got university level education, free.

Ali: Yes, but you try to find work in Singapore with a Universiti Pertahanan degree. You spend half your time “pertahankan” the university's existence.

Ah Chong: You can say anything Ali, we say something we enter jail.

Ali: Not true. A lot of people are speaking up for all that you’ve mentioned and more, Malays and non-Malays. Many pay the price of freedom for it. But sometimes, we just want others to speak up for us as well. It’s easy to blame any given race or any given administration over the situation we are in. But what really matters is what we can do about it now. It doesn’t matter, who started the fire. It just matters if we want to put it out. – April 7, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.