Raggie Jessy
a. May 13, 1969 (continued…)
The 60’s marked the dawn of a new era in Malay politics. Despite there being steady fundamentals and ameliorating climates for businesses to flourish, the Malays felt squeezed out and were increasingly frustrated. The Chinese thrived on tight trading networks that were communally inclined, which shut the doors for active participation by Malay businesses that were hardly close to par with Chinese enterprises. The Chinese exercised stringent control over credit, which didn’t offer much room for budding Malay enterprises to make the cut.
But those that did rarely persevered, with some suffering harrowing fates at the hands of Chinese creditors. Ruthless, the Chinese would offer no way out for debtors, who were often left dry and destitute. The Malays never felt that they had recourse in the Government and knew that they wouldn’t stand a chance against the Chinese in a free market. They saw that the Tunku did nothing to redress the disproportionate representation by ethnic communities in the economy.
Indeed, the Tunku was careful not to encroach on the idiosyncrasies and traditional livelihood of the Chinese who contributed immensely to Malaya’s financial health. So as not to vex the Chinese, the Tunku was bent on preserving a pluralist venture into nationhood and never imposed upon them. He left ethnic groups to prosper within their traditional economic fortes and began funding agricultural support schemes and rural development projects, which he thought would appease the traditional Malay farmer. But the next generation of Malays preferred to venture into urbanized economy and make their mark in non-traditional sectors. They feared being eclipsed by opulent Chinese businessmen who by then were patronizingly condescending and treated the Malays as inferiors.
With that, support for UMNO was on the wane, though this never became manifest until the 1969 General Elections. The Malays singled the Tunku out as the cause of their grievances and felt misrepresented by UMNO in every manner that impinged on their representation within the Federation. Students at a Muslim College even burnt him in effigy when he compromised with MCA over the National Language Act in 1967. It appeared that the Malays would never compromise with the Chinese over matters that had to do with the Malay language and their traditional birthrights. To them, the Tunku had failed to consolidate the Malay symbol at the vanguard of Malaysian politics.
Incidentally, UMNO itself was never really a party that sought to champion the cause of the common Malay, forget a priori abstractions by mainstream history authors. Hatched at the Johor Palace by a group of aristocrats and courtiers led by Onn Jaafar, its primary purpose was to safeguard the eminence of Malaya’s aristocracy from threats posed by the British Malayan Union. In a sense, UMNO was originally founded not to protect the Malays per se, but the very group that saw itself at the brink of a collapse.
In other words, it was the aristocratic faction seeking to protect its own interests and the prerogatives of His Royal Highness over terms of governance. Back then, it concerned the palace to the nth degree that the question of granting citizenship to non-Malays had been deliberated on by the British and shoved upon the Sultans for approval. To the aristocrats, this spelt doom for the sanctity of the Monarchical institution. As they saw it, a nation without the Malays in charge would cause the powers of the Monarchs to erode into oblivion.
But the UMNO of the 60’s was undergoing a transformation brought about by a new generation of radical thinkers who were more sophisticated than the old guards. They denounced traditional aristocratic cultures and began cultivating subversive ethos under the guise of nationalism and fundamentalism. However, these groups went on to engender an order of elitism that centred on corporate magnates and affluent business players. In due time, UMNO began to look more like a corporate platform that vested resources in profitable ventures, benefiting the ‘ultras’ and a select class of corporatists from within the party in a big way. And yet again, UMNO never really represented the commoner, though it did help urbanize the Malay economy by taking off where the Tunku had failed.
At any rate, the new order comprised the likes of Mahathir, Musa Hitam, Harun Idris and Syed Jaafar, all of who had a different think where it had to do with the Tunku. But perhaps the most radical among them was Mahathir, who would wait for the right climate in which to flourish.
When Syed Jaafar initiated a hate campaign against Singaporean Chinese (refer part 7), he merely lent voice to resentment by this new order, which sought to have the Malays up on the pedestal dictating over the Chinese. He accused Kuan Yew of harbouring imperious contempt for Singaporean Malays, and went on to stoke passions through mainstream media by charging the Chinese with discrimination against the Malays. When Kuan Yew heard of this, he resorted to remedial measures by calling for a convention to allay Malay fears.
Now, while it is true that the Malays were increasingly frustrated with the Tunku, they were never known to be a violent race. As a matter of fact, traditional Malays exercised immense restraint and moderation in bracing just about any circumstance. A peaceful lot, they rarely took malicious pleasure in harming others, unless of course, they were provoked.
When Syed Jaafar heard of the PAP sponsored convention, he pre-empted it by orchestrating a hate parade on the 30th of June 1964. The demonstration was attended by a clamorous crowd of hecklers, who were heard chanting “kill him…kill Lee (Kuan Yew)…” It was said that the Federal controlled Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) gave Kuan Yew’s convention a miss, suggesting that the order had come from high above, possibly from Razak himself. Tensions mounted to summit on the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, with riots that killed dozens of Singaporeans and injured hundreds others.
The hecklers and unruly demonstrators who took to the streets in 1964 were really extremists from within UMNO who went on to spark a furore. Like I said, the Malays were never known to be a violent race, not unless they were provoked into acts of aggression by firebrands such as Syed Jaafar. Parading as fundamentalists and nationalists, Syed Jaafar’s team soon amassed a sizeable following and impressed upon the Chinese an unsettling sense of anarchical calamity. It was as if the Malays were willing to settle for nothing less than an absolute sense of control when and where it concerned the governance of the Federation. But truly, it was an ‘UMNO thing’ more than it was a ‘Malay thing’.
While Syed Jaafar may or may not have intended for the Tunku to be made a consequential scapegoat for his misadventures, it is certain that both Mahathir and Razak had taken things to the next level following the riots with the sole purpose of getting the Tunku to hang up his hat.
To be continued…
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