Race-based policies will raise tension among Bumiputeras, warns academic

Continuing Malaysia’s race-based policies will lead to increased tension among Bumiputeras as the affirmative action policies in the past 40 years have largely benefited only the Malays and widened the socio-economic gap between them and other Bumiputeras, an academic has warned.

Associate Professor Dr Madeline Berma of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) said while the development policies benefited the Malays, the Bumiputera minorities of Sabah and Sarawak and the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia, whom she dubbed “ethnic minorities”, lagged far behind in terms of poverty rate, employment, education and healthcare, breeding discontent among them.

“Continued use of ethnicity as the foundation of economic policy is no longer coherent, and hence could only be undertaken with the risk of greater discontent, paradoxically amongst the Bumiputera community.

“Continuing the pro-Malay oriented policy would apparently lead to internal contradictions and tension within the Bumiputera community and sowing the seeds of future problems for it,” Berma wrote in her essay titled "Ethnic Minorities and Development Process in Malaysia".

“Although the ethnic minorities are Bumiputera, the policies tend to ‘benefit’ the Bumiputera Malays, particularly by those in Peninsular Malaysia,” she wrote in her paper, which was published in the book "Malaysia Human Development Report 2013: Collection of Background Essays from UKM".

Berma, who is from UKM’s Faculty of Economics and Management and also heads the university’s Rural Transformation Research Niche, said that many ethnic minorities were frustrated and resentful as they felt they had not benefited from the policies they felt they deserved and were designed to uplift them.

Many perceived big differences in access to education, economic opportunities, government jobs, asset ownership, business contracts and government procurement, she said.

“Close examinations of government programmes in education, employment, subsidies, during the NEP (New Economic Policy) and NDP (National Development Policy) periods, hardly reflect any ‘special attention’ given to the ethnic minority.

“The Bumiputera-Malays, as opposed to the Bumiputera-minority, appear to receive ‘special attention’ although their socio-economic positions have improved since the implementation of the NEP.”

Ethnic minorities overlooked

In one example, Berma said that while the World Bank had proven Malaysia had succeeded in reducing poverty though the New Economic Policy and its successors, poverty rates among the ethnic minorities were still higher than the national average of 5%.

“Rapid economic development experienced by Malaysia in general, Sabah and Sarawak in particular, appears to have 'missed' these ethnic minorities. The Malaysia Economic Monitor, 2010 published by the World Bank, reported that Sabah had the highest incidence of poverty in Malaysia.

“Sabah has about 10% of the Malaysian population but more than 40% of all poor people living in Sabah.”

Within Sabah, she said, the Murut had the highest incidence of hardcore poverty, at 56.1%, according to data from the Statistics Department in 2013.

“One major implication of poverty is the high incidence of statelessness among the ethnic minorities, particularly those living in the interior of Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia.”

Berma said that the time and cost to register their children’s birth, coupled with their ignorance, caused many parents to forego such a responsibility, thus severely limiting their children’s access to basic health care, education and public services.

In terms of education, while the government had invested heavily in expanding the system of higher education and scholarships for the Bumiputeras, the ethnic minorities continue to have low or no formal education, said Berma.

According to the 2009 Household Income Survey, in Sabah, 32.1% of Murut and 28.8% of Bajau have primary education. In Sarawak, about 32.1% of Iban, 32.3% of Bidayuh and 32.5% of Melanau have primary education. Only 7.3% of Murut and 7.5% of Bajau had tertiary education.

Berma noted that an analysis of news reports revealed that the majority of ethnic minority students obtained Grades D and E in critical subjects such as Mathematics, Science and English in their Primary School Evaluation Test (UPSR).

This prevented them from entering educational institutions or pursuing programmes conducted by the Education Ministry, she said.

“Due to their poor examination performance, ethnic minority students face difficulties getting accepted into Mara’s education programme – the one institution created by the government with the sole purpose of assisting Bumiputeras.”

She said their poor examination results and high dropout rates would prevent them from entering universities on government scholarships, and enrolment in the highly competitive public institutions of higher learning (IPTA) would be low.

Meanwhile, they lacked the financial means or sufficient information to enter private institutions of higher learning.

And while another major objective of the NEP and subsequent policies was employment restructuring, analysis of data on appointment of public officials revealed a subtle biasness against Malaysians from Sabah and Sarawak, she said.

In 2009, 6.5% of Bumiputeras from Sabah, or 2,170, and 4.9% from Sarawak, or 1,631, were hired in federal departments, said Berma, citing statistics from the Implementation and Coordination Unit in the Prime Minister's Department. This was lower than their population share at 11% for Sabah and 8.7% for Sarawak.

“A related issue is the promotion in the civil service whereby a Malay/Muslim tends to have a higher chance of being promoted as compared to a non-Bumiputera and Bumiputera minority.

“If not properly addressed, these civil service imbalances can lead to increased racial polarisation and perceived discrimination in our civil service.”

The 2008 Household Income Data also revealed that most ethnic minorities worked in low-income sectors and were self-employed, compared with the Malays, Chinese and Indians who were primarily employed in government or the private sector.

“Unlike the Malays, Indians and Chinese, the ethnic minorities are mostly concentrated in economic sectors that require low skills and promised low economic returns,” she wrote, adding that the majority were in the agricultural sector.

“Their low involvement in modern urban sectors with high economic returns is indirectly due to their low education and limited skills. Also, many job opportunities are hard to access as the ethnic minority usually live in remote areas.”

Meanwhile, an analysis of the ethnic minority’s healthcare revealed that they had relatively lower immunisation coverage among children, relatively lower percentage of safe deliveries, and relatively higher maternal and child mortality rates compared with the national average, she said.

Why policies favoured Bumiputera-Malays

Berma said one of the reasons why the Bumiputera policies seemed to benefit the Malays alone was because the NEP itself was drafted as a solution to end the conflict between the Bumiputera-Malays and the Chinese, in the wake of the 1969 racial riots.

“The policies were conceived to advance Malay economic wellbeing and narrow the income gaps between the Malays (Bumiputera) and Chinese in Peninsular Malaysia.

“Inputs from Sabah and Sarawak, particularly non-Malay Bumiputeras or the ethnic minorities are almost non-existent,” she said.

She added that the NEP was created to address inequality between ethnic groups, mainly the Malays and the Chinese, rather than within the Bumiputera community.

Early policies failed to recognise that the ethnic minorities are not Malays, and as such do not share the same economic, social, religious and cultural characteristics or privileges of the Malays, she added.

Berma argued that using ethnicity as a cornerstone of Malaysia’s economic policies would result in the socio-economic gap widening within the Bumiputera community

She said that the pro-Malay policies of the past had appeared to be successful in its initial years because the majority of the poor were Bumiputeras, but as Malaysia moved forward, this was no longer the case.

“As Malaysia becomes developed, one needs to question the validity of continuing the articulation of Malaysia’s economic policy in the political rhetoric of inequality.

“The widening economic gap within the Bumiputera community as well as the emergence of cross-cutting cleavages in society necessitate a re-examination of Malaysia’s future economic policies,” she said.

Berma stressed that the bigger challenge for Putrajaya now was not inter-ethnic disparity, but intra-ethnic inequality, particularly between the ethnic minority and the dominant group.

“It is safe to say that the policies put in place by the dominant society have made the ethnic minorities the most vulnerable in Malaysia.”

- TMI