Are Bumiputra Rights Ethical and/or Islamic? Part IV (Compensatory Justice)

TABLE OF CONTENT

1.0              INTRODUCTION                                                                                        

2.0              HISTORY LEADING TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION                           

2.1              THE AFTERMATH OF MAY 13 RIOT                                       

2.2              HOW DID THE NEP FARE?                                                         

3.0              THE ETHICS OF NEP                                                                                

3.1              DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE                                                                        

3.1.1        STATISTIC                                                                          

3.2              COMPENSATORY JUSTICE                                                       

3.3              ARGUMENTS AGAINST NEP                                                    

3.4              IS THE NEP ISLAMIC?                                                                 

4.0       CONCLUSION                                                                                             

Compensatory Justice

Compensatory Justice states that people who have been treated unjustly ought to be compensated. Throughout the colonialization of Malaya, Malays have fought the colonial powers of Portuguese, Dutch and British and the colonialization of the then Malaya was part of the Crusade. As such, it was the agenda of the British colonials to leave the Muslim Malays behind economically and socially. By discriminating the Malays from the main economic activity of the day, the Malays were isolated in the own country and continued to be the peasants that they were.

While many of the today’s Malays may not have been victims of discrimination themselves, they have been victimized by its effect. It is typically a vicious cycle of poverty for many families deeply entrenched in poverty. The children of these families were often deprived resources to upgrade themselves in term of education and skills and were relegated to low-paying jobs. The Malays, for example, lacked the confidence and skills to compete on equal term with the Chinese. The so-called level playing field was not level in as far as the Malays were concerned.

We would like to quote President Johnson who gave a very beautiful analogy of this. He said, “Imagine a 100-yard dash in which one of the two runners has his leg shackled together. He has progressed 10 yards, while the unshackled runner has gone 50 yards. How do they rectify the situation? Do they merely remove the shackles and allow the race to proceed? Then they could say equal opportunity now prevailed. But one of the runners would still be 40 yards ahead of the other. Would it not be the better part of justice to allow the previously shackled runner to make up the 40-yard gap or to start the race all over again?’ (Steiner, G.A., et al)

The NEP was not created as a result of contempt for the Chinese or Indians, but merely to redistribute the wealth of the nations.

If one were to argue that the present day Chinese and Indians were not the perpetrators and as such should be asked to hold the burden of the wrongdoings of the British colonials, they (the Chinese and Indians) were the major beneficiaries and have benefited from its effects.

Utilitarian ethic can also be used to justify NEP. NEP brought an overall good the society by bridging the gap between races. Avoiding another May 13^th Incident is one of the major achievements of NEP. IN fact, Pueng Vongs in his article The Changing Face of Race: Global Affirmative Actrions says that ‘The Malaysian Prime Minister recently hinted at dumping the bumiputra policy, a move that could ‘plunge the nation into chaos and violence.’

Are Bumiputra Rights Ethical and/or Islamic? Part III (Distributive Justice)

TABLE OF CONTENT

1.0              INTRODUCTION                                                                                        

2.0              HISTORY LEADING TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION                           

2.1              THE AFTERMATH OF MAY 13 RIOT                                       

2.2              HOW DID THE NEP FARE?                                                         

3.0              THE ETHICS OF NEP                                                                                

3.1              DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE                                                                        

3.1.1        STATISTIC                                                                          

3.2              COMPENSATORY JUSTICE                                                       

3.3              ARGUMENTS AGAINST NEP                                                    

3.4              IS THE NEP ISLAMIC?                                                                 

4.0       CONCLUSION                                                                                             

3.0 The Ethics of NEP

In Defence of Affirmative Action

3.1 Distributive Justice

Affirmative actions are often defended on the ground of distributive justice. In essence, it requires that society benefits (and burdens) be distributed equitably amongst the races and/or groups. As a result of past discriminations by the British colonials, Malays and other natives have been denied of their fair share of opportunities. The British colonial has a divide-and-rule policy in bringing the Chinese and Indian labourers to Peninsular Malaya, and it had served their agenda, politically and economically very well.

During the British rule, there exists an irregular infra-structural development that benefited certain groups while neglecting others. The distribution of wealth was not equitable. There was inequality in sharing the growing economic pie between Europeans and Asians (Malays and non-Malays), immigrant (Chinese/Indians) and indigenous (Malays) population, between Chinese and Indian immigrants and between Malay aristocrats and the Malay peasants. These gaps were incidentally part of the divide-and-rule policy of the British.

Entrenched and subtle policies perpetuated by the British colonials, continuing the tradition of the Portuguese and Dutch predecessors, have denied the Malays and other native populations their fair share of the economic cake, leaving them out of the equation totally, isolated from the rest of the economic activities that were taking place under the British rule. While shutting the door on the indigenous Malay, the British pursued a policy of encouraging labourers from China and India with totally alien cultures, languages, and religions from the native population.

Can the distributive justice be used to justify the NEP? For that we need some hard evidence on the condition of the Malays prior to the implementation of the NEP.

3.1.1 The statistic never lies

Let’s take a peak at the economic and social conditions of the Malaysian society prior to the implementation of the NEP and see if a pattern can be seen to justify affirmative actions for the Malays. This can be see from the table below.

Table 1 The Mean Income of Households by Ethnic Groups 157-1970[1]

	1957, $	1967/68, M$	1970, $
Malays	144	130	172
Chinese	272	321	294
Indian	217	253	304
Others	NA	839	813

It can be seen that comparatively Malays are significantly less affluent compared to the other races. This is despite the fact that they are the biggest race group in 1970. It should be noted that even after more than 10 years of independence, in spite of the government development programs, the economic plight of the Malays had hardly improved.

Table 2 Communal Electorate Composition in the Federation of Malaya

Community	1955		1957
Malays	1,078,000	84.2%	1,217,000	56.8%
Chinese	143,000	11.2%	764,000	35.6%
Indian	50,000	3.9%	159,000	7.4%
Others	9,000	0.2%	4,000	0.2%

Table 3 Total Graduates by Community (1959-1970)

	Malay		Chinese		Others
B. Arts	1369		1404		603
B. Science	69		1448		150
B.Engineering	4		408		41
B.AgriScience	40		162		21
MBBS	12		108		9
B.Economics	112		185		31

Within a decade of independence, Malay students constituted only 20 percent of the enrollment in the 1962/63 session. The figure was even worse in the context of Science and Engineering faculties’ enrollment (only 4.6 percent). The ratio of science graduate of Malay to Chinese was 1:20, Medicine 1:9, while in engineering 1:100 can be seen from the above table. Similar disparities in the racial composition of the teaching staff at the university can also be seen with  only 51 Malays, 143 Chinese, 75 Indians, and 119 others.

Table Membership of Registered Professionals by Ethnic Group 1970

Profession	Bumiputra		Chinese		Indians		Others		Total
Architects	12		224
Accountants	40		387
Engineers	66		643
Dentists	20		579
Doctors	79		954
Veterinarians	8		6

The gap between Bumiputra and non-Bumiputra professionals was also yawning. While Bumiputra constituted more than 50 percent of the population, in term of percentage, they constituted only 4.9 percent of professionals.

The economic disparity can further be highlighted by the following facts:-

·      The value of property in Kuala Lumpur owned by the Malays was less than 5% whereas the Chinese owned more than 75%

·    Ownership of public listed companies listed on the Stock Exchange was 1.3% by the Malays and 89.2% by the Chinese

·   Capital ownership in limited companies was 1.5% by the Malays and 22.8% by the Chinese.

Another important statistic that can paint a clearer picture of the imbalance between the races is pertaining to the poverty amongst the races. Of the Malays, 65 percents were poor, whereas 26 percent of the Chinese and 39 percent of Indians were poor. In other words, Malay accounted for 74% of the poor, followed by Chinese 17 percent, and Indians 8 percent.

Thus from the above statistic it was clear that Malays were pretty much lagging behind other races when it comes to economic affluence.  Such a gap between the races was one of the major factors that caused the eruption of the May 13 riot in Kuala Lumpur in 1969. Such an incident could probably have be prevented had such distributive justice be implemented prior to the NEP

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[1] Fridaus Haji Abdullah, Affirmative Action Policy in Malaysa: To restructure Society, To Eradicate Poverty, Ethnic Studies Report, Vol XV, No. 2, July 1997