Singapore Democrats

This piece is somewhat lacking. The only real point you brought up is the SAP system. I'm not sure why you mentioned the GEP as it doesn't seem to be relevant. The 4 initial GEP schools don't promote any racial or cultural traditions.

It would be useful, in addition, to raise the issue of Malays in the SAF. Barring of course the token Malay general/bigshot guy who has faded into obscurity after his one-off photoshoot.

Singapore was the centre of Malay excellence in film making, journalism, literature, businesses and politics, military and other fields.

The years during British rule before PAP's Singapore saw proliferation of top religious schools (Aljunied) which produce Muslim scholars and muftis for Brunei, Malaysia and the region.

That 1950 era produced one Sulaiman Sujak (the fighter aircraft flying legend who was said to be able to fly many types of fighter aircraft and later became Director of Civil Aviation Malaysia ),

BG Alsagoff Spore Army Chief of Staff whom LKY mentioned during the late Goh eulogy recently

P Ramli (legendary film maker),
Professor Ahmad Ibrahim, (legendary legislator)
Professor Shahrom Ahmat (Sporean who later became VC USM Pulau Pinang and Brunei)
Yusof Ishak (doyen of flourishing Malay newspaper industry), numerous Malay newspapers and magazines
hundreds of private Malay schools and madrasahs,
well known literary groups like (ASAS 50),
prolific writers like Masuri SN,
great actors, great Islamic scholars, graet writers
great warriors, Lt Adnan who defended Singapore,
and great landowners the Alsagoff, Haji Jafri (the richest Malay landowners) and many others.

The British also gave many opportunities to Malay youths like my father to fly military aircraft as radio operators in voluntary service.

Infact Malays were happily over represented in the military and police.

Beautiful Malay house architecture evolved in Kampong Melayu Kaki Bukit Jalan Damai area with beautiful green sceneries and scenic kampung environment.

Malay language teachers were extremely in demand in the years after independence and Malay schools like Sang Nila Utama (where one MP Maideen Packer and activist Halim Kader came from) flourished.

All police and army officers must take National Language lessons. This promotion of Malay language class was still held as far back as 1974. Everybody was happy and felt Singaporean.

Malays then were able to speak Hokkien and Tamil and Chinese spoke bazaar Malay with equal ease. My father spoke 6 Chinese dialects and had many Chinese friends and we even adopted a Chinese girl who then became a popular actress in Malaysia.

Now ask JC Chinese student whether he can speak Malay or a Malay whether he can speak Hokkien without attending formal lesson.

This proved that their proficiency had to be earned in a formal paid setting unlike in the old days where we culturalise freely and genuinely.

What we have today is fake culturalisation through meaningless racial harmony days and cosmetic cultural performance where the victors watched and the vanquished danced.

The lone shopkeeper son in our kampong became our pet adopted son and although we never once talked about Islam, I heard that he converted to Islam many years ago and is now a preacher.

Without PAP politics we were already an inclusive society.

Such wss happy Singapore before PAP introduce divisive politics and racist policies at the height of their power.

It was a proud moment to be be a Malay in the 50's and 60's before LKY became too powerful.

We had President Yusoff Ishak in his splendid baju kurong during National Day parades in 1960's.

I am extremely sure that Singapore would not have another Malay president from now on despite the promise of a rotating presidentship.

We had 2 Indian Presidents, one Eurasian, 2 Chinese (this is a broken promise) and just one Malay one.

The circumstances surrounding the 1964 riot and merger according to some theory was orchestrated by some people for selfish political ends.

It was not started by the Malays. It was an act of provocateurs during Prophet Muhd celebration parade along Kallang Road in 1964.

Bottles were thrown from the shophouses near former Kallang Gasworks building and hit the silat men in front.

This in silat ethics is deemed as inviting battle and great retribution. Whoever threw the bottle knew where to hurt and knew too its serious repercussion.

God knows who was behind this cowardly acts which led to Singapore's planned exit from Malaysia in 1965.

The better thinking, educated, and highly talented Malay leaders with a sense of history who could read the writings on the wall ...

left in droves after independence knowing too well LKY's disenchantment with KL Malay politicians.

My uncle a lowly religious teacher belatedly packed up in 1969, settled in KL and enjoyed his life there affording after some years,a beautiful semi-detached house, and a prestigeous lectureship position in a university. His children did well needless to say...

They left behind the rudderless leaderless poor uneducated Malays who had no choice but to hand over their fate to the LKY team for their promised protection and land of glory.

That is the reason in post 65 immediate years, PAP could not get educationally talented Malays into its fold. They had all left.

Instead they had to settle for barber-MPs( like Yaacob Mohammed) and gardener-MPs (like Rahmat Kenap) to fill in the blanks.

They managed to get only one graduate Shaari Tadin (BA Malay Studies University Malaya KL) and he was also reluctant to leave his teaching job to become the first graduate PAP MP.

So when PAP chided opposition for offering low quality candidates, remind them to reflect on their humble beginning...

In short, it was not fashionable..almost treacherous for a Malay to join PAP during the merger years. This aversion to PAP is especially understandable now.

What is happening to the Malays now is confirmation of the correctness of their past fears and their apprehension that the usually gentle Malays would become foreigners in their own country.

It is only in the late seventies, when LKY was at his powerful, that we notice the decline of the importance accorded to Malay affairs.

I believe this is because there was no one left to question him further and critique his minority views.

The Malay teachers union was politically active then.

Mosques and suraus (small worship areas) were everywhere. There is no need to raise funds like now.

It was Sidek Saniff who convinced Malay parents to switch to English schools as Malay schools were seen as having less than bright future in the 1970's.

Malay and silat societies flourished so were religious and literary writing and Malay associations and societies mushroomed.

Infact before 1965 Singapore not Kl was the epicentre of Malay literature, film making and journalism (Rahim Kajai was the Singapore's father of Malay journalism).

We had Ghazali Ismail who was director of education in the past.

The gold / diamond business / textile before 1965 was controlled by the Malays from Kalimantan Borneo and elsewhere before the Chinese businessmen took over.

We even had many Malay millionaires like Eunos (an MRT named after him), Ambo Solok and untold number of Malay landlords and diamond / shipping merchants.

Now we hsd just one so called Malay millionaire minister who does not consider himself a Malay at all. Ask him. and perhaps another in the Speaker.

But we are proud that we had the sole Muslim President scholar Ismail Ibrahim from RI who is his elder brother in 1968 who went to Stanford. Not sure what happen to him now.

But 3 years back there is a second Kalimullah from Hwa Chong Institution. So in the 50 yearts of PAP rule they can only produce 2 Muslim president scholars (not even Malay) but they can produce more than 2 Indian ones, countless trade unionists leaders and many cabinet ministers and one opposition mMP.

Are Malays becoming more stupider under PAP extra care policy, more lazier?

It seemed that malay interests were better taken care off by the British than the present PAP government.

Now the Malay society is completely detached from its soul.

Actually they have had a proud history of more than a thousand years with an entrenched system of givernment and writing that are well documented in scholarly writing.

Indeed, young Malays will miss those golden years of Malays supremacy in many fields in the 50's.

Such is the fate of Malay society under the hand of the PAP government.

Now many Malays do not want to be identified as one because there is no advantage in doing so economically at least.

They have ceased being a Malay in spirit...perhaps thats what the PAP govt wants. though they cannot shed their sawo matang (brown) exterior.

Thats the price they paid for being fooled into giving their land and their villages to their colonial British carnivores and then to the PAP government.

After 50 years of PAP rule, we have yet to see one Singapore building having a Malay owner save PKMS building which belong to UMNO in the past.

PAP MPs Rahmat Kenap, Yaacob Mohamed, Shaari Tadin, Othman Wok, Ahmad Mattar and other post 65 PAP MPs and especially Tengku Abdul Rahman will have to do a lot of answering in the hereafter for their roles in getting the Malays to where they are now.

Yes they have their TVs, handphones, cars, menial jobs so have others. more so.

Dysfunctional Malay families, homeless Malays, Malay gangsterism, teenage pregnancies, high divorce rates, poor educational showing, civil marriage cases, poor job opportunities,

Unexaggerated descriptions of such glories and achievements of past Malays as in postings above could be constructively used to help present young Malays remember their "roots" as "Malay Singaporeans" and contribute to the "diverse but united" Singapore culture we hope is in the making.

Also, to inspire them with the confidence to make fuller use of the equal educational opportunities we undeniably have basically to emerge like those Malay scholarship winners mentioned.

Many Chinese and Indian Singaporeans, interestingly, also have similar grouses about purported destruction of their past. We may suppose that, in the process of forging unity, some "diversity" has had to give.

I would not be so pessimistic of Malay success. In my life experience teaching in a tertiary institution, I had found Malay students to be specially careful and meticulous at trying to learn the subject matter taught when it got difficult, whilst others tended to evade it.

Re: "Even if the state chooses not to render special assistance for the Malays, their legitimate needs shouldn’t be neglected or marginalized."

I would suggest that it is not a choice but a legal obligation by virtue of the relevant Articles in Part XIII of the Constitution; they are binding on this and all future governments.

Re: "We had 2 Indian Presidents, one Eurasian, 2 Chinese (this is a broken promise) and just one Malay one."

This is such a coincidence. After years of having forgotten this, I suddenly remembered this facet of public life in Singapore just last Saturday. It's true that the government at Independence had committed to a convention - though not enforceable by law - of instating only minority race candidates as the Prseident premised on the probability that the prime minister is more likely than not to be an ethnic Chinese individual. (Not that any of it matters in an incestuous system in which there is no check and balance.)

But typically, it would have had to be during Lee Kuan Yew's Confucianazi binge that that initial commitment too was turned on its head.

Singaporeans do have to know that law is not the only thing that dictates that certain things are always done in a set pattern; conventions, while not law, play much the same role political systems, especially those that adhere the rule of law, so much so that a change in any one convention can most often only result from a referendum barring which a constitutional crisis often sets in.

Re: "What is happening to the Malays now is confirmation of the correctness of their past fears and their apprehension that the usually gentle Malays would become foreigners in their own country."

I actually think that has already happened. And it's only to get worse for Malays with the 3-in-1 population/foreign workers/enlarge-PAP-ministers'-incomes-from-the-resulting-enlarged-GDP policy.

For the longest tiime, I have remembered the statistic that Malays constituted 15% of the population. In the last three or four years, it has become 14%. Most recently I read a statistic of 13.5%.

And this is happening in the only ethnic group in Singapore that has a higher than replacement TFR, albeit only slightly.

How could this happened? Well, among the new arrivals to Singapore there are ethnic Chinese and Indians among others. Not that I think that they even want to, but are the Malays from Indonesia, Malaysia and even less likely Brunei, becoming Singaporeans?

I normally never fret about being from an ethnic group that is small in numbers because I tend to rely haeavily on developing and using my personal power instead of living vicariously off the strength in numbers.

However, I would have to submit that being from a group that is small in numbers means one thing that can be fatal for the group: we don't have any political clout and therefore have to forfeit so much that others can take for granted.

Re: "The years during British rule before PAP's Singapore saw proliferation of top religious schools (Aljunied) which produce Muslim scholars and muftis for Brunei, Malaysia and the region...The British also gave many opportunities to Malay youths like my father to fly military aircraft as radio operators in voluntary service...It seemed that malay interests were better taken care off by the British than the present PAP government."

I myself am on record for saying this, and not a few times: I wish the British never left.

Not that I know what British rule was like but from all accounts what minority races have experienced under the PAP is a far more insidious colonialism than the one under the British.

This is the link to an article written by Alfian Sa'at on the subject of Article 152.

http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/09/should-article-152-be-scrapped-from-the-singapore-constitution/

Towards the very end of the comments section, he writes:

[Quote]

"Section 152 was created around the time Singapore was preparing for merger into Malaysia.

[Endquote]

I have also encountered another comment by an anonymous netizen on the same topic who said that it was the British who insisted on this section of the Constitution - Section XIII - because they had seen through Lee Kuan Yew and determined that he had strong Chinese chauvinist proclivities.

I don't believe the two comments to be contradictory. I believe that during the years of self-government before Merger, the British still played a strong role in Singapore's governance. Minorities would not have had this legal protection against being run over if not for them, not that the PAP has put anything substantial in place to meet their legal obligations.

So Singaroars, yours are not idle speculation.

Finally, I would like to enjoin other readers of all ethnicities to also post on the facebook page "I want to remove race from my NRIC" set up by Seelan Palay. In particular, I would like to request that SDP members log in from time to time to be exposed to, understand, and support the project. It's interests aggregation, one of the most important functions of political parties.

Despite the name of the page, it is actually developing into a larger project on race relations in general, particularly at least for now, as it has to with governance.

I need more information on this from anyone in the know. I had formed the impression that with compulsory education, all the madrasahs were now required to offer the same subjects as those offered in the national schools; I also assumed government funding for all the madrasahs on that basis.

But, I picked this up from the following must-read paper. (While it is an academic paper, the language is easy.)

http://www.nzasia.org.nz/downloads/NZJAS-June03/5.1_4.pdf

[Quote]

...when the government was to launch compulsory education, it promised to fund one of the madrasahs but only under the harsh condition that its students must have passed the Primary School Leaving Examination so as to be exempt from enrolment in national schools. The shortage of financial and institutional support from the government inevitably results in poor educational quality in madrasahs and they have become much inferior to the national schools.

[Endquote]

Firstly, thank you to Warren for posting an interesting insight into the PAP's policies for Malay Singaporeans. It is true that if the Chinese can establish SAP schools for its ethnic students, why cant the Malays or Indians do the same? Or for the sake of our national pledge, which i like to talk a little later why not abolish this singular racial education system and impose just multi racial stream schools for Singaporeans? Referring to Robox, the madrasahs are in fact indirectly governed by the PAP. The government controls MUIS which reflects its educational policies to the madrasahs. By right madrasahs which are meant to be religious schools are influxed with the secular education system. You may argue that secular education is important in this generation but if you have signed up to pursue religious education then so be it, there is no need for the mix. If you aspire to be a IT specialist, lawyer, banker, a madrasah education is not the correct choice.

To touch on our "National Pledge"

We the Citizens of Singapore
Pledge ourselves as one united people
Regardless of race,language,religion
To build a democratic society
Based on justice and equality

Clearly, the malays are not getting equality especially in the SAF. Reason, our hostile territory around pro muslim states such as Indonesia, Malaysia?
And afraid that high appointed malay army personnel to form coalition with these states? Come on, I see blacks in the US army rising to posts of generals and given equality to serve in all departments of the US army. If Singapore models US, why cant they model this system as well?