Tricky but not impossible #OK BAH! BY JIMMY ADIT It is better to nurture and encourage national integration or 1Malaysia rather than forcing it on Malaysians. It used to be just national integration, but for whatever reason, it has mutated into 1Malaysia. That’s how I see it. If we care to look back, indeed much had been done to make Malaysians, well, truly Malaysians. Remember the Feri Malaysia project connecting Sabah, Sarawak and peninsular Malaysia? The vessel, called Feri Cruise Muhibbah, weighed 7,900 tonnes, was 134m long and with a height equivalent to a seven-storey building. Bought from Finland for RM50mil, it could carry 1,000 passengers and 100 cars. It was launched on Aug 31,1986 by the Sultan of Pahang with much fanfare because it was seen as a vital machine of national integration. Then in 1997, it ceased operations due to losses. Apparently, national integration was secondary to profit. Deputy Home Affairs Minister Datuk Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar called that (profit) bottomline when he questioned the unwillingness of airlines to provide better air connectivity for Sarawak. In fact, he went further to say that past decision-makers placed too much emphasis on cost considerations, although it would be more honest if he had said that too many times politics got in the way and so we forgot our original intention of integrating Malaysians. Yes, to me politics has always been in the way of good decisions. For example, we thought it had to be in the language that we all must speak, indeed, master. So we looked and re-looked our education system until we got confused, so much so that we could not even differentiate between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Melayu, and which should be the better of the two in as far as multi-racial and multi-religious Malaysians are concerned. Unfortunately, we have not learned enough and so we continue to commit similar mistakes by allowing politics to cloud our better judgments. So is it any wonder if one million Malaysians will be petitioning the Education Ministry over its planned 270 minutes per week Bahasa Malaysia learning at the expense of English which will be taught for just 150 minutes in all Chinese primary schools? If you think differently, then don’t you see the foolishness of requiring all premises to fly the Jalur Gemilang? Do you seriously believe that will ensure all Malaysians are loyal to the King and country? Be it national integration or 1Malaysia, it is tricky – yes, tricky but not impossible – getting people of different races and religions to agree to a common denomination. In the days of the early settlers of the Samarahan River basin, some form of education came only when a Malay man by the name of Cikgu Taib came to live among the Sebuyau Ibans. He offered to teach the Ibans how to read and write if they would build him a pondok across a stream where the pigs didn’t roam. They got him the pondok and he taught them to read and write in Jawi. My parents in their lifetime, like most others of their era, not only read and wrote in Jawi but also signed letters and documents in the Arabic alphabet. Yet they lived and died as Christians, as did Cikgu Taib, who lived and died a proud Muslim. When my late mother and her siblings – they were Sebuyau Ibans – moved out of the Lower Sadong to look for a new life in the Middle Samarahan and elsewhere, her eldest brother ended up marrying a Malay, a sister married a Muslim Melanau, another sister married a Chinese, yet another sister married a Bidayuh, her youngest brother married a Christian Melanau, and she, my father, a Balau Iban. What I am saying is, I have first cousins who are Malays, Melanaus, Chinese, Bidayuhs and Ibans and because of that it takes very little effort for me and my relatives to accept each other. I know of many families like ours, meaning ours is really not unique. In fact, there are families that have better racial and nationality mixes where acceptance and understanding are never an issue. So, need you wonder why Sarawakians find 1Malaysia as nothing new? I will not draw any conclusion, but let me share this with you. My son went for a company job interview. His interviewer, who was from peninsular Malaysia, asked him how it was possible that when he is a Christian, his reference, a Malay, is his cousin. “I don’t understand. You are a Christian and you have a Malay as your first cousin,” the man said. My son replied: “I have many Malay relatives and they are the ones who make our Gawai Dayak and Christmas celebrations meaningful every year.” He was given the job, but I really don’t know if it was because he is what I think he is – truly Malaysian. The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 04:45:25 +0000
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