My Miscellaneous Page

Towering Malays across Causeway Sept 1, 2006

YOUR REPORT, “Give up PBA post, Dr Koh urged” (The Star, Aug 28) quoted Deputy Health Minister Datuk Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad as saying at the opening an Umno meeting in Penang that he sympathises with Penang Malays because he understands they do not want to end up like the Malays in Singapore.  

I strongly urge the deputy minister to visit Singapore more often to see for himself the true situation there. The fact is that Singapore Malays feel more superior to those across the Causeway. 

I know because I work with many of them and I often heard remarks like: “Why is it that Malaysian Malays, including your so-called graduates, cannot speak or write English as fluently as we can?” or “You know, in Singapore, my success is entirely due to my own hard work and capability.”  

Malays in Singapore can hold their heads high and many have found employment anywhere in the world simply because they generally are much more fluent in English and also the successful ones climb up the hierarchy entirely on their own merits as they play on the same level field as the other races, without asking for any concessions.  

I am not ashamed to say that my son is studying in Singapore ever since he was quite young. 

I deliberately sent him there because I want him to enjoy the superior education there and also to develop the right attitude of “no crutch please as I can walk on my own”.  

As our saying goes, “bend the bamboo while it is young.”  

If the Malays in Penang (or elsewhere in Malaysia) can be like the Malays in Singapore, then we will not need former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad or current Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to remind us from time to time to seek to become “towering Malays.”  

Give up PBA post, Dr Koh urged Monday 28 August

BUKIT MERTAJAM: The Bukit Mertajam Umno division has called on Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon to give up the Penang Water Supply Corporation Sdn Bhd (PBA) chairman’s post to Umno. 

Division chief Datuk Musa Sheikh Fadzir said Dr Koh had “snatched” the chairman’s post away from Umno’s Datuk Ahmad Saad, who was former Penanti assemblyman, in 1999. 

“If Dr Koh is truly sincere in wanting to help the Malays progress, he should resign as PBA chairman and give it back to Umno,” he said at the Bukit Mertajam Umno delegates conference here yesterday.  

Musa said there were only three Malays who presently held top positions in PBA.  

He said that although 60% of the company employees were Malays, most of them were low-ranking officers.  

“I also understand there are plans to set up subsidiaries under the PBA, which will be done in a similar manner like the Penang Development Corporation (PDC),” he said. 

He said he hoped Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Abdul Rashid Abdullah would reject any proposal to form subsidiaries and instead resolve the lack of high-ranking Malay officers in the company. 

Deputy Health Minister Datuk Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad, who opened the conference, said he sympathized with the Malays in Penang.  

“I understand they do not want to end up becoming like the Malays in Singapore.”  

Former top CPM leader dies at 89 in Narathiwat

BANGKOK: A former senior leader of the defunct Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), Rashid Maidin, died in southern Thailand yesterday. He was 89. A Thai military spokesman said Rashid died at about 9am at his daughter’s home in Sisakoin, Narathiwat, and was buried after Friday prayers. Rashid, who was born in Kampung Gunung Mesah, Gopeng, Perak, on Oct 10, 1917, joined the Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM) in 1951 along with several Malay nationalists such as Ishak Mohamad (Pak Sako), Ahmad Boestamam and Abdullah C.D. in Perak. After the PKMM was outlawed by the British administration, Rashid opted to join the CPM and was entrusted by then CPM secretary and main leader Chin Peng to lead the party’s 10th regiment in Bentong, Pahang. When pursued by the authorities, Rashid fled into the jungle along the Malaysia-Thailand border. He had left his wife back in Gopeng and married a CPM member by the name of Latifah. Rashid first came into the limelight at the Baling Peace Talks in 1955. – Bernama