How ‘qualified’ should a Malay candidate be?
(Commentary/Opinion Piece by Editor)
Post originally published on 1 July 2020 in Facebook and Instagram.
[This post garnered one of our largest outreach during GE2020 with a total reach of more than 15,300 in both Facebook and Instagram, and more than 3300 engagements.]
It is 2020, and Singaporean Malays are tired of being unnecessarily highlighted during elections purely for the virtue of being Malay. No one is saying that race is not important, but surely there is more to a Malay than his or her race. And beyond race, should the candidates’ ‘qualifications’ be the only benchmark they are measured by? Close to 3 years after the controversial Presidential Elections reserved for Malays, we hear PM Lee naming PAP’s Malay candidates in this 2020 General Elections as “role models”. Essentially, the dominant narrative expounded and maintained all these years by the incumbent government is: PAP’s choice of Malays = the Right Choice of Malays.
Malays did not ask for a Malay President. It was given and ‘reserved’ for Malays, as if telling them they wouldn’t have qualified to be President otherwise. Moreover, the 2 non-PAP affiliated candidates were told they didn’t meet the criteria, resulting in a walkover victory for our current President. So it appears that Malays can’t even produce qualified Presidential candidates! Similarly, the GRC system was introduced for the General Elections in 1988 (32 years ago!) to supposedly ensure minority representation. It appears that the PAP government believes that Malays and other non-Chinese communities are not qualified enough by themselves to be voted into Parliament without the GRC system.
And so during elections we get a lot of focus on candidates and their qualifications, macam like a giant Interview Process for Parliament, supposedly decided by We the Citizens. We see many lawyers and doctors, ex-military men and PhD holders. This is the case across the board, not only for Malay candidates. Though perhaps because there are proportionally less Malay doctors or PhDs, now any Malay who has a ‘Dr.’ in front of their names would automatically (at some point in their lives) asked if they would be future MPs. The current PAP Malay MPs are mostly made up of this so-called elite class of Model Malays, considered as cream of the crop and the best the Malay community can offer (by the PAP of course).
The Opposition appears to have taken note of this. Increasingly we see more ‘qualified’ Malay Opposition candidates ready to challenge PAP’s own selection. Of course one may argue that this too is a phenomenon across the board for the Opposition (especially the Workers’ Party candidates), not just Malays. But it begs the question; should one’s qualifications or achievements, whatever they may be, only be highlighted during elections?
Elections seem to be the only time where achievements of Malay candidates are highlighted proudly and loudly. Indeed we should ask ourselves; were they not achievements worthy of recognition before? Must every successful Malay come forward as MPs or Presidents before they can be recognised as valuable to national interests? Where does the fault lie when you usually equate Malays with laziness, high divorce rates and disproportionate percentage of drug addicts, instead of these stellar success stories of rags to riches, Normal Academic to PhD?
Surely then we have to strive to acknowledge successes beyond not just race or family background, but beyond just elections too. It is 2020, and we have to move away from this politics along racial lines. In 1963 while we were still part of Malaysia, Singapore Malays rejected UMNO and voted for PAP precisely because they reject racialised politics. So PAP leaders really ought to stop performing politics with race, especially when it comes to Malays. All of our homegrown Singaporeans, Malay and non-Malay alike, deserve to be Seen and Heard for their well-deserved achievements because precisely these are the qualifications they need to be part of our national success stories, not just for candidacy into Parliament.
