Kerajaan mengumumkan pada Oktober 2006 bahawa sebuah kawasan pembangunan khas di Selatan Johor akan diusahakan. Kawasan ini merangkumi 2,217 km persegi dan akan menjadi kawasan wilayah pertumbuhan ekonomi khas. South Johor Economic Region (SJER) ini ada diterajui sendiri oleh Khazanah Holdings Bhd., agensi pelaburan Kerajaan Persekutuan paling utama, sebagai pemaju utama keseluruhan projek.
Kawasan ini melibatkan keseluruhan kawasan perindustrian, perdagangan dan penempatan yang terangkum dari Pasir Gudang disempadan timur ke Tanjung Pelepas disempadan barat dan Senai ke utara. Ini merupakan projek pembangunan bersepadu paling besar dan strategik dalam sejarah Malaysia. SJER merupakan percambahan dari idea asal UEM World membangunkan 2,200 ekar tanah Nusajaya, lewat 90an.
Sebuah agensi dalam SJER akan dijadikan sebagai agensi ‘pusat satu perhentian’ (one stop centre) untuk mengko-ordinasi dan meluluskan keseluruhan permohonan pembangunan, perindustrian dan perdagangan yang dimajukan untuk pertimbangan. Sekali gus, agensi SJER ini akan mengambil penuh kuasa kuasa mutlak Kerajaan Negeri Johor seperti hal ehwal tanah, kerajaan tempatan, perancangan pembangunan dan fungsi fungsi unit perancangan ekonomi negeri (UPEN). Inilah pertama kali system ini diperkenalkan diMalaysia tanpa kawasan itu diambil dan diubah hak milik kepada Wilayah Persekutuan.
SJER akan terbahagi kepada lima kawasan Flagship iaitu:
- Flagship A – Pusat Bandaraya Johor Bahru
- Flagship B – Nusajaya
- Flagship C – Gerbang Pintu Barat
- Flagship D – Gerbang Pintu Timur
- Flagship E – Senai – Skudai
Sebuah plan pembangunan komprehensif akan dirangka untuk SJER ini. Keseluruhan pembangunan dalam 2,217 km persegi Selatan Johor ini akan disusun semula secara rapi dan sistem yang lebih mantap akan diguna pakai.
DYMM Tuanku Sultan Iskandar Ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail, Sultan Johor, telah berkenan untuk mencemar duli dan merasmikan SJER yang dijenama semula sebagai Wilayah Pembangunan Iskandar (WPI) dalam satu upacara khas diDanga Bay, Johor Bahru pada 4 November 2006.
Sultan Iskandar, dalam titah ucapan semasa merasmikan WPI membelakangi protokol apabila mengesa Kerajaan Persekutuan memecahkan Tambak Johor dan membiarkan kapal melalui keseluruhan Selat Tebrau.
JOHOR BARU: Johor Sultan Iskandar Ibni Almarhum Sultan Ismail caused a stir during his address at the launch of the South Johor Economic Region (SJER) project yesterday when he digressed from his written text and said the Causeway should be removed.
To the shock of the 2,000 people present and thousands of viewers at home of the live telecast over RTM 1 and TV3, the Ruler said it was built by colonialists who had used dirty tactics to deceive his ancestors.
He said the building of the Causeway was to deliberately prevent ships from passing local waters, resulting in the development of Keppel Port in Singapore instead.
“The Causeway has to be removed to allow ships to pass,” the Sultan said before launching the multi-billion SJER.
At this juncture, the audience broke into laughter and applauded.
In his address the Ruler, who was clad in a T-shirt, said he would not “give face” (bagi muka) to the foreigners (Mat Sallehs) and urged the people not to hold them in high regard.
He also reminded locals and their children to be wary of them as they were “vultures”.
The Causeway was built in 1920 when Malaya and Singapore were ruled by the British. It is 1,050m long and has railway lines, a road and a water pipeline and is used by tens of thousands of people daily.
(dipetik dari akhbar The Star, 5 Nov 2006)
Baginda dengan tegas mengingatkan agar jangan mempercayai bangsa barat. Perancangan WPI adalah untuk mengalakan zon zon pembangunan bagi kommersial, perindustrial dan perniagaan utama dibuka untuk dijual kepada pelabur asing, dengan harapan banyak industri industri baru dibangunkan dalam kawasan pembangunan WPI ini
Amat jelas bahawa Singapura merupakan objektif utama sasaran untuk pelabur dicari bagi menjayakan WPI. Ramai yang percaya banyak boleh dimanafaatkan dari kekuatan ekonomi, pasaran modal dan punca kewangan dan modal insan dari Republik itu.
Apabila disingkap, idea asal SJER sebegini besar magnitudnya ini dimain dan usahakan oleh Dr. Vincent Lim, Setiausaha Politik Perdana Menteri. Dr. Lim, seorang bekas anak didik Singapura dan Oxford, telah pergi beberapa kali ke Johor untuk berunding dengan pegawai pegawai Kerajaan Negeri, terutama Pejabat Menteri Besar dan UPEN. Dalam penghujahan beliau, limpahan dari pembangunan ekonomi pesat Singapura sepatutnya disalurkan kepada SJER dan digunakan sebagai pemangkin pertumbuhan ekonomi diSelatan Johor pula. Beliau juga menegaskan begitu banyak pelaburan baru dari Singapura akan dinikmati Johor apabila semua halangan halangan yang ujud di’angkat’ dan memudahkan pemilikan hartanah dan kawasan kawasan kommersial dan perniagaan bagi perusahaan perusahaan republik itu yang pada masa ini rancak melabur/dilabur-semula di Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam dan China.
Ketua Unit Polisi diPejabat Perdana Menteri Ahmad Zaki Zahid juga menyokong kuat idea konsepsual ini. Khazanah kemudian dilibatkan sebagai pemain utama dalam merangka plan tindakan SJER. Asalnya, plan ini dirangka secara unilateral dan di’paksa’ Kerajaan Negeri Johor menerimanya. Selepas begitu banyak kepincangan ujud dalam draf asas SJER, maka imbuhan dari Kerajaan Negeri Johor mula dimasukan dan Khazanah merundingkan semula plan draf SJER mereka.
Maka setelah tujuh kali draf dirundingkan antara Khazanah, UPEN dan EPU dan dipinda, Bill untuk Iskandar Development Region Authority (IRDA) siap dibentangkan diDewan Rakyat pada 13 Dis 2006 dan Dewan Negara 21 Dis 2006. Bill IRDA ini menerima perkenan DiRaja pada 12 Februari 2007, digazetkan pada keesokanya dan mula berkuat kuasa 17 Februari 2007.
Sebuah syarikat yang akan bertindak sebagai “Super Developer” bagi WPI diujudkan pada Disember 2006, yang dikenali sebagai South Johor Investment Corporation (SJIC). Khazanah memegang 60% kepentingan dan bakinya dimiliki KWSP, 20%, dan Kumpulan Prasarana Rakyat Johor (KPRJ), 20%. Modal permulaan SJIC berjumlah RM 3.4 billion, dalam bentuk asset hartanah dan tunai.
Sejumlah besar nilai ekonomi akan diharapkan dijana dari WPI, iaitu RM 140 billion, menjelang 2015. Menjelang 2025, pelaburan dan kegiatan ekonomi bernilai RM 383 billion dianggarkan dan peluang pekerjaan untuk 800,000 orang akan diujudkan. Menurut Khazanah, Johor akan mengalami pertumbuhan ekonomi yang mantap pada konsisten 7% setahun.
Kepentingan strategik Singapura kepada kejayaan projek Mega ini ditafsirkan seterusnya apabila tahap Zon Akses Terbuka (Free Access Zone) akan diujudkan dalam WPI. Ini bermakna pergerakan orang dan barangan keluar masuk dari Singapura akan begitu terbuka dan mudah sehinggakan tiada proses saringan langsung (samada dokumentasi atau inspeksi) diperlukan. Kunun kununya model Shenzhen diChina menjadi rujukan.
Pada 21 Mac lepas, mantan Timbalan Perdana Menteri Tun Musa Hitam, yang juga ahli panel penasihat IRDA dalam temuramah kepada akhbar antarabangsa AP menegaskan bahawa sepatutnya Selatan Johor ini tidak lagi dikenakan sebarang keputusan yang berlandaskan Dasar Ekonomi Baru (DEB), untuk menentukan program program yang dirancang terlaksana sebagaimana wilayah pembangunan khas yang berthemakan pelaburan dan penyertaan perniagaan antarabangsa berjalan dengan jayanya. Pendekata, menurut Musa, SJER sepatutnya menjadi kawasan bebas untuk semua.
Ini semua membawa pemikiran yang paling tidak terlatih sekali pun kearah kecenderungan membuat kesimpulan bahawa WPI ini adalah agenda yang secara langsung menguntungkan Singapura. Pelabur dan pemilik perniagaan diSingapura sekarang dengan mudah membeli hartanah dan kawasan perniagaan, perindustrian dan perdagangan dalam WPI, terutamanya Flagship A; zon perniagaan utama sekitar Bandaraya Johor Bahru.
FAZ juga bermakna rakyat dan barangan dari Singapura begitu bebas keluar masuk dari mana mana pintu sempadan dalam SJER, terutama Johor Bahru tanpa sebarang sekatan atau pemantauan langsung. Ramai berpendapat, ini tidak wajar kerana Singapura adalah sahabat karib Israel. Ini bermakna barangan dan perkhidmatan yang asalnya dari Israel hanya perlu dikemas-semula (repackage) diSingapura dan dibawa kedalam WPI untuk diagih agihkan keseluruh Malaysia atau mana mana destinasi kepada 200 juta umat Islam seluruh rantau Asean dan sub-benua Asia Selatan. Pelabur Israel juga begitu mudah membeli hartanah dan saham dalam perniagaan perniagaan dalam WPI, terutama melalui penama penama Singapura.
Minggu lepas, Perdana Menteri Dato’ Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi mengumumkan cukai Real Property Gains Tax (RPGT) dan kelulusan FIC bagi membeli hartanah telah dimansuhkan. Ini bermakna, golongan pelabur dan hartawan dari Singapura dan negara lain, bebas membeli mana mana bidang tanah sekitar WPI dan akan berlaku satu keadaan lonjakan harga hartanah mendadak. Ini semua berlaku secara ‘tiruan’ (artificial) kerana permintaan yang ujud kepada hartanah ini adalah spekulatif semata mata. Dirasakan paling rugi dan tercicir dalam persaingan kompetitif ini ialah pemilik pemilik dan pelabur hartanah Melayu, yang akan tertinggal dengan keputusan untuk membuka pasaran hartanah dan menjadikanya begitu terbuka dan kompetitif sebagai arena pemain hartanah bertaraf dunia.
Tanpa menerapkan DEB dalam apa apa keputusan, kelulusan dan/atau pertimbangan mana mana perniagaan atau perusahaan dalam WPI, maknanya keutamaan menjaga kepentingan dan membangunkan usahawan Melayu, terutama golongan kommuniti usahawan menengah akan terabai. Sebenarnya, sekiranya pertumbuhan perdagangan dalam WPI berada dalam keadaan sihat, pesat dan progresif, maka golongan usahawan menengah Melayu, yang boleh memainkan peranan besar memenuhi keperluan jaringan pembekalan (supply chain) dan sokongan keatas industri industri utama dan besar. Jika saranan Tun Musa itu diterima-pakai, maka usahawan usahawan industri kecil dan serdehana (IKS) Melayu akan perlu bersaing dengan syarikat syarikat yang telah sedia bertapak dengan akses kepada modal yang banyak dan mempunyai sistem jaringan yang mantap. Ini sebenarnya bukan permainan di’padang rata’ (level playing field).
Secara realistiknya, orang orang Melayu sekitar Selatan Johor adalah mereka dari golongan yang tidak banyak mempunyai kecairan dan sumber kepada dana yang banyak. Oleh demikian, jika berlaku ledakan hartanah sekitar WPI, yang membenarkan mereka yang melabur menikmati kesan spekulatif yang bernilai berpuluh puluh billion Ringgit itu, ialah kuasa kepada modal tunai dan pembiayaan. Sebilangan besar orang orang Melayu Selatan Johor akan tertinggal dari persaingan ini kerana diluar kemampuan mereka, baik secara individu maupun institiusi. Ini bermakna ledakan industri pembangunan hartanah tidak akan melibatkan mereka sebagai pemain dan sebaliknya, pelabur pelabur Singapura yang mempunyai kekuatan sokongan pasaran modal dan kewangan, terutama dari pembiaya kewangan bertaraf dunia, akan memonopoli segmen industri ini dalam WPI.
Jika dinilai dari kepentingan politik, sekiranya begitu banyak pemilikan hartanah dan perniagaan terbuka tanpa langsung sekatan sekitar Selatan Johor, maka pertimbangan politik untuk orang orang Melayu juga akan terjejas. Ini adalah kerana begitu banyak ahli ahli UMNO yang mencari kehidupan melalui perniagaan kecil kecilan dan IKS, sekitar Bahagian Bahagian Johor Bahru, Pulai, Tebrau, Pasir Gudang, Gelang Patah, Tanjong Piai, Senai, Kulai dan Pontian akan merasa bahang kesanya.
Johor, sebagai negeri tulang belakang kekuatan UMNO, dimana 500,000 dari 3.2 juta ahlinya tinggal. Johor Bahru juga tempat kelahiran UMNO 60 tahun dahulu. Yang anihnya, program perancangan SJER ini dilaksana dengan kadar begitu cepat sekali. Orang orang UMNO juga tidak pernah dibawa berbincang dan berunding, mengenai WPI ini walaupun ianya secara startegik akan melibatkan mereka. Boleh dikatakan ramai kepimpinan menengah dan akar umbi UMNO sekitar Selatan Johor tidak berapa jelas mengenai program program WPI serta kesan taktikal dan strategik keputusan Kerajaan ini.
Ada yang berpendapat, sekiranya DEB dikecualikan kepada apa apa program, termasuk peluang membeli hartanah dan perniagaan di Selatan Johor, maka ini boleh ditafsirkan sebagai menafikan hak hak orang Melayu, yang sedia termaktub bawah Artikel 153 Perlembagaan Persekutuan.
Apa apa pun, WPI ini amat dicurigai ramai Melayu yang bersemangat nasionalism sekitar Selatan Johor. Belum lagi nampak bagaimana secara langsung, program program dibawah WPI akan menguntungkan orang orang Melayu secara langsung.
Realitinya, ramai mereka yang berada didalam jawatankuasa pelaburan Khazanah dan boleh membuat perancangan strategik adalah mereka yang bukan Melayu. Ini boleh diandaikan bahawa kecenderungan apa apa keputusan yang diambil oleh Khazanah tidaklah mengutamakan imbuhan Agenda Melayu atau DEB, tetapi pertimbangan dan deliverables lain. Beberapa kedudukan strategik seperti Pengarah Eksekutif Pelaburan, Ketua Ekonomi dan empat Pengarah Pelaburan Khazanah Holdings Bhd. adalah terdiri dari bukan Melayu.
Jika tidak, boleh ditafsirkan Kerajaan Persekutuan dibawah kepimpinan Presiden UMNO Dato’ Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi mewujudkan WPI dan kesan sebenarnya ialah kepentingan Melayu diSelatan Johor diabaikan. Ini amat mendukacitakan kerana orang orang Melayu Johorlah selama ini setia mendukung dan memberi kekuatan tulang belakang UMNO Malaysia. Orang Melayu Johorlah yang memberikan BN menang selesa 100% di Johor dan memberi muka kepada BN, tatkala pengaruh UMNO kepada kawasan kawasan Melayu lain tiris pada Pilihanraya Umum ke XI, November 1999.
Benar kata mantan Presiden UMNO, “Melayu mudah lupa”.
Di mana suara Melayu dari Johor?
Begitu sepi
Begitu lesu
Ucap dan cakap
Dato’ Nenek mu pembela negara
Tanah Air kau gadaikan tanpa kira peluh juang mereka?
Mintak pasir dapat ribuan hektar!!
yea, apa org melayu akan diam saja, apakah pemuda umno diam membisu, mana dia suara-suara lantang semasa perhimpunan agung umno yang lepas, ke mana semua menikus?
I have written my piece also which I read this as Musa ole vengence and Dolah’s political desperation.
It’ s quite easy to quieten dissenting views of UMNO members,fed them well,’dodoi’ a lullaby ,hayun buai laju2….am sure they would sleep with millons sweet dream.
The fights no longer theirs,they are not poor anymore.
One question:
Why is it so difficult for UMNO to have a person in the mould of Michael Chong??
Answer:
There is no such person in UMNO!!
Dahulu aku pernah mengaumi suara melayu di Johor, yang kelihatan amat ampuh untuk dirobohkan benteng perpaduan nya. Tetapi akhir-akhr ini banyak suara-suara melayu ini hanya diam membisu… agak nya mengambil sikap tunggu dan lihat…
Dahulu aku pernah mengkagumi suara melayu di Johor, yang kelihatan amat ampuh untuk dirobohkan benteng perpaduan nya. Tetapi akhir-akhr ini banyak suara-suara melayu ini hanya diam membisu… agak nya mengambil sikap tunggu dan lihat…
Di Johor UMNO ditubuhkan….. mungkin kerana Johor juga UMNO akan dikuburkan. Ini bukan apa.. hanya kerana apa bila dasar NEP tidak lagi diadaptasi, maka perjuangan UMNO tidak lagi relevan. Perjuangan utama UMNO adalah untuk memperkasakan bangsa Melayu. Apabila pemimpin orang Melayu sendiri tidak mengaplikasikannya, maka apa guna UMNO lagi??
Kita tahu.. siapa yang beria-ia bercakap tentang perkara ini. Pada kita.. dia dah hilang keMelayuannya. Mungkin ia hilang apabila dia menjadikan kepulangan politiknya sebagai agenda membalas dendam peribadi, atau apabila dia dicucuk hidung oleh orang bukan Melayu yang mengenyangkannya ataupun ia hilang apabila dia berkawin dengan orang bukan Melayu… entahlah. Yang pasti, suaranya tidak kedengaran Melayu. Memang orang Melayu perlu maju dan tidak lagi perlu disuap. Tapi apa rasionalnya jika projek Mega sebegini (kununnya!) dimajukan di Tanah Melayu tetapi yang untungnya bukan orang Melayu?? Bahkan kepada negara lain yang terang-terang tidak disenangi oleh jirannya yang lain kecuali kita!
Apa-apahal pun syabas kepada Penulis Blog ini kerana memberi penerangan dan ulasan panjang lebar berkenaan isu ini. Mungkin dia terasa tercabar ataupun terasa perlu berbuat sesuatu tidak seperti pemimpin-pemimpin lain yang hanya terangguk-angguk tanpa tahu biji butir dan tak faham apa yang sebenarnya telah terjadi, sedang terjadi dan akan terjadi.
entah2 tun musa sengaja buat2 sokong paklah tak. pasal tun musakan kuat nasionalisnya.mana mungkin boleh begini saja.atau sengaja mahukan paklah di benci orang melayu
tunggulah dan lihatlah …
Big Guy,
Mana ada melayu mudah lupa?
.. more like.. melayu mudah buat-buat lupa..
Thot of sending you my sept 25 2006 posting on my reaction to MM Lee’s speech at the WB-IMF summit:
I personally find MM Lee Kuan Yew’s recent comments that Malaysian Chinese were being systemically marginalised as more obnoxious than ‘naughty’.
(Lee, who was speaking at a forum on the sidelines of the World Bank-International Monetary Fund meetings, had also said the attitude of neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia towards Singapore was shaped by the way they treated their own ethnic Chinese minorities.
Lee had said that Singapore’s neighbours had problems with their Chinese communities because they were successful and hardworking and “therefore, they are systematically marginalised.”)
Apparently, MM Lee’s remarks manifested his convoluted conception of eugenics and, by extension, Chinese genetic supremacy and cultural dominance in a SEA (as in ocean, and Southeast Asia) of inferior Malay genes and cultural traditions. Hence, it is no surprise that many Southeast Asian Chinese also perceive themselves as superior to the natives and demand that their language, education and culture be put on par, if not above the indigenous languages and cultures. Interestingly though, they seem to subscribe to a different racial heirarchy when they migrate to the US, Canada or Australia, where assimilation into the White Supremacist Culture, Colonialist Language and education system is never an issue, and even being ghettoized in Chinatowns is seen as ‘exotic’.
This disturbing line of thinking – that of an inflated sense of a single race’s inherent capabilities – can then be used to justify enrolling (and passing), hiring and promoting students, graduates and employees from that supposedly superior race. In fact, this erroneous belief has evolved into an unofficial ideology and policy that rationalized the institutionalization of racism as revealed by the following article:
Lee Kuan Yew: Race, Culture and Genes
by Michael D. Barr
Department of History, University of Queensland
Journal of Contemporary Asia v29, n2 (1999)
Racism is rarely far from the surface of Asian societies, and this is especially true of those multiracial societies that feel the need to promote racial tolerance as part of official ideology. Yet even in these cases, promoting racial tolerance does not necessarily imply the promotion of racial indifference. Singapore’s multiracialism, for instance, encourages a high consciousness of one’s race even as it insists on tolerance. Further, it has been considered by many as a covert form of discrimination in favour of the majority Chinese and against the minorities, especially the Malays. This article is an attempt to advance our understanding of Singapore’s idiosyncratic version of multiracialism by casting new light on the thinking of its primary architect, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Despite official denials there can be little doubt that there is an unofficial pro-Chinese bias in Singapore, and that in spite of the structures of “meritocracy” and sometimes because of them, the Malay minority in particular has suffered structural discrimination. Even a cursory survey of recent history confirms this impression. For two decades after separation from Malaysia in 1965, for instance, the Singapore government had an unofficial policy of excluding Malays from the Singapore Armed Forces and the police force because of concerns about their loyalty. Not only did this practice deny Malays a traditional source of employment, but it made other employers reluctant to hire them because they were, technically, still eligible to be called up. (1) At the same time, the government exaggerated, possibly unintentionally, the structural impediments to Malays’ educational advancement. At the time of separation from Malaysia, Malay students in Singapore had already been disadvantaged inadvertently because they were streamed through Malay-language schools which were staffed by under-qualified teachers, and which used substandard Malay-language text books. (2) These schools had very high attrition and failure rates from the beginning, but after separation even the successful students faced unique linguistic and academic hurdles in their pursuit of higher education. After separation, not only did the Malays find that their language had little economic value, but they discovered that their schools had not prepared them for tertiary education in the new Singapore. The first problem was that unlike Chinese-educated Chinese attending Nanyang University, and English-speaking Chinese, Indians and Eurasians attending the University of Singapore, the Malays had no tertiary institutions in which they did not face a language barrier. In fact Malay students’ command of English was so poor that they alone were required to take an oral examination as part of their entry requirements to university. Further, as part of the push for national and economic survival in newly-independent Singapore, university scholarships were restricted to those students pursuing technical and science disciplines, and the inadequately staffed and poorly resourced Malay-stream schools had left their students singularly ill-equipped to qualify or compete for these scholarships. (3) The Malay’s problem was compounded by their continuing socio-economic marginalisation, (4) and by the near-universal perception that their underachievement reflected their racial and cultural defects: that they had grown up in the “soft,” lethargic Malay Culture which did not encourage studiousness, enterprise or hard work. Between their educational and employment disadvantages, and the psychological impact of being told that their problems were the result of their ethnic culture, it is not surprising that Malays are still at an economic disadvantage today.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the saga of Singapore’s Malays, however, is not the actual discrimination, but the fact that Singapore’s multiracial meritocracy has provided the rationale for its justification, and that this rationale has been effective to the point that even Malay teachers have come to accept this “cultural deficit” explanation of Malay underachievement. (5) The perception of the cultural deficiency of the Malays is, to some extent, a continuation of the prejudices fostered by the British colonial authorities who regarded the Malays as slow and lazy because they preferred their agrarian kampong lifestyle to working in tin mines for money. (6) This interpretation, however, ignores the role of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in moulding the ideological and social perceptions of Singaporeans. Although no nation’s history can ever be reduced to the story of one man, Lee Kuan Yew had such a paramount role in making modem Singapore that an understanding of that society cannot be complete without an attempt at understanding Lee himself. The remainder of this article is devoted to contributing to our understanding of Lee’s views on race.
Lee Kuan Yew
Understanding any aspect of Lee Kuan Yew’s career requires a syncretic approach. but fully understanding his racial views stretches holistic analysis to new limits. Lee’s views on race have been a matter of much private, but little published comment. This now changes with the publication of his authorised biography, Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas, (7) in which Lee speaks about race with unprecedented candour. Upon close inspection, Lee’s racial beliefs prove not to be an aberration or idiosyncrasy in his thinking, but the consummation of his world view and his political thought.
Until the late 1990s, Lee rarely allowed his public record to be sullied by any explicit statement that could be construed as racist, though on occasions he has come close to doing so. He has, for instance, argued that there are links between economic performance and race. In 1993, Lee wrote an article for The Economist in which he speculated on the state of the world in the twenty-first century, with special emphasis on Asia. (8) Lee put his own views into the mouth of a fictional Chinese Singaporean, Wang Chang, who then discussed his views with his friend, Ali Alkaff. Lee painted a picture of a prosperous twenty-first century East Asian industrial belt consisting of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and coastal China, while South and South East Asia (except for Singapore) languished by comparison. Singapore, although geographically part Of South East Asia, was economically on a par with the more prosperous East Asian region. (9) In the subsequent “discussion” of these predictions, “Wang Chang” made it clear that race was a factor in his assessment, since he based his forecasting “on a people’s culture, heredity and organisational strengths.” (10) A few years earlier, Lee used his 1989 National Day Rally address to defend the Government’s programme of encouraging Chinese immigration from Hong Kong on the basis that the birth rate of Singapore’s Chinese is lower than that of the Indians and Malays. The numerical preponderance of the Chinese must be maintained, said Lee, “or there will be a shift in the economy, both the economic performance and the political backdrop which makes that economic performance possible.” (11) Lee enumerated several reasons why maintaining the Chinese proportion of the population at current levels was necessary for economic prosperity – including the “culture” and “nature” of the Chinese. Without a hint of irony, Lee also took the opportunity to assure Malays that they need not fear Hong Kong immigrants taking their jobs because the immigrants will all be high income earners. In 1977 Lee treated Parliament to a four hour post-election victory speech which could best be described as “uninhibited.” In this speech, Lee told the multi-racial chamber, “I understand the Englishman. He knows deep in his heart that he is superior to the Welshman and the Scotsman…. Deep here, I am a Chinaman.” (12) In recent times, Lee has not only been more forthright about his racial views but he has also confirmed that he held them at least as early as the beginning of the 1970s. In October 1989, in an interview with Malaysia’s New Straits Times Lee revealed that after he read Mahathir Mohamad’s The Malay Dilemma (13) in 1971 or 1972, he found himself “in agreement with three-quarters of his analysis of the problem” of the economic and educational under-performance of the Malays. (14) According to Lee and Mahathir, the problem was both cultural and genetic. (15) Lee noted with approval that Mahathir’s views were the “result of his medical training, and… he was not likely to change them.” (16)
Indiscretion
While Lee has been moderately circumspect in most of his public statements on race, there have been rare occasions on which he has shown less discretion than usual. The earliest such documented occasion was on 27 December 1967, when Lee addressed a meeting at the University of Singapore. (17) After his speech there was a question and answer session, in which a question was asked about “the most important factor, the X-factor, in development.” (18) Two members of the audience have given the author independent and almost identical accounts of Lee’s answer. According to Chandra Muzaffar, Lee responded in these terms:
“Three women were brought to the Singapore General Hospital, each in the same condition and each needing a blood transfusion. The first, a Southeast Asian was given the transfusion but died a few hours later. The second, a South Asian was also given a transfusion but died a few days later. The third, an East Asian, was given a transfusion and survived. That is the X factor in development.” (19)
Herman Paul independently gave the following account of Lee’s answer: “There were 3 women, one of them from East Asia, another from South Asia and the 3rd from S-E Asia. They were admitted to the Singapore General Hospital. Their condition was precarious, and they all received blood transfusions. The woman from S-E Asia passed away. The woman from East Asia survived. The woman from South-East Asia (20) passed away. ” (21)
Each listener took the Southeast Asian to be a Malay or perhaps a member of one of the aboriginal races of the region. Each of them took the South Asian woman to be an Indian, and the East Asian who survived was Chinese, or perhaps Japanese or Korean. Lee revealed in this speech, as reported by Chandra Muzaffar a perception of a racial hierarchy of Asians, in which the Chinese and other East Asians are at the top, Malays and other Southeast Asians are at the bottom, and Indians and other South Asians are in between. On this occasion Lee made no attempt to disguise his views on race with discussion of related factors, such as culture. He was talking about the inherent, genetic, strength and weakness of the different races. The emphasis that Lee has placed on culture and race in economic development has varied over the years. Only 27 months after Lee argued that race is the “X-factor” in development, Lee credited “ethnic factors” with being one of the variables in economic development, though on this occasion he contradicted his December 1967 statement by arguing that these “ethnic factors” were a minor consideration compared to “cultural factors.” (22) Regardless of the balance between the two factors in Lee’s thinking, there is no room to doubt that both race and culture play related if different roles in Lee’s political thought.
Hierarchy
The hierarchy of races revealed in Lee’s December 1967 parable helps to explain a similar hierarchy of humiliation to which Lee referred four years earlier, when he said, “Humiliation and degradation by foreign European powers is bad enough. It was worse at the hands of a conquering Asian nation like Japan – and it will be even worse if it should be by a neighbouring power in South-East Asia.” (23) In fact, Lee’s racial hierarchy is much more complex than he indicated on either of these occasions. In 1982 he revealed his belief that Jews share with East Asians a place at the top of the racial pyramid. and that both occupy a higher place than Americans:
“Let us not deceive ourselves: our talent profile is nowhere near that of, say, the Jews or the Japanese in America. The exceptional number of Nobel Prize winners who are Jews is no accident. It is also no accident that a high percentage, sometimes 50%, of faculty members in the top American universities on both the east and west coasts are Jews. And the number of high calibre Japanese academics, professionals, and business executives is out of all proportion to the percentage of Japanese in the total American population.” (24)
More recently, commenting upon Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, (25) Lee told his authorised biographers:
“The Bell curve is a fact of life. The blacks on average score 85 per cent on IQ and it is accurate, nothing to do with culture. The whites score on average 100. Asians score more… the Bell curve authors put it at least 10 points higher. These are realities that, if you do not accept, will lead to frustration because you will be spending money on wrong assumptions and the results cannot follow.” (26)
A reading of the evidence cited above suggests that Lee has always had an agenda based on the racial and cultural superiority of Singapore’s Chinese population. If this analysis is accurate, however, it requires a complementary argument which accounts adequately for the fact that Lee did not begin acting on these beliefs until the late 1970s. On the surface, such a line of argument appears plausible, since there are no shortage of external factors which could have restrained Lee’s sinocentric bias until the early 1980s. His early hostility to Chinese education, culture and language, for instance, can be explained by the fact that Lee regarded Chinese culture as a threat to Singapore’s stability because it was so closely associated with Chinese chauvinism, Chinese communism and loyalty to the People’s Republic of China. (27) As well as these internal communal factors, it is known that Lee considered that allowing even the appearance of creating a sinocentric culture in the 1960s or 1970s would have heightened tensions between Singapore and its Malay neighbours. (28) These were sufficient reasons for Lee to continue his campaign of gutting Chinese education and building a communally neutral multiracialism. By 1979, however, Singapore’s political and regional landscape had been totally transformed. Chinese culture was succumbing to the constant incursion of English language education and Western influence through the media. Nanyang University, almost the last institutional bastion of Chinese culture and Chinese communism. was demoralised, (29) and the Chinese-educated were on the verge of becoming a minority in the electorate. (30) This meant that Chinese culture was no longer seen as a major threat to Singapore’s internal stability. Furthermore, Singapore’s relations with both Malaysia and Indonesia had reached a new high thanks to the spirit of regional solidarity within ASEAN, prompted by the fall of Vietnam in 1975. (31) The post-separation siege mentality towards the Malay world was now redundant, if it had ever been valid. This development coincided roughly with the retirement, enforced or otherwise, of most of the “old -guard” of PAP leaders. By the mid-1980s Lee had surrounded himself with younger second generation leaders Substantially dependent upon his patronage, thus relieving Lee of another constraint. The sinicization of Singapore was now a political possibility for Lee, and according to the logic of this argument, he then took the opportunity to act on his racial beliefs.
While this thesis goes some way towards explaining Lee’s actions, it faces serious problems. It is important. for instance, to acknowledge that not only did Lee show no signs of acting on Chinese racial or cultural supremacist beliefs until the very end of the 1970s, but for many of those years he was widely demonised as an enemy of Chinese culture. Alex Josey wrote in 1974 that “within ten or fifteen years, Lee Kuan Yew expects the Chinese language to be unimportant, ” (32) and this seemed a fair assessment. The majority of Chinese parents were choosing English as the first language for their children’s education since English was the language which led to good jobs and upward social mobility. (33) Nanyang University was struggling to survive and was under a continuing cloud of suspicion that it was fostering Chinese chauvinism and communism. This suspicion had lead the Government to “disperse” former communist Chinese-educated students to universities in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, rather than allow them to study at Nanyang. (34) In 1971 two Chinese language newspapers, Sin Chew Jit Poh and Nanyang Siang Pau were brought to heel for allegedly promoting Chinese chauvinism and accusing the government of killing Chinese education and the Chinese language.(35)
These factors by themselves undermine the thesis that Lee was always a closet Chinese Supremacist. Consideration must be given also to the testimony of Lee’s close associates from those early decades, who flatly contradict the picture of Lee Kuan Yew as a Chinese cultural or racial supremacist. Goh Keng Swee was Lee’s right hand man for twenty years in government, at one stage rising to the position of First Deputy Prime Minister. When Goh was shown Chandra Muzaffar’s account of Lee’s December 1967 parable, he was genuinely shocked and lost for words. Finally he stammered. “I can’t imagine he spoke in such crude terms.” (36)
E.W. Barker, a Minister in Lee’s Cabinet for more than twenty years and his friend for more than two decades before that, was equally adamant in interview that “there was nothing of this race business in Cabinet. I wouldn’t have served if it was a pro-Chinese government, but it was not.” (37) While Lee believed in his heart that the Chinese were genetically and culturally superior, he separated this belief from his public policy. Only in the late 1970s did his racial beliefs begin to exert a noticeable influence upon public policy. The discrepancy between the picture of the Chinese, racial and cultural supremacist which we are able to paint from a collage of’ Lee’s words is barely reconcilable with Lee’s public record up to the late 1970s and with the accounts given by his close associates of forty and fifty years. It is obvious that the thesis that Lee was restrained from acting on his beliefs by external forces is insufficient. As is the case with most aspects of Lee’s career, the story is much more complicated, and requires a detailed study of the gradual development of his political thought.
Origins
At this stage it is important to consider the origins of Lee’s racial views. It is natural to assume that Lee’s beliefs stem directly from prejudices he learnt as a child. While there is a certain likelihood in this line of approach, Lee’s own accounts suggest that he arrived at his racial views as a result of observation, empirical enquiry and study as an adult: “I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that’s the most unlikely thing ever to have been, because millions of years have passed over evolution, people have scattered across the face of this earth, been isolated from each other, developed independently had different intermixtures between races, peoples, climates, soils. …I didn’t start off with that knowledge. But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I’ve come to.” (38)
Lee maintains that at some stage before the late 1960s he had acted under the assumption that all races were equal, but bitter disappointment convinced him that the reality was otherwise: “When we were faced with the reality that, in fact, equal opportunities did not bring about more equal results, we were faced with [an] ideological dilemma. … In other words, this Bell curve, which Murray and Herrnstein wrote about, became obvious to us by the late ’60s.” (39)
The evolution of Lee’s racism was a long process. According to Lee himself he began to form his views on race while he was a student in London. (40) He has described how his ideas firmed in 1956 on a visit to Europe and London, (41) and then reached their full force in the Malaysia period. (42) The details and implications of Lee’s account of the development of his racial views are considered later in this article, but one must be sceptical that his adult mind was ever a tabula rasa on the question of race. Lee likes to consider himself a pure empiricist who can rise above preconceptions and prejudices, but it seems reasonable to assume that the very questions he asked as an adult, and his early fascination with questions of race sprang from an existing, possibly unconscious world view in which race was an all-pervasive feature.
In racially conscious Singapore it would have been difficult to have grown up without exposure to racial stereotyping. Further, the Chinese of Lee’s parents’ and grandparents’ generations grew up in a culture which emphasised familial piety and ancestor worship and who were naturally proud of both their ancestry and their tenuous association with the glories of Chinese civilisation. Ethnic pride can slip easily into racial prejudice in the most racially unconscious society, and Singapore was and is anything but racially unconscious. We might believe Lee when he maintains that he had, at some stage in his early adult life, come to the intellectual conviction that all races are equal. His childhood, however, was steeped in racial stereotyping that meant that questions of race were never far from the surface of his dynamically inquisitive mind, and deep seated stereotypes were always ready to challenge race-blind explanations of the world. Hence, when he visited other countries, even as a student, he took his racial consciousness with him. He has told his biographers, “I visited Europe during my vacation (as a student) and then saw India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Indonesia, Japan, Germany … You look for societies which had been more successful and you ask yourself why.” (43) Note Lee’s assumption that a society’s “success” can be judged by a universal standard of progress and development.
For Lee it was natural to judge peoples according to the how high up the ladder of progress they had climbed, and his background made him prone to place people in racial and cultural categories when making such judgements.
Rationale
Lee may have brought the kernel of his racial prejudices intact from childhood, but as an adult he has woven an intricate argument to rationalise and develop his view. His argument rests on four pillars: an environmental determinism based upon a distortion of Arnold Toynbee’s “Challenge and Response” thesis; a medieval scientism which gives an important role to ductless glands in determining a person’s and a people’s drive to achieve; a Lamarckian view of evolution; and a belief in culturally-based eugenics and dysgenics. The influence of Arnold Toynbee on Lee since the mid-1960s is well documented in speeches and inter-views. From 1967 onwards Lee acknowledged Toynbee as a source of his ideas. (44) It is less well-known that Lee began quoting Toynbee’s “Challenge and Response” thesis in Cabinet meetings as soon as the PAP came to power in 1959, (45) and that Toynbee was widely read and vigorously discussed in Lee’s circle of friends at Cambridge University. (46) The connection between Toynbee’s thesis and Lee Kuan Yew’s racial beliefs is convoluted, but it is the lynch pin of Lee’s rationalisation of his Chinese racial suprematism.
Do also read A. Kadir Jasin’s Malaysia-Singapore: Who will win the poker game?
AsiaViews, Edition: 34/III/Aug/2006
“While Malaysia is embroiled in a political spat between the past and present Prime Ministers, its southern neighbour Singapore, well-known for its astuteness and opportunistic streak, might just gain the upper hand.
DON’T YOU JUST LOVE SINGAPOREANS? IN THEIR OWN ANNOYING kiasu way, they’re pretty nice fellows. And we have to hand it to them that they are good.
Driven by an extreme fear of losing, they have developed for themselves a survival kit that is second to none in this region…..
Continuing my response to MM Lee’s provocative comments, I would like to register my protest about his unsubstantiated claims and would instead focus on his blatant political agenda of sinicization of Singapore and, by extension, Southeast Asia.
My indignation was further fueled last night when NIA and I failed to find any signage that would lead us to KLPAC to watch ‘Anak Bulan Di Kampong Wa’ Hassan’ by Alfian bin Sa’at (http://www.kakiseni.com), a play that captures the sense of dispossession/displacement among the Singapore Malays when the last Malay kampung succumbs to modernization. May I reiterate that my maternal family lived that very experience when our kampung homes and lifestyles at Kampung Melayu Kaki Bukit, Kampung Wa’ Tanjung, Geylang Serai, Sembawang, etc. had to make way for “progress and development” in the form of factories and high-rise flats (”Flattened and flatted”, according to my cousin).
Far from romanticising an idyllic Malay kampung life, especially in terms of hygiene, sanitation and drainage infrastructure, I found myself drawn into the discourse of alternative economic models some fifteen years ago while searching for the ‘meaning’ of development (see for example, No. 11 Treaty on Alternative Economic Models, http://habitat.igc.org/treaties/at-11.htm, published works of Sohail Inayatullah and Amartya Sen).
The dominant economic paradigm is at least one theory that MM Lee and MM (Mahathir Mohamad), Malaysia’s former (?) PM, both embrace and uphold. The other would, of course, be their contested theory of eugenics that propunded the genetic and cultural inferiority of the Malays. The “soft”, lethargic Malay Culture is the simple and perfect explanation for the “cultural deficit” thesis on “educational under-performance” of the Malays (and thus professional incompetency may I add) in the face of rapid Modernization and Globalization.
Here, I would like to argue, based on my own experience of teaching at both public and private institutions of higher learning for more than twenty years, it is generally vision and policy that determine the standards of excellence and the quality of academics and undergraduates rather than genetic and cultural factors. The consumer ethos towards education and knowledge, that is, students as “clients” and academic staff as “service providers”, as succintly described in an article “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: I. As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students” (userwww.service.emory.edu/~pthoma4/Hirst-Maritain-Freire-Noddings-Edmundson.htm), is a major contributing factor to the deteriorating state of higher education here and elsewhere. So, allow me to state the painful truth that the intellectual quality and language proficiency, for both English and Bahasa Melayu, of local undergraduates, regardless of their ethnic background, have really gone down the drain over the last twenty years.
However, perhaps endemic to Malaysia is the self-defeating practice of instituting a zero-failure policy (in other other words, 100 percent passes) as a denial of reality (that there will be students who do not study and will, therefore, fail their examinations) or safeguard against disappointment, mostly amongst administrators and parents. That is the simple reason why we are churning out more and more sub-standard and unemployable graduates every year (www.islam-online.net/English/News/2006-09/09/05.shtml).
“Menang sorak, kampung tergadai” (Living in a fantasy world, that ignores current realities – a liberal translation) is the myth we live by as evidenced through speeches by elite champions of ethnic interests at convocation ceremonies which touted the phenomenal growth of student enrolment in a short period of time. The case of Nor Amalina Che Bakri who scored 17A1s in the 2004 SPM Exams and the unsavoury response to her achievement (blog.geminigeek.com/archives/2006/03/manual-spammer-is-stupid) is symptomatic of the residual impact of intense ethnic competition in the field of education. And Malaysians certainly do not need incitements to racial hatred and public discontent from neighboring leaders of state, south and north of the border (recently ousted and topic for another day) to further exacerbate ethnic rivalry. Amin.
assalamualaiakum… baru sahaja terbaca topik yang menarik ni… walaupun saya asal sabah… tapi ayah saya anak jati johor… dan isu di atas sedikit mendukacitakan saya… banyak perkara pelik dan mostly negative setelah pimpinan umno ni bertukar tangan…. kalo dahulu 2-3 tahun yang lepas… isu2 yang timbul hanyalah isu biasa yg kebanyakannya melibatkan politik..tapi sekarang ni lain plak isunya..perkara politik kelihatan sudah tidak menjadi masalah..tetapi perkara yang lebih berat makin berleluasa..isu tanah melayu di ceroboh sewenangnya oleh bangsa cina…isu gejala sosial yang melampau2… isu tanah melayu…isu keagaaman… apa nak jadi malaysia… Ya Allah ya Tuhanku..selamatkan laa malaysia dan orang melayu….aminn..
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A
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Sebagai anak melayu jati daripada Kampung Awat, Segamat Johor dan cucu kepada Hj Abdul Manaf b Hj Jamaludin dan cicit kepada Hj Jamaludin dan cicau kepada Hj Zabidi, iaitu datuk keturunan saya yang membuka Kampung Awat, Batu Anam, Segamat Johor, saya berasa bangga dengan adanya South Johor Economic Region (SJER). Tahniah kepada Sultan Johor dan kepimpinan Johor kerana usaha murni mereka bagi mempertabatkan jajahan Johor