Dr M, you are confused: No one community is in the majority in Malaysia

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, a medical graduate who switched to politics as a more lucrative calling, has once too often trotted out a distorted view on what the majority or minority in the country means.

In his warped and jaundiced view, majority simplistically means the Malays while minority means the others in the country. This is a misnomer.

He has reiterated this view in the wake of recent “warnings” by disgraced former Inspector General of Police “Black-Eye” Abdul Rahim Noor that a “human rights wave, akin to communist terrorism, was sweeping the country”.


Mahathir, echoing Rahim Noor, said the views of the majority – he cited democracy as a fig leaf – had to prevail over that of the minority. At the same time, while paying lip service to notions of democracy, he could not understand the fixation with “western concepts of human rights and the pre-occupation with individual rights over the good of the majority”.

In a contradiction in terms, his majority-minority view notwithstanding, Mahathir has gone on to lament that the Malays are now in danger of becoming a minority since they are now split into three camps led by Umno, PAS and Parti Keadilan Rakyat.

Sarawak Malays actually Muslim Bidayuh and Muslim Iban

Mahathir should probably mention four camps among the Malays since the Sarawak Malays – actually Muslim Bidayuh in the 1st Division and Muslim Iban in the other Divisions referred to as Malays by the Brooke Dynasty – are led by the Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu presided over by 'kleptocrat' Taib Mahmud, himself a Melanau Dayak, for over three decades.

If purely ethnicity is the basis of consideration, the Malays are not a homogenous community at all in Malaysia and not that large as it’s commonly believed. Professor William Roff estimated in his “Origin of Malay Nationalism” that as late as 1885, about 85 per cent of the so-called Malay population of Peninsular Malaysia were in fact not Malays but either immigrants or descendents of immigrants.

Many people who pass off as Malay are in fact nothing of that sort. One would think that one must be a Native of Peninsular Malaysia to be Malay and yet we know that any numbers of Muslims, who are not Malays, and therefore not Native to Peninsular Malaysia, are passing themselves off as Malay. This applies not only to people from the Indian subcontinent and China but also from various islands in Indonesia and elsewhere.

The only majority worthy of mention under the rule of law is that obtained in the legislature.

Such a majority may not be based on one ethnic grouping but comprise various ethnic groupings coming together on a common platform.

If the ruling Barisan Nasional is cited as a case in point, Malay legislators make up less than half the seats held by the coalition.

It is the same case with the opposition alliance, the Pakatan Rakyat (PR), in Selangor, Penang, Kedah and Kelantan, the four states which they have governed from March 2008 and from before. There are as many Malays in PR as in the BN.

Also, Pakatan has as many Malay members as BN

If all Malay legislators in Parliament and the respective state assemblies, across both sides of the political divide, were to come together under one platform, Mahathir could of course rightly claim that the Malays are now in the majority in the respective legislatures. However, the chances of this happening are equivalent to a lightning strike twice on the same spot, an all too rare phenomenon.

In Penang, for example, the Malays probably form a slight majority vis-à-vis the Chinese and other non-Malays. Yet no Malay has been Chief Minister of the island state since independence.

Likewise, in Sarawak, the Dayaks form a majority in the state at slightly over 50 per cent of the population, and almost but not quite half the seats in the state assembly. It’s the same story with the 31 Parliament seats in the state.

Even so, except for the first two Chief Ministers for brief spells, no Christian Dayak has held the post. Both Taib and his predecessor, his maternal uncle Abdul Rahman Ya’kub, are Melanau, a Dayak minority community which is mostly either Christian or pagan.

In Sabah, the Dusun – including the Kadazan or urban Dusun and the Murut – are the original people of the land but find themselves reduced by 500,000 over the years to just 650,000, a figure which refers to only non-Muslims. No one knows what happened to the 500,000, a figure cited recently by former Sabah Attorney General Herman Luping.

The Dusun numbers pale in comparison vis-à-vis the 3.5 million population in the state today. The exact ethnic breakdown wasn’t immediately available. In 2005, when the population was 3.2 million, it was disclosed that only 1.5 million were Malaysians while the remaining 1.7 million were foreigners including illegal immigrants, legally-employed workers, and 600,000 who had obtained local documents via the backdoor.

If it’s any consolation, the Dusun are still considered the single biggest ethnic group in Sabah although this isn’t reflected in the state assembly where the community’s non-Muslim members have less than a third of the 60 state seats. Muslim Dusuns are generally found among the Bisaya, Orang Sungei – think MP Bung Mokhtar -- and in Ranau.

In Peninsular Malaysia, the Orang Asli or the original people, number less than a quarter million. They are an endangered species as Muslim missionaries have embarked on a relentless campaign to eradicate their animistic beliefs, culture, customs, traditions, dialects and languages. Only Unesco can save them.

The bottomline is that Mahathir’s majority-minority theory does not hold water in the politics, law and legislatures of the land.

PM need not be Malay

The Federal Constitution, to cite another example, does not state that a Malay must be Prime Minister. It simply reads that His Majesty, the King, will call upon a member of the House of Representatives, who in his opinion is likely to command the confidence of the majority of the members in the House, to be sworn in as prime Minister, and he will then go on to appoint his Council of Ministers. There’s no mention of a Deputy Prime Minister in the Federal Constitution.

On this token, anyone can be Prime Minister of Malaysia, not necessarily a member of a so-called major community in Malaysia or even Malay, who in Mahathir’s view is the majority community in Malaysia.

If Malaysians are to ever break free of the politics of race and religion – with apologies to Hindraf Makkal Sakthi’s stress on the underclass – the emphasis should only be on parliamentary majority and a majority in the respective state legislatures.

While the majority – seat winners -- have a right to rule, the minority – seat losers -- have the democratic right to be heard, something not possible under our first-past-the-post electoral system.

Any other talk of majority and minority, Mahathir or no Mahathir, is not worthy of consideration and should be cast into the dustbin of history.

No one community is in the majority in Malaysia.

Written by  K Suresh Malaysia Chronicle