By : JOE FERNANDEZ
LETTER Reader Chong Tet Loi
claims in “Never let extremists have their way” (Sunday Forum 24 Feb, 2013
Daily Express) that MANY (people?) were amused by my take in “Both These
Sultans Never Owned Sabah” (Sunday Forum 17 Feb, 2013).
No doubt he conducted an
instant Sabah-wide survey after my letter to conclude that 'MANY' were 'amused'
by it and probably he would have liked to add that quite a few even died from
laughter.
I don’t know Chong from
Adam’s. I hope that he is not a coffeeshop lawyer. If he’s a lawyer, heaven
forbid!
I don’t know either if Chong
is smart. If he’s smart, he’s not too smart either.
No offence meant. Nothing
personal. We all make mistakes. To err is human, to forgive is divine.
Ignorance is bliss, a little knowledge is dangerous. That doesn’t prevent many
people from ventilating their ignorance in public for MANY, as Chong pointed
out, to be “amused”. If only these MANY would come forward and state their
piece!
In fact, I readily 'concede'
that I am one of those 'guilty' of routinely 'ventilating my ignorance in
public', as the accusations go. In that sense, I am a glutton for punishment as
well. Chong, if it’s any consolation, is in good company.
But if my ventilation of 'ignorance'
remains unrebutted or unchallenged beyond a shadow of doubt, surely then it
must enter the realms of being the Gospel Truth, for want of a better term.
The writer has accused me of
a cardinal sin: writing to impress (show-off is the word he used), no doubt
rather than writing to express.
This is really so ridiculous
that it should not be dignified with any comment.
Is Chong trying to convince
us that he’s a subject matter expert in the English language and things
Borneon?
I am not like Terence Netto
of malaysiakini, a self-appointed specialist in emptiness of thought, who in
defending Anwar Ibrahim doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going. Netto can
really say a lot without saying anything in particular.
Those who know me will
testify that I am also not like Anwar Ibrahim the political chameleon, Netto’s
hero, who unfortunately for us all wants to be our next Prime Minister, driven
like Najib by the delusion that the post is his ancestral birth right.
Unlike Anwar, I always mean
what I say and say what I mean. I never write to impress but only to express. I
never use one word more, when one word less will do. Never a difficult word
when there’s a simpler word for it.
Chong is also gravely
mistaken when he claims, in a highly politicised and emotionally-charged take,
that I harbour ill-will towards half-Natives and particularly Sinos.
Nothing could be further
from the truth. What has ill-will, even if true, got to do with anything?
My purported ill-will alone
will not be sufficient to deny the half-Natives their human rights. So, why
bring up any purported ill-will to detract, disrupt and distract from the
issue? Why not clarify and defend the Sino-Natives if I have infringed on any of
their rights?
Inter-marriage, harmony, and
goodwill, or the lack of it, is not the issue here either.
I reiterate my earlier
statement, at the risk of being labelled an extremist, that many Sino-Natives
in Sabah don’t have even a drop of Orang Asal or other Native blood in them.
Those who don’t believe this
statement can just take a walk to the nearest Amanah Saham Bumiputera (ASB)
counter where Chinese-looking “Sino-Natives” with Chinese names are made to run
the gauntlet. We can hear them cursing and swearing in Chinese among
themselves, much to the amusement of the others, as they are often made to wait
for as long as three hours while checks are made into their background.
This matter can easily be
settled, on a case-by-case basis, by Sino-Natives producing a DNA report. If no
Dusunic, Murutic, Suluk or Bajau DNA, don’t claim to be Sino-Native in Sabah!
I was careful not to use the
Sino-Native as an example in my Feb 17 take and instead referred to the
Indo-Natives who are really very tiny in number in Sabah when compared with the
former.
All I am saying is that one
cannot be Chinese and Native in Sabah at the same time. Either one opts to be a
Native or a Chinese. There are procedures for this and I have already spelt
them out. If there do seem any contradictions between this take and my earlier
one on Feb 17, consider this has the true and correct version.
If the long-suffering
Sino-Natives want to stop being a political punching bag, they should not leave
their fate entirely in the hands of their myopic leaders and self-appointed
opinion leaders like Chong who keep elephant-sized egos as pets.
Since it doesn’t serve any
purpose whatsoever, I have no similar DNA advice for the obviously just-arrived
from India Tamil Muslims, for example, who queue up at the ASB counter proudly
clutching their unit trust books.
The Constitution allows
Indian Muslims in Malaysia to claim Malay, and by extension Bumiputera status,
but does this privilege also extend to those who just got off the boat from
Tamil Nadu or from elsewhere in the Indian sub-continent?
Why they are not made to run
the gauntlet by ASB just like the Sino-Natives is a bit of a mystery?
The National Registration
Department (NRD) in a recent statement in the local media clarified that they
don’t decide on Native status. It’s right in a way. We should all re-read the
Chief Secretary’s circular of Nov 2010 on the issue. The NRD, it must be noted,
is a Federal Government Department, and is duty-bound to comply with any policy
directive from the Chief Secretary.
The said circular does not
refer to Natives but half-Bumiputera. Having said that, the proof of the
pudding is in the eating.
The NRD, no doubt in its
confusion, does not re-issue birth certificates to half-Bumiputera with the
entry Bumiputera under race.
The only exception I know is
a half-Orang Asal girl who was issued with a birth certificate which carried
the term, “Bumiputera Sabah Bukan Islam” in the entry for race. That was two
decades or more before the Chief Secretary’s said circular. This particular
girl was even questioned recently on her race by a puzzled Immigration at the
Kota Kinabalu International Airport. But that’s a different story.
In Sabah, the NRD will only
enter Dusun, Murut etc or Suluk, Bajau etc when re-issuing birth certificates
to half-Bumiputera. That’s getting into Orang Asal and other Native territory
and clearly a contradiction in terms if the half-Bumiputera concerned is not at
least partly of Orang Asal stock.
In Sarawak, the Immigration
Department will enter Iban, Bidayuh, Melanau, and Orang Ulu for half Bumiputera
in their passport details despite these applicants holding birth certificates without
these classifications.
The NRD Sarawak routinely
refers all applications from half-Bumiputera for re-issuance of birth
certificates – as per the Chief Secretary’s policy circular to the Native Court for a declaration. Here,
no half-Orang Asal will be declared Orang Asal.
Let’s make a distinction
between Orang Asal, Native and Bumiputera based on Adat, history and
jurisprudence. Let’s not get into myths, fairy tales and bad political
propaganda.
Orang Asal need not be
defined by the Constitution or law – Acts, Enactments, and Ordinances,
administrative but only by history and Adat.
That’s why the Orang Asal of
Sabah refused to be entered and defined in the Native Interpretation Ordinance.
They considered that the Supreme Insult.
There’s no need for DNA
studies, notwithstanding my earlier take on DNA reports for Sino-Natives, since
the entire population of Southeast Asia is descended from dark-skinned
Dravidians (archaic whites) who made their way from South India along the Asian
coast to South China and Taiwan and mated with the Mongolian (yellow-skinned by
now after specialisation) tribes living there.
These Mongolian tribes were
descended from one branch of the Dravidians who broke away from the main group
in Afghanistan which entered the Indian sub-continent.
Orang Asal in Sabah refers
only to the Dusunic including Kadazan or urban Dusun and Murutic groupings.
These are the people to first settle down in the empty expanse of a
geographically defined area – Sabah, Brunei, northern Sarawak, and the
headwaters in Borneo where three nations meet – and did not leave remnants of
their population outside this defined area, and if so, not in any great
numbers.
Orang Asal means Original
People or Indigenous – also in using the terms employed by the United Nations
-- as in Adat and history.
Orang Asal also means Native
but as the Native Interpretation Ordinance shows, the term also includes people
who are clearly not Orang Asal. In short, all Orang Asal are Natives but not
all Natives are Orang Asal.
In Sabah, the terms Orang
Asal and other Natives should suffice but a further difficulty was introduced
when Tunku Abdul Rahman in Malaya coined the term Bumiputera, a Sanskrit word
meaning 'son of the soil'.
The reason for coming up
with this term was because the Malay-speaking communities in Malaya - Bugis,
Javanese, Minang, Acehnese, Arab Muslims, Indian Muslims etc – are not the
Orang Asal of the peninsular. Neither are they considered Natives.
The Federal Constitution
merely defines the term Malay. This definition is not ethnic but political,
subsequently constitutional, and in essence denotes a Malay Nation in Malaysia
without Territory.
Malaya and Malaysia,
incidentally, are named after the Malay language which began as a dialect in
Cambodia and was developed by the Hindus, later the Buddhists, to become the
lingua franca of the Archipelago. The Hindus infused Sanskrit words into Malay and
the Buddhists did the same with Pali (a Sanskrit dialect) terms.
The existence of the Malay
language by no means denotes the existence of a Malay race.
Malay aside, Indians and
Chinese are Nations in Malaya and Malaysia without territory. Orang Asal, Sabah
and Sarawak are Nations in Malaysia with Territory.
With one stroke of the
bureaucratic pen on Bumiputera, Tunku included the Malay-speaking communities
in Malaya in the same category as the Orang Asal and other Natives in the
country for the purpose of doling out Government aid to certain communities.
One could argue further that
Bumiputera are not Natives and certainly not Orang Asal.
In that sense, the NRD is
right when it said that it does not decide on Native status. The Chief
Secretary’s circular merely refers to Bumiputera status. However, all Orang
Asal are Native and Bumiputera while other Natives are Bumiputera but not Orang
Asal.
The term Bumiputera does not
exist in law or the Constitution despite what Chong claims about “Stephens and
his half-Native company”.
The best definition for
Bumiputera can only be a citizen by operation of law who is the issue of a
citizen by operation of law. This means that the majority of the Indians and
Chinese, among others in Malaysia, are Bumiputera.
I will rebut the rest of
Chong’s take in his Feb 24 letter in a separate piece.
Again, if there do seem any
contradictions between this take and my earlier one on Feb 17, consider this
has the true and correct version.
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