Dato' Seri
S. Samy Vellu's Indian Dilemma
The MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, is very confused these days. Despite his strenuous efforts in acquiring wealth for himself, something which in his view redounds on the Indian community's good reputation, many Indians, especially professionals and others, want a wider role for the community than be proud that its leader is a Bolehland Midas with the proclovities of Mr Scrooge. Dato' Seri Samy Vellu takes such views as this as an insult to his, and the Indian's community's, intelligence that he loses his mind over it. How else could one explain the verbal fisticuffs he had in Parliament this week with the DAP MP for Teluk Intan, Mr M. Kulasegaram, over the role of the Indian community. He insists the Indians do well, thank you, better than they could ever have. This despite the reality of active marginalisation of the community, with the MIC disinterested in their fate. The Indian community is an underclass more determinedly than any other community. The MIC has deliberately ignored their plight, the party's aim to ensure that the lollies and goodies are shared by the president's men. Any who challenges this view is ungrateful, a man who should not be called an Indian, he avers. He would accept only pure unadulterated sycophancy from an Indian. The man's anger therefore is understandable. Three thousand representatives of Indian groups throughout the country met at the Chinese Assembly Hall last Sunday, 11 July 1999, to discuss their problems. The MIC was invited, but like UMNO Youth, it does not see why such meetings to be held if it is not MIC that is organising it. Not one leading MIC leader turned up to contribute to the non-party discussions on how to redress the ails of the Indian community, and how they can be galvanised to ensure fairplay and justice for them and how they can be a vehicle for national development. The MIC finds such demands and discussions treacherous. In Johore, the MIC tried, without success, to circumcribe the activities of an NGO, the Johore Indian Business Association (JIBA), who does more good to the Indian community in less than a decade than the MIC could in a century. Studs farms for the leader in Australia take precedence over low cost housing for Indians. Take the Putra and Star LRT, and you would see on sections of the route horrific slums -- and within a few kilometres of the Petronas Twin Towers -- of Indians. Every high profile actions of the MIC failed, and continues to fail. The primary
industries minister, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik, insulted the Indian community,
the MIC kept quiet. Instead, it produced a report, posthaste, about
its plans to introduce monthly wages. Not that much would come out
of it. The MIC leaders are so badly compromised that even the government
of which it is a member ignores its
Last Sunday's
meeting is the result of continual MIC refusal to address the ails of the
Indian community. It came about with the realisation that the community
would regress unless individuals took a hand and work to ensure its relevance.
The list of what is wrong with the community is long, and gets longer with
MIC's strenous efforts. The
Malaysian
democracy streaks out into the sunlight after 44 years under the National
Front banyan tree. The Malay and Indian communities want a role for
themselves than as doormats. The Chinese community, as it has in
every country in Southeast Asia, is comfortable being doormats to authority
so long as they can survive on contracts obtained by hook or by crook.
But even here, the younger breed of Chinese question whether its traditional
role should not be revalued. The New Economic Policy ensured that
the Malay would no longer be identified as syces and
M.G.G. Pillai
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