is not someone's name (though it is not unlikely that there might be someone of that name) is the term in Cantonese, for someone who stirs trouble.
'Malays now divided into three groups : Mahathir' was a recent headline from Malaysiakini.
My immediate reaction was 'Why does he care whether the Malays are divided into three or more groups unless it has to do with political control, especially by Umno? Why can't the people be grouped according to certain political beliefs and aspiration instead of race, race and race?
With a clear majority in terms of race in the country, and political control, even a prospective change of government to Pakatan is going to be Malay controlled. The attempt at creating suspicions and mutual distrust among the people is unwelcome of a former Premier who had his many years of almost dictatorial rule.
Could Barack Obama be President of the United States of America if the people of the most powerful country were not matured politically and had insisted that the President must be a White because of its majority in population? He had even admitted to being a Muslim. Wasn't that an achievement for the Muslim movements worldwide?
In Malaysia, the idea of a non-Malay and/or non-Muslim Prime Minister is still considered almost impossible. Does anyone believe that the Nons are working on something which has some semblance to that?
Under the general climate of insecurities perpetuated by Umno, I can understand the opposition to anything that promises some form of equality of the races, like 1Malaysia and NEM, which are taken with a pinch of salt by cynics right from the start anyway.
The opposition to the proposed 40% participation of Non-Malays in the Kg. Baru project in KL begs the question by many Nons: Did we ask for it? Nobody in their right mind would want to participate in anything that are strongly opposed by many... unless of course, there are $$$ to be made. There are no shortage of such people who could have secretly asked. To the majority of the Nons, it never occurred to them and would never have tried.
The simple economics law of Supply and Demand works in such a way that if there is no Demand, the price of things cannot go up. If we look around us, there are so many Malay reserved lands, properties and so on, with strict conditions on ownership, transfer and usage; their prices are only less than half the commercial values of others. The reason was simply the lack of demand because in practical terms (purchasing power and so on), more than half of the available market was shut out by the conditions.
This is similar to the situation I was in before: Because of tax reasons, I had to advertise for the sale of company even though we wanted to sell the land only. Out of 10 serious enquiries, almost all refused to go any further because they were interested in the land but not the company. Effectively, the condition of sale had shut out the actual demand for the land.
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