Tag: Malay

Malay Businesses are doing Far Better Than The Chinese

I just got back from my home state Kedah. Over the weekend we went up north to my second wife’s hometown in Alor Setar and Jitra. With MCO and whatnot, it’s been a while since we were back in Kedah.

An amazing photo of Jalan Raja Post Office in Alor Setar. Just a 5-minute walk from Pekan Rabu.

Growing up in Sungai Petani in the 80s and 90s, you get to see Penang progressed from where they were to northern economic powerhouse.

Of course growing up in the good old Kedah with 76% of the population are of rural Malays, spending more than a decade in government school with 90% of my friends being Malays, one tend to filter one’s view through a kinda racially-driven lens.

Growing up, we were made to believe that the Chinese took all the lands, buildings and whatnot in Penang and drove the Malays out of Tanjung, towards Balik Pulau. The Malays sold their lands to the Chinese as the Chinese made them an offer they can’t refuse.

I remember back in the day, I asked some of the elders around me, how come the Chinese can afford to offer the Malays that much money for their land?

The answer was simple, “Depa kapiaq takdak agama, depa menega boleh menipu. Kita Islam tak boleh menipu. Depa boleh rasuah sini sana, kita tak boleh. Sebab tu depa kaya pastu beli abih semua.”. Loosely translated to, “They (The Chinese) don’t believe in Islam so they can lie and cheat in doing business. We Muslims can’t lie and cheat. They can bribe here and there, we can’t. That’s how they get to be so rich and bought everything up.”

“Depa kapiaq takdak agama, depa menega boleh menipu. Kita Islam tak boleh menipu. Depa boleh rasuah sini sana, kita tak boleh. Sebab tu depa kaya, pastu beli abih semua”

I believed we Malays have caught up to the Chinese. We are now as good as them if not better, than the Chinese when it comes to running a business. Don’t believe me? Let me share with you some of the amazing success stories I’ve read in the news lately.

A business with people at the heart of it.

Let’s start with the proud folks from down south. Knowing that Malaysia is growing rapidly and in need of cheap labours, several high ranking government officials and high ranking uniformed officials banded together and started a business to smuggle Indonesian migrant. These astonishingly innovative businessmen and businesswomen are of course all Malays. Chief among them is the Asst’ Director of Immigration Department, a Malay lady, her right hand man, a Malay; Construction worker, a Malay as well; ferry ticket agent, also a Malay; and a security guard, you guessed it right, a Malay as well.

The poor Myanmar refugees can’t pay to be smuggled in so these Malay businesspersons, can’t make money that way. Hence they don’t really care about the Myanmar refugees lah. But the Indonesian can pay them good money, so they smuggled them in by the truckloads. These people smuggled into the country definitely helped the economy to grow. How else would we build the roads, houses and buildings? Of course they are taking valuable jobs for Malaysians in the country but the we the Malays make money in smuggling them so it’s okay lah. With the Myanmar, we can’t make any money. So this is better lah.

I’m pretty proud of them, they have successfully helped to grow Johor and supported the businesses there with cheap foreign labour by smuggling human beings into our country. This really is an import export enterprise here. Importing and exporting people that is.

Hidup Melayu! Long Live Malays!

A business with our children at the heart of it.

The second case, is close to all our hearts. It involves our kids and our schools. The schools has always been a Malay friendly industry. Canteen provider are mostly Malays. Security guard suppliers, Malays. Stationeries, Malays. Teachers, mostly Malays, Headmasters/Mistress, Malays. Officers in PPD and Ministry, mostly Malays as well.

So when I read in the papers that ‘Boarding schools supplied with food items past expiry dates, no expiry dates, no halal certification, non approved food supplies, dirty kitchen based on the recent Auditor General report’, I can only imagine that our Malay teachers, headmasters, assistant headmasters at government religious schools, technical, vocational, residential schools are doing a mighty fine job in inspecting and supervising the kitchen, stocks and purchasing from great suppliers. Let’s list down some of the innovations introduced by these contractors and school administrators that have catapulted the Malays to the forefront:

  1. 30% of the schools have expired food items more than 1.5 years past.
  2. 71% of the schools have food items that’s not certified halal by JAKIM.
  3. 55% of the schools have unapproved brand of food items.
  4. 21% of the schools have expired food items more than 1.5 years past.
  5. 30% of the schools have dirty kitchens.
Just a photo of a nicely cooked and arranged food in a canteen. Definitely not a photo of the non-halal certified, expired and non-approved food cooked in dirty kitchens.

And the suppliers to these government religious schools, boarding schools and other schools are mostly Malays as well. So these Malays business man are definitely upping the game to be on the same level as the cheating and lying Chinese businessman who aren’t Muslims. I’m incredibly proud of my Malay brethren here.

Especially when these brethren of mine are teachers and headmasters/headmistress and school administrators. Kudos to the Malay suppliers as well. They definitely got the contract after dealing the said Malay Headmasters, Teachers, PPD and Ministry Officers and probably a few Division Heads of a certain political party. They are definitely people with super strong fibre optics cables. They are not people like you and me ladies and gentlemen. They are folks with connections to those in power.

In any case, they are really doing a mighty find job of educating our kids on the way to run an enterprise and get rich faster. May our brights kids who are eating non-halal certified, non approved and expired food cooked in dirty kitchen get all the blessings and barakah from the teachers and school administrators.

Hidup Melayu! Long live Malays!

A business that is definitely made in heaven up above.

The last one is the most successful of the three examples I’m sharing. It is none other than the business ran by our Mama-san. The business of “makan atas angin” or “Ali baba”. This is where the Malays excel way better than the Chinese. In fact, it’s probably the only industry where 100% of ownership of all “makan atas angin” businesses belong to the Malays.

Based on the ongoing trial involving the ever lovely Kak Mah, the court was told that Kak Mah “makan atas angin” RM5,000,000, while her aide RM500,000 for helping a company secured a RM1.25 billion diesel solar hybrid project. Court was also told that the company has been paid RM63 million in July 2017 to start the project but nothing had been done since then.

A Malay consultant between Kak Mah and the company also “makan atas angin” RM1,000,000. He was promised another RM10,000,000 by the company director (Saudi Abang Samsurijal, Malay?). Court was also told that, Kak Mah demanded 15% or RM187,500,000 worth of “makanan atas angin” to help the company secure the project to supply solar hybrid energy to 369 schools (Awwww, it’s for the lovely schools AGAIN. They really do love schools) in Sarawak. Then the aide to Kak Mah, an amazingly talented business negotiator named Rizal, also demanded more “makanan atas angin” of RM 25,000,000 in instalments of RM5,000,00 a year, over 5 years.

These are some incredible state-of-the-art business deal techniques employed by Mama-san and Co. Great negotiation skills to get better deals, even Trump who wrote the book “Trump: The Art of the Deal”, could not have closed the deal the same way Mama-San, the aide and the consultant did.

Not only do these towering Malays did better than the Chinese, they did better than Trump!

Back in the 50s, P. Ramlee has us in stitches with the famous scene below:

Now Kak Mah gave us the sequel,

  • RM5,000,000 untuk aku
  • RM500,000 untuk engkau
  • RM63,000,000 untuk engkau dan tak payah buat apa-apa
  • RM1,000,000 aku terima
  • RM10,000,000 engkau janji
  • RM5,000,000 engkau bayar dulu
  • RM500,000 aku bagi dulu
  • 15% atau RM187.5 million aku mintak
  • RM25,000,000 engkau mintak
  • Nah beg penuh dengan RM1,500,000 untuk engkau
  • Nah rasuah untuk aku RM5,000,000
  • Amik ni 10-15% bayaran untuk engkau
  • Eh…“Actually it is a commission but it is not nice to say that…” untuk aku
  • Eh…“Actually it is a commission but it is not nice to say that…” untuk engkau

If it’s not commission, it’s political donation. Donation for what? Untuk kerajaan isle la.

Hidup Melayu! Long live Malays.

The Malay businesses have progressed to a new level that has far surpassed the Chinese. Not just the Chinese but the west and Jews themselves can’t do things like these. This is the art of the deal! I’m incredibly proud to be a Malay.

Peace be unto all.

Being Critical, Being Objective and Calling a Spade A Spade

I’m been busy the last few weeks, only managed to catch up on news the last few days.

This one catches my interest. I have long since wanted to write on this topic. The news was on our Education Minister, Maszlee Malik. There are several articles on this (See HERE, HERE, for video see HERE) and he said the following:

“Matriculation is just a road to university, just like a diploma, STPM and so on. But the matriculation programme gives the chance for the poor to advance their studies at the pre-university level.

“If we want to change, if we say in ‘Malaysia Baru’ there is no need for a quota system and so on, then we must also make sure job opportunities are not denied to bumiputera just because they don’t know Mandarin,” he said to a round of applause. 

“We should not look at such issues in isolation – we harp on (the quota system in) matriculation without considering that people are being denied jobs because they don’t know Mandarin, for instance. 

“If we can make do without all that, if we can give equal and business opportunities, then we can talk about being fair to all.”

Education Minister Maszlee Malik with students of SJK (T) Sungai Ara in Penang. (Photo: Bernama)

These two have nothing in common. First of all, matriculation program is a government program. Together with it comes the quota policy.

How can a quota policy by the government be linked to what the ignorance private sector (the ignorant and possibly racist employer) do? Is this particular government policy a result of what the ignorant private sector is doing? It’s like, the government decided to raise the interest rate due the the increased number of blue-coloured car on the road. These two have nothing in common.

Maszlee needs to be more objectives. Don’t mix being objective and being emotional about the situation. He was right in the beginning to state the reason why matriculation program was setup. It’s due to the imbalance in university enrolment of bumi and non-bumi students in science scream courses. He should just stop there and it’s enough to both get the non-bumi to understand and the bumi to give him a round of applause.

Secondly, he shouldn’t be doing the immature tit-for-tat move. Those are kids stuff. Is he the type of person who can’t think and only know how to react impulsively. You racist? Ok lah, I pun racist lah. You pukul eh? Ok, I pun pukul la. You kick me? Ok then I kick you la. You stab me? Ok then I stab you back lah.

These are kids stuff. People who can’t think objectively will react emotionally. We can’t have people who can’t use their head properly be our ministers. We had enough of that back in the days.

If we really want to have a New Malaysia or Malaysia Baru, we should abolish the policy favouring bumi versus non-bumi and have a new policy that favours the less able or the B40 instead.

If we really think about it, who are the B40? What is the racial distribution of B40? The answer will be the same, the majority will be the Bumis. Huge majority will be the Bumis. Don’t believe me? Check the statistics for yourselves. Let me share some, HERE and HERE. You can get more, just google and read them up.

A diagram showing breakdown of the B40, M40 and T20. Taken from http://www.dosm.gov.my

We all know which race is the poorest, we all know who are the farmers, fishermen, low level government servants, low level policemen/women, low level army/navy/airforce officers. In case you don’t know, a good 80-90 percent of them are Bumi. So it goes without saying that the policy based on income level benefits the Malays and Bumi the most. If together with the Bumis we have 10-20 percent non-Bumis, it’s all good for unity right? All of our less able Malaysian get taken care off. ALL of them, ALL of the less able be it Malay or otherwise, ALL of them Malaysian . That’s good. That’s the ideal situation. It can’t get any better than this.

Here’s another reason why we shouldn’t have a race-based education policy, take the example of MARA scholarship, or MRSM or Sekolah Berasrama Penuh (SBP) enrolment. Since the BN days, these are places reserved for majority of the Bumi. The problem is, not many of the enrolments are from B40 families. It became the places reserved for the Malay elites. These people are probably already in the higher M40 and T20 and yet still get a place in the above places. It’s been abused to no end.

The famous MCKK. One of the many Sekolah Berasrama Penuh.

Nobody stopped them because it’s not against the policy. The policy is for the Malays and Bumi right? They are Malays and Bumis, so nothing is wrong right? Wrong!

We have heard so many stories of the rich Malay elites getting MARA scholarship and getting into SBP/MRSM. It’s disheartening that nowadays we still see only 70% of MRSM enrolments and 50% of SBP enrolments are from B40 group (See HERE). We should either have more from B40 or use the surplus budget to spend on other things for B40. Not spend for non B40 or those Malay elites who can afford all manner of things already.

Now if we do it based on income levels, the Malay elites can no longer enrol in the above program. So we will end up with more budget per students or we can include more from the less able or less stellar result to be enrolled. Give them special care to better educate them and we will end up with more bright people in the country. So, let’s do away with race based education policy. Let’s do it based on income level. Let’s start to do the good things and good things will come to us. It’s what Allah have said in the Quran.

If we spend our wealth in the way of Allah, we will get more and more. Spending for the wrong Malays, who isn’t supposed to be there in the first place isn’t called spending in the Way of Allah.

We need to spend the money wisely, if it’s for the poor or B40 groups then let’s do it as such and Allah will give us more to spend.

We need to always be objective, even more so as leaders. So Maszlee as the Minister of Education has to be objective in this part. As much as I’m a supporter of PH, I need and I want to be critical. When you love something, you always want the best for it. So you tend to be critical of it. I believe Maszlee should be more objective and not make that stupid comparison. He’s wrong to make that comparison and unbecoming of a Minister. So, I am calling a spade, a spade. Nothing more, nothing less.

Peace be unto all.

Being a Malay and a Malaysian

Over the weekend I was bed-bound, stricken with a heavy dose of diarrhoea. I didn’t do a lot of things being aside from reading a heavy dose of blog posts. Some of the more interesting blog posts are from anak si hamid. She’s a ~70 years old lady from Singapore who was a teacher. I followed the blog when it first started several years ago after being introduced by Rocky Bru. What draws it to me is the heavy dose of ‘what does it means to be a Malay’. This particular para that I read (way back in 2008) struck a chord in me, it still resonates within me from time to time. I’ll reproduce it verbatim.

The Malays are always going on about ‘berbudi bahasa’. And yet Malay men AND ‘hijab-ed’ women as well, both young and old have left me standing with my bags on the LRT while they remained seated, sometimes pretending to sleep; they have cut the queue and pushed in front of me at cashier’s counters without blinking an eyelid, they have knocked into me without saying a word of apology and they sullenly take our food orders without any thank you even though we show our appreciation by thanking them! Islam Hadhari? They first have to learn to be Malays- polite Malays like their grandfathers and great-grandfathers who were untainted by the desire to be Orang Putih celop or Arab-celup

This piece was published way back in 2008. This may sound like an old lady scolding young people about manners but sadly, it’s that. We boast of our Islamic tendencies, we declared that we are an Islamic country, we had Islam Hadhari as the centre piece of our nation’s progress, we demand for Hudud, we even shout ‘Allahu Akhbar’ every time time our politician finishes a sentence in his speech. Unfortunately, we lack manners still. We need a 70-yr old makcik to blog, scold the young folks.

Anyway, I digress, back to the main reason why I decided to write something today. Her latest post again struck a chord in me. It’s titled “Perfidy” (Defined as the state of being deceitful and untrustworthy). I urge everyone to read it and see if it struck your chord.

Talking about chords, I’m not terribly fond of Facebook nowadays. There’s too much negativity emitting from my timeline and my chords are all in a bind reading them posts. Strangely, the negativity doesn’t seemed to appear when I’m talking to my friends face-to-face. The negativity is almost exclusively through Facebook posts only. I’m now starting to think that perhaps the real person is the one on FB instead of the one in real life.

Personally, I think Facebook is just the means to communicate, it can be a phone, it can be face-to-face and it can also be a piece of paper with words written on it. So, as a Malay Muslim, let’s think and think again if what we are posting on the Net reflects who we are. Are we the kind of person who only complain about work/family/friends/politicians day-in and day-out? In a nutshell, are we that big of a complainer?

Answer is yes! Malaysian are famous as a big complainer. We complain and complain and complain about things but in the end, we still swallow it whole. Take the classic case of McDonalds and KFC, we complained that the price of these fast foods are getting higher ever year or that chicken wing are getting smaller, but we still visit the stores religiously. The latest act that is spot on in depicting us to be a big complainer but lacking action is regarding ‘Objection Notice’ against the DBKL assessment rate hike. There was a huge ruh-roh on FB about this recently and it’s gaining thousands likes and shares. Just how may people have actually submitted the objection notice officially? Just slightly over 10% of the total 500K house owners have submitted the notice. Whelp, I guess that’s us. Tau komplen saja, kerja tak mau buat.