See what what Mahathir has done ... ?
| Yusseri is an engineer by training, a consultant by accident and a company man by necessity. He wishes that people would stop calling him to sell life insurance. It's death insurance he's looking for. He writes rubbish at http://www.mentera.org/ and pretends to be an intellectual at http://www.othermalaysia.org/ |
To the non-Malay who would be our Prime Minister
I know it seems a little early to be sending this to you. After all, we don't even yet know who you might be. However, since this seems to be the season for open letters, I just thought it'd be a good idea to send mine in now.
If it pleases you, I would like to be the first to congratulate you on your ascension to the highest executive office of the country. It's not an exaggeration to say that your achievement is quite staggering. It's a game-changer, a blue ocean strategy, and very much a green fields era for the country.
Suffice to say, Sir (or Madam), that the nation is forever changed by your holding of the office.
Far be it for my humble self to describe to you the scale of your achievement, but for the sake of posterity, please allow me to do so here.
As you very well know Mr (or Madam) Prime Minister, Malaysians consists of four races: Malays, Chinese, Indians and Others. Of these four races, the Malays form the majority of the population. And until you assumed office, we have only ever had Malay prime ministers.
The mathematics of it have always been a simple one, it seems. Due to an unwritten rule, the prime minister of the country will be a Malay. But you, Sir (or Madam), have bucked the trend. For you to achieve this, you must have overcome many major hurdles, some of which I shall recount forthwith.
The first hurdle would be to be the leader of your party or coalition during the General Elections. At the time of writing, the leaders of the two coalitions are both Malays. One of them is the president of Umno and Barisan Nasional; and the other is the husband of the president of PKR, who also acts as the leader of the Opposition for Pakatan Rakyat.. In order for you to be the leader, either of these two must fall.
In the case of BN, you would have to get Umno to agree for you to lead them and if you managed to do that, then you are clearly a wonder. As it stands, we can safely assume that the members of Umno would just as soon sell their Porsche Cayennes than to let someone else from the other component parties lead them. And you would have to be from one of the other component parties, wouldn't you? Unless something changes in the future, if you're not a Malay, you won't have a snowball's chance in hell of being a member of Umno, after all.
If you're with Pakatan Rakyat, then you've clearly managed to rise as the first among equals. Because that's what the PR parties claim themselves to be, no? They're a three-party coalition of equals. I must admit that it sounds a little like having three generals and no soldiers, but what do I know, eh? I'm not the son of a former party secretary-general or a party president's husband.
Further, unless you're a Muslim, you would also have had to convince PAS to back down from their stance that a non-Muslim may not be the prime minister of their Islamic nation-in-waiting. After all, having a non-Muslim as the PM of an Islamic country would be like having a boatyard in a desert. It sorts of defeats the purpose.
Your second hurdle would be to win the General Elections itself, by at least a simple majority. Considering that in order to do that, you would have had to convince enough voters of all races to vote for your coalition, I would say that it would take considerable effort and copious amounts of flesh pressing and baby kissing on your part, and those of your coalition's candidates. Not to mention truckloads of bitumen, cement, tar, rice, flour, sugar, and big mock cheques.
It must also be noted that if the state of the nation when you will be contesting the elections is similar to now, you're already at least 300,000 Malay votes short.
Granted, if you're already part of the ruling coalition of clearly defined communal-based parties going into the elections, it would not be as hard as being a part of a secularist/socialist-centrist-Islamist opposition coalition, but I reckon either way, it would not be a walk in the park.
The third hurdle would be to command the majority of the House. It seems, in what may seem to be incredible foresight on the part of our forefathers, the Federal Constitution is silent on the allowed ethnicity of the prime minister. Apparently, all that is needed is for the majority of the MPs in Parliament to agree on who shall be it. I suppose this is not so much a hurdle, as a minor little bump, actually. After all, if you've managed to become leader of your coalition and bring it into power, getting your own people to choose you as the leader of the country should not be too onerous.
As a final note, I must say that I do wonder who you are right now. Are you Chinese, Indian or Other? Maybe you're a Chindian, or a mamak even. Do you walk among us already? Are you already working on a masterplan? Have you started formulating your own alphabet soup economic programme? So many questions, so many questions. But I really should not take up any more of your precious time. You do have a country to govern, after all.
So anyway, you would have done it, Sir (or Madam)! The Prime Minister. Of Malaysia. And you're (maybe) a Chindian! I take my songkok off to you.
Yours in admiration,
A Citizen of Malaysia
P.S. I'm hoping you'd do something about the property bubble. It's a bit difficult to buy a decent house these days, at a good location. You really should kneecap all those speculators.
P.P.S. While we're on the subject, are you planning to remove the discount for Bumiputera homebuyers? I think a better idea would be to just give a blanket discount to all citizens. Good idea? No?
P.P.P.S. Another thing, if you don't mind. I was wondering if you could send someone to look at the … no, that's okay. Sorry to bother you, I know you must be busy.
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