'Hadi, Mahathir ignoring statistics on Malay power'
Published on: Saturday, May 13, 2023
By:
FMT, K Parkaran
The Malay Proclamation by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is seen as trying to resolve the deep rifts within the Malay-Bumiputera community.
PETALING JAYA: The Malay community must not be swayed by racial rhetoric spewed by politicians promoting the Malay Proclamation as it is not supported by statistics, says a political scientist.
James Chin of the University of Tasmania said the Malay community has no reason to feel threatened by their non-Malay counterparts.
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Referring to claims made by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang and several other leaders from PAS and Bersatu, Chin said:
“They are completely ignoring the numbers which define who has actual power.” It would be impossible for non-Malays to dominate the local political landscape, based on population statistics and population growth over the past 50 years, he said.
The statistics show that the Malay-Bumiputera population grew from 53% of total population in 1970 to 65% in 2021. The number of Malay-Bumiputera voters has also grown in tandem.
“So, the claim by Mahathir and Hadi that non-Malays will eventually take over political power has no statistical basis whatsoever,” he told FMT.
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Chin also said it is highly improbable that there will be any significant growth in non-Malay majority constituencies to shift the balance of power away from the Malays.
He said Mahathir, PAS and Bersatu were pushing the Malay Proclamation in a bid to replicate the 2019 Malay Dignity Congress which led to the fall of the Pakatan Harapan government the following year.
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Another political analyst, Azmi Hassan of Akademi Nusantara, said the Malay Proclamation was being pushed to address deep rifts within the Malay-Bumiputera community.
“Although Malays are dominant in terms of population, they are extremely divided by politics and ideology,” he said.
The Malay parties had also completely lost the support of the non-Malay voters, who now give their undivided support to PH, he added.
Azmi said the proclamation will not find support among the people of Sabah and Sarawak, who make up at least 10% of the Malay-Bumiputera numbers, “because they think very differently from Peninsular Malays politically and socially”.
“With the state elections looming, PAS and PN know that Malay votes are critical for their return to power. So, they are using the proclamation as a way to get Malay votes in the state elections,” he said.
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