According to the Star dated 10 May, 2007, the Cabinet has ordered Maybank to withdraw their letter which states that panel law firms must have a bumiputra partner with at least a 50% stake before they could do any business with the bank.
Take away the specific words requiring 50% stake, and apply it on other panel partners/vendors/business associates that received the directives such as the letter issued to Panel Valuers below, would that be acceptable, then?
According to Bar Council chairman Ambiga Sreenevasan, “The level of equity is irrelevant. It’s still discrimination. No company has the right to stipulate the racial composition of firms that it will give work to; this is certainly no way to deal with professionals.”
What say you?
Update 12/05/2007: It was sighted on The Star that AmBank Group has withdrawn and apologized on the letter sent to panel lawyers, and Chinapress reported that the above letter sent to Panel Valuers by Maybank has also been withdrawn.
8 comments:
Hi,
I'm not as wordly as you as well but all I can say here, or if I have a chance to speak on the Maybank directly is...........TAK MALU.
welcome back bro!!
heard of the 'joke' some MP made on fong po kuan? the leaking issue? .... good for cartoons bro...
If anybody who thinks that corruption and racial discrimination is not wrong then there will be nothing that is wrong.
This is what is actually happening in Umno. They love the two evils
(i) corruption to enrich themselves
(ii) racial discrimination to make them feel good and superior to other races (when they do not know that they still need to be spoon fed and the tongkat) and deceive the poor kampung folks that they are heroes to their race who keeps on voting for them.
They are actually robbing the country by making everybody poorer, Malays and other races alike. Petrol prices are raised with hundred and one excuses and tolls are raised without any transparency, and everything has gone up making the poor becoming poorer.
I do not see anything that they can be proud of, and nothing superior about them. Even to rob they are all given assistance and the tongkat to do it, by having two set of laws, one for them and one for the ordinary citizens.
As a post-independence-born Malaysian, I would like to offer my thoughts on Article 153 of the federal constitution which mentions the special position of the malays. Please note that there is no mention of the words 'special privileges' or 'special rights' in the constitution.
For too long, there has been a lack of understanding of what our forefathers had in mind when they included this clause in our much talked about social contract. To gain a better understanding, let us take a trip back in time to 1957 to actually visualise the scene then.
In a scenario where the immigrant Chinese and Indians were seeking citizenship rights in Malaysia, it is reasonable to presume that they would have had to understand and acknowledge the difficulties faced by the majority malays.
And this is where the meaning of the words 'special position' comes into focus. What did our forefathers mean by the special position of the malays? Did they mean that the malays would enjoy a higher status than all the other races? Did they mean that the malays would have special rights and privileges in perpetuity?
If this is what our forefathers had intended, then our constitution would have mentioned this specifically. However, the constitution or social contract does not say so.
What then, could the words 'special position' mean? It is reasonable to infer that our forefathers were concerned first by the fact that the malays were left behind economically despite being the indigenous majority in the country.
Secondly, they were concerned by the fact that, despite being immigrants, the Chinese and a small segment of the Indian community were relatively much better off.
The clause was therefore more so of an acknowledgment by the non-malays of the disadvantageous economic situation of the malays. The consideration given by the former to the latter when entering into the social contract for citizenship rights was agree to provide some measure of support for the malays to improve their economic standing.
If our forefathers had meant for these preferences to last in perpetuity, then there would not have been a request for a review in 15 years.
When I see the compulsory requirement for non-malay companies to hand over a certain portion of their equity to the malays for no input at all, I am tempted to ask: Is this what our forefathers had in mind? I can go on listing the abuses forever because there are plenty of them.
It is intriguing to hear senior BN and Umno leaders repeatedly asking the people to adhere to the social contract. What contract they are referring to? It cannot be the federal constitution. It is most probably some contract that they have entered into unilaterally without the agreement of the non-malays.
So it seems to be incorrect to firstly equate the words 'special position' with 'special rights and privileges'. Secondly, it also seems incorrect to suggest that the malays have special rights and privileges in perpetuity and therefore, that they have a higher status than everyone else.
The non-malays only agreed to allow them preferences over the others for a finite period of time. It has now been almost 50 years since independent but has such a meaningful review of those preferences taken place at all? Absolutely not.
In fact what has happened is that successive BN governments, dominated by Umno, and especially after the 1969 tragedy, have taken the liberty to very liberally interpret Article 153. This has led to the wholesale abuse of the consideration provided by the non-malays in 1957 for their citizenship rights.
It seems to me that the real social contract of 1957 was torn up long ago by the BN government with the way in which the NEP was implemented from the 1970s onwards.
To me, the real social contract of 1957 has long been dead. I hope the day will come when the people of Malaysia in the true independent spirit will make it live again.
Then perhaps, we would not have to spend hundreds of millions ringgit on nonsensical projects like the National Service to inculcate unity amongst the races.
The special position of the malays as prescribed under Article 153 of the Constitution is limited in scope to only the reservation of reasonable quotas in these 3 sectors: public services, educational places and business licenses.
Hence, the present rampant racial discriminations practiced on almost every facet of our national life are mostly violations of the Constitution. Examples of these violations are:
(a) Racial discrimination in the appointment and promotion of employees in publicly funded bodies, resulting in these becoming almost mono-raced bodies. These bodies include: the police, civil service, army and various semi and quasi government agencies.
(b) Imposition of compulsory share quota for malays in non-malay companies.
(c) Imposition of compulsory price discounts and quotas in favour of malays in housing projects.
(d) Completely lop-sided allocation of scholarships and seats of learning in clearly unreasonable proportions that reflect racial discriminations.
(e) Blanket barring of non-malays to publicly funded academic institutions (that should include the Mara).
(f) Barring of non-malays from tenders and contracts controlled directly or indirectly by the government.
Our Constitution provides for only one class of citizenship and all citizens are equal before the law.
The presence of Article 153 does not alter this fact, as it is meant only to protect the malays from being "squeezed" by other races by allowing the reservation of reasonable quotas on certain sectors of national life.
However, this Constitution has now been hijacked through decades of hegemony of political power by the ruling party to result in the virtual monopoly of the public sector by a single race.
The ensuing racism, corruption and corrosion of integrity of our democratic institutions have brought serious retrogression to our nation-building process in terms of national unity, morality, discipline and competitiveness of our people.
The facts:
(1) Negritos are the first inhabitants in this land
(2) Proto malays came from Yunan in China
(3) Deutro malays came from Indonesia
(4) Malays are Hindus/Buddhists for 2000 years
(5) Harun and Razak plot the 1969 riot
(6) Social contract rewriting after 1969 riot
(7) Bumis term never exist before 1969 riot
(8) lie - Blame Chinese control economic 70%
(9) lie - Blame Chinese/Tamil schools for national disunity
(10) lie - Blame Singapore government suppress malays
(Many more.)
We have the tallest, longest, largest, greatest, grandest, biggest, everything; and now some record breaking events, falling, collapsing, cracking, bursting, break-downing incidents in new buildings. It is only the beginning.
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