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Social contract (Malaysia)

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Politics and government

   The social contract in Malaysia refers to the agreement made by the
   country's founding fathers in the Constitution. The social contract
   usually refers to a quid pro quo trade-off through Articles 14–18 of
   the Constitution, pertaining to the granting of citizenship to the non-
   Malay people of Malaysia, and Article 153, which grants the Malays
   special rights and privileges. The term has also been used occasionally
   to refer to other portions of the Constitution, such as the Article
   stating that Malaysia is a secular state.

   In its typical context related to race relations, the social contract
   has been heavily criticised by many, including politicians from the
   ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, who contend that constant harping on
   the non-Malays' debt to the Malays for citizenship has alienated them
   from the country. Such criticisms have met with opposition from the
   Malay media and the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the
   largest political party in Barisan Nasional. Many Malays, typically
   from UMNO, have used the social contract to defend the principle of
   Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy).

Contractual terms

   The Constitution does not explicitly refer to a "social contract" (in
   terms of citizenship rights and privileges), and no act of law or
   document has ever fully set out the social contract's terms. Its
   defenders often refer to the Constitution as setting out the social
   contract, and the Malaysian founding fathers having agreed to it,
   although no reference to a "social contract" appears in the
   Constitution. Instead, the social contract is typically taken to mean
   an agreement that provides the non-Malay and other non-indigenous
   peoples of Malaysia (mostly the Chinese Malaysians and Indian
   Malaysians) with citizenship, in return for their granting special
   privileges to the Malays and indigenous people of Malaysia,
   collectively referred to as the Bumiputra (sons of the soil). A higher
   education Malaysian studies textbook conforming to the government
   syllabus states: "Since the Malay leaders agreed to relax the
   conditions for citizenship, the leaders of the Chinese and Indian
   communities accepted the special position of the Malays as indigenous
   people of Malaya. With the establishment of Malaysia, the special
   position status was extended to include the indigenous communities of
   Sabah and Sarawak." Another description of the social contract declares
   it to be an agreement that "Malay entitlement to political and
   administrative authority should be accepted unchallenged, at least for
   the time being, in return for non-interference in Chinese control of
   the economy".

   The Constitution explicitly grants the Bumiputra reservations of land,
   quotas in the civil service, public scholarships and public education,
   quotas for trade licences, and the permission to monopolise certain
   industries if the government permits. In reality, however, especially
   after the advent of the Malaysian New Economic Policy (NEP) due to the
   racial riots of the May 13 Incident which occurred in 1969 when Malays
   held only 4% of the Malaysian economy, Bumiputra privileges have
   extended to other areas; quotas are set for Bumiputra equity in
   publicly traded corporations, and discounts for them on automobiles and
   real estate ranging from 5% to 15% are mandated.

   The Constitution also included elements of Malay tradition as part of
   the Malaysian national identity. The Malay rulers were preserved, with
   the head of state, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, drawn from their ranks.
   Islam would be the national religion, and the Malay language would be
   the national language. These provisions, along with the economic
   privileges accorded by Article 153 of the Constitution, made up one
   half of the bargain, and have been referred to as the Malay Agenda.

   Some suggest that this bias towards Malays in education and politics
   is, in part, a response to the ability of the Chinese Malaysians to
   secure most of the country's wealth. The Indian Malaysians, as with the
   Indian Singaporeans, can make a case for being those that lose out the
   most, although this may be disputed.

   The government did roll back the quota system for entry to public
   universities in 2003 and introduced a policy of " meritocracy".
   However, this new system was widely criticised by the non-Bumiputras as
   benefiting the Bumiputras by streaming them into a matriculation
   programme that featured relatively easy coursework while the
   non-Bumiputras were forced to sit for the Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan
   Malaysia (STPM, or Malaysia Higher School Certificate). Although in
   theory non-Bumiputras may enter the matriculation stream, and
   Bumiputras may sit for the STPM, this rarely occurs in reality.
   Meritocracy was also criticised by some quarters in UMNO as being
   discriminatory, as it caused the rural and less-prepared Malays to fall
   behind in university entrance rates.

   The Reid Commission which prepared the framework for the Constitution
   stated in its report that Article 153, the backbone of the social
   contract, would be temporary only, and recommended that it be reviewed
   15 years after independence. The Commission also said that the article
   and its provisions would only be necessary to avoid sudden unfair
   disadvantage to the Malays in competing with other members of Malaysian
   society, and that the privileges accorded the Malays by the article
   should be gradually reduced and eventually eliminated. Due to the May
   13 Incident, after which a state of emergency was declared, however,
   1972, the year that Article 153 was due to be reviewed, passed without
   incident.

   According to the social contract's proponents, in return for the
   enactment of these originally temporary provisions, non-Malay
   Malaysians are accorded citizenship under Chapter 1 of Part III of the
   Constitution. Except for the Bumiputra privileges, non-Bumiputras are
   otherwise generally regarded as equal to their Bumiputra counterparts,
   and are accorded all the rights of citizenship as under Part II of the
   Constitution. In recent years, some have sought to provide Malay
   citizens with more political rights as per the ketuanan Melayu
   philosophy. However, most of these ketuanan Melayu proponents argue
   that their additional rights are already written as law and thus only
   seek to "defend" them from their opponents.

   When he assumed the Presidency of UMNO, Tunku Abdul Rahman (later the
   first Prime Minister of Malaysia) stated that "...when we (the Malays)
   fought against the Malayan Union (which upset the position of the
   Malays' rights) the others took no part in it because they said this is
   purely a Malay concern, and not theirs. They also indicate that they
   owe their loyalty to their countries of origin, and for that reason
   they oppose the Barnes Report to make Malay the national language. If
   we were to hand over the Malays to these so-called Malayans when their
   nationality has not been defined there will be a lot of problems ahead
   of us." However, he continued that "For those who love and feel they
   owe undivided loyalty to this country, we will welcome them as
   Malayans. They must truly be Malayans, and they will have the same
   rights and privileges as the Malays."

Early criticism

   Article 153, and thus by extension the social contract, has been a
   source of controversy since the early days of Malaysia. Singaporean
   politician Lee Kuan Yew (later the first Prime Minister of Singapore)
   of the People's Action Party (PAP; its Malaysian branch would later
   become the Democratic Action Party or DAP) publicly questioned the need
   for Article 153 in Parliament, and called for a " Malaysian Malaysia".
   Questioning the social contract, Lee stated: "According to history,
   Malays began to migrate to Malaysia in noticeable numbers only about
   700 years ago. Of the 39 percent Malays in Malaysia today, about
   one-third are comparatively new immigrants like the secretary-general
   of UMNO, Dato' Syed Ja'afar Albar, who came to Malaya from Indonesia
   just before the war at the age of more than thirty. Therefore it is
   wrong and illogical for a particular racial group to think that they
   are more justified to be called Malaysians and that the others can
   become Malaysian only through their favour."

   Lee criticised the government's policies by stating that "[t]hey, the
   Malay, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of
   training and education that the more competitive societies, the
   non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn't it?
   Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got
   to do is to get Malay rights for the few special Malays and their
   problem has been resolved." He also lamented, "Malaysia — to whom does
   it belong? To Malaysians. But who are Malaysians? I hope I am, Mr
   Speaker, Sir. But sometimes, sitting in this chamber, I doubt whether I
   am allowed to be a Malaysian."

   Lee's statements upset many, especially politicians from the Alliance,
   Barisan Nasional's predecessor. Then Finance Minister Tan Siew Sin of
   the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) called Lee the "greatest,
   disruptive force in the entire history of Malaysia and Malaya." Tunku
   Abdul Rahman, the first Prime Minister of Malaysia, considered Lee to
   be too extremist in his views, while other UMNO politicians thought Lee
   was simply taking advantage of the situation to pander to the Malaysian
   Chinese.

   PAP-UMNO relations were chilled further by the PAP running several
   candidates in elections on the Malay peninsula, with UMNO retaliating
   by trying to run candidates on its ticket in Singapore. Eventually, the
   Tunku decided to ask Singapore, through Lee and some of his closest
   confidantes, to secede from Malaysia. Eventually, Lee agreed to do so,
   and Singapore became an independent nation in 1965. The Constitution of
   Singapore contains an article, Article 152, that names the Malays as
   "indigenous people" of Singapore and therefore requiring special
   safeguarding of their rights and privileges as such. However, the
   article specifies no policies for such safeguarding, and no reference
   to a "social contract" has ever been made by the political
   establishment in Singapore.

Present debate

   In 2005, the social contract was brought up by Lim Keng Yaik of the
   Gerakan party in Barisan Nasional. Lim, a Minister in the government,
   asked for a re-examination of the social contract so that a " Bangsa
   Malaysia" (literally Malay for a Malaysian race or Malaysian nation)
   could be achieved. Lim was severely criticised by many Malay
   politicians, including Khairy Jamaluddin who is Prime Minister Abdullah
   Ahmad Badawi's son-in-law and Deputy Chairman of the UMNO Youth wing,
   and Ahmad Shabery Cheek, a prominent Malay Member of Parliament from
   the state of Terengganu. The Malay press (most of which is owned by
   UMNO) also ran articles condemning the questioning of the social
   contract. Lim was adamant, asking in an interview "How do you expect
   non-Malays to pour their hearts and souls into the country, and to one
   day die for it if you keep harping on this? Flag-waving and singing the
   Negaraku (the national anthem) are rituals, while true love for the
   nation lies in the heart."

   A year earlier, Abdullah had given a speech where he mentioned the most
   "significant aspect" of the social contract as "the agreement by the
   indigenous peoples to grant citizenship to the immigrant Chinese and
   Indians". However, Abdullah went on to state that "the character of the
   nation" changed to "one that Chinese and Indian citizens could also
   call their own". However, the speech went largely unremarked.

   In the end, Lim stated that the Malay press had blown his comments out
   of proportion and misquoted him. The issue ended with UMNO Youth chief
   and Education Minister Hishamuddin Hussein warning people not to "bring
   up the issue again as it has been agreed upon, appreciated, understood
   and endorsed by the Constitution."

   Earlier that year, Hishamuddin had waved the keris (traditional Malay
   dagger) at the UMNO Annual General Meeting, warning non-Malays not to
   threaten "Malay rights" and to question the social contract. This was
   applauded by the UMNO delegates, but widely ridiculed in the Malaysian
   blogosphere.

   Other politicians, mostly from opposition parties, have also criticised
   the NEP and its provisions, but refrained from directly criticising the
   social contract or Article 153 of the Constitution. Former Deputy Prime
   Minister Anwar Ibrahim of the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) promised he
   would roll back the NEP if he ever gained power, and many from the
   Democratic Action Party (DAP) have also spoken out against the NEP.
   They criticised the NEP as benefiting only a small portion of Malays,
   mostly well-connected and urban, while ignoring the rural and poor
   Malays, and noted that the NEP's avowed goal was to give the Malays a
   30% share in the country's economic equity, regardless of whether only
   a few or many Malays held this share. The DAP has been particular in
   arguing it does not question Article 153 or the social contract, but
   merely seeks to abolish inequitable policies such as the NEP.

   Article 10 (4) of the Constitution permits the government to ban the
   questioning of Article 153, and thus the social contract; indeed, the
   Sedition Act does illegalise such questioning. The Internal Security
   Act (ISA) also permits the government to detain anybody it desires for
   practically an infinite period of time, and many, including politicians
   from the DAP such as Lim Kit Siang and Karpal Singh have been held
   under the ISA; it is widely believed this was because of their vehement
   criticism of Malay privileges.

   More recently, some commentators have remarked on younger Malaysians
   chafing at the terms of the social contract. One wrote that "half a
   century on, younger non-Malays especially feel they were not parties to
   deals and contracts (at the time of independence) and should not be
   beholden to them." In 2006, several non-Malay parties in the ruling
   Barisan Nasional coalition called for a reexamination of the social
   contract; Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's refusal to do so
   reportedly triggered "much consternation". Abdullah was quoted in the
   Malay media as saying: "If we change this balance and if we are forced
   to meet all over again on the rights of every group, it will not be the
   same as now. It would be far from satisfactory. Whatever the new
   formula, it will not succeed because the old formula is enough, is
   already maximum. As everyone had agreed to this before, why do we want
   to disturb this and meet again?"

   That year, at the UMNO General Assembly, several delegates criticised
   other members of the government coalition for criticising the social
   contract and ketuanan Melayu. One stated that "If they question our
   rights, then we should question theirs. So far we have not heard the
   Malays questioning their right to citizenship when they came in droves
   from other countries." Others argued that the Bumiputra communities
   continued to lag behind the rest of the country economically, and
   called for stronger measures in line with the social contract. One
   delegate, Hashim Suboh, made headlines when he asked Hishammuddin, who
   had brandished the kris again, " Datuk Hisham has unsheathed his keris,
   waved his keris, kissed his keris. We want to ask Datuk Hisham when is
   he going to use it?" Hashim said that "force must be used against those
   who refused to abide by the social contract", provoking criticism from
   the DAP, which accused him of sedition.

Usage in other contexts

   The social contract has also occasionally been referred to in a context
   other than that involving race relations. In the 2004 general election,
   the DAP ran on a platform of defending the "social contract" by
   combatting an Islamic theocracy, which the Constitution forbids, but
   was endorsed by former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, Lim Keng
   Yaik and by PAS, the second-largest Malay-based political party in the
   country.
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