When I was back in Setapak Garden during the Asian financial crisis, my bedroom window looked out onto a street where there was a Chinese coffee shop and a stall selling goreng pisang in the afternoons, nearby. The coffee shop was open until 4am every night. It was full of noisy beer drinkers, singing and occasionally smashing beer bottles on the street in the early hours of the morning. In the afternoons, a young Malay guy, who lost his job during the crisis, sold goreng pisang to feed his family. Then, one day the DBKL officers came in large numbers, confiscating the stall and fining the poor guy, in what could be best described as a humiliating scene for him.

Notwithstanding all this, the coffee shop continued to open unimpeded making a racket every night.

When I was living in Alor Setar, I used to regularly visit the old Pasaraya Peladang, at Wisma PKENK. I liked this outlet because they supported all the small Malay businesses which supplied traditional Malay food products made at home. One day, some health department officers came and gave a compound to a Pakcik and Mahcik from Kuala Kedah who were supplying Paladang with a kampong made balacan. No warnings or opportunities to correct the packaging were given by the officers. No advice and assistance on how to correct it. Just a nice big compound. I could see the Pakcik, who had probably never broken any law in his life crying in the corner of the store.

When I lived at Batu 9 Berseri in Perlis, I saw many houses within the area had earthen floors, and no furniture, fridge, or TV. The people there struggled so hard to make ends meet with the jobs they could get, some paying as little as RM 20 per day at the time, while the former YB for the state assembly seat drove around his electorate in his Merc. This was an area where the weekly donations at Friday prayers didn’t even reach RM200.

With all the kris waving and Ketuanan Melayu rhetoric, one would think that the above three situations would not occur within Malaysia.

Nonetheless, over the pandemic, there have been countless examples double standards, where struggling Malay hawkers were given excessive fines for breaches of Covid SOPs, while politicians have either got away without any fine, or given minimum fines.

Malays, second-class citizens?

Some of the major assumptions behind the Ketuanan Melayu narrative place Malays under the ‘care’ of their leaders. The 1971 book Revolusi Mental, published by UMNO portrayed Malays as weak and backward, and Mahathir Mohamed in his book The Malay Dilemma talked about the ‘lazy Malay.’ The UMNO politicians made themselves the guardians of Malay rights. However, history since the 1970s shows how Malaysia’s leaders have continually abused this self-given trust.

Ask those Malays who are self-made, and many will tell you how they feel berated, insulted and angry over such assumptions. The hardworking everyday success stories are ignored by the elite because it threatens their narratives.

The so-called privileges that Malays are supposed to get such as university scholarships, seem to go primarily to those who have connections. Many Malays feel these privileges are out of their reach and they must survive to pursue their careers and livelihoods without assistance.

One lady I spoke to at the pasar Yan in Kedah asked me around 2004, how would the biotechnology industry (launched with much fanfare at the time) benefit her community.