Malay Singaporeans should keep making efforts to excel in the face of globalisation. So said Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong on Feb 17, 2005 in a speech about the Malays, entitled 'Successes and Changes'.

Even though Goh noted the positive achievements the Malay community had made to date, the title of his speech nevertheless shows two elements - jaya (success) and ubah sikap (change in attitude) - remain the basic framework when talking about the Malays.

Ever since Singapore's independence 40 years ago, the history of the Malays has been a story of constant 'striving' by the minority community to achieve a package of targets set by the government.

The efforts to make Malays successful began as early as 1970s, although it was not until the 1980s that the 'Malay issue' was recognised nationwide (when state statistics revealed that Malay students had the lowest education level in Singapore.)

Soon after independence, Malays organised dozens of seminars to discuss their plight in Singapore. Gradually the term 'the Malay problem' ( masalah Melayu ) began to be used among Malays.

In 1971, a seminar on 'Malay Participation in the National Development of Singapore' organised by the Majlis Pusat (Central Council of Malay Cultural Organisations of Singapore) turned into a landmark event.

Participants at this seminar identified key problems of the Malay community in the context of nation building, and secondly, discussed how to seek jaya (success). Jaya became a key word as a goal for Malays to achieve.

Gov't sets goals

Another key word at this time was ubah sikap (change in attitude). For instance, Malays had to increase the level of their children's education. They had to become fluent in English. They had to enter the commercial sector by running small businesses like the Chinese.

They had to limit the number of their children so they could better supervise their children's education and so that the family could fit into an HDB flat. For that reason, Malay women were advised even by Islamic religious leaders to use contraceptive pills.

These goals were set by the government in the 1970s as a model for successful Singaporeans. This pattern continues today. Firstly, the state sets a package of targets. The Malays then identify problems which prevent them from reaching these targets. They articulate these problems and resolve to overcome them and thus prove that they can be successful Singaporeans.

In this way, any new target, no matter how unreasonable it is, can stimulate a desire among Malays to prove that they can be successful and not second-class citizens.

The question at stake for Malays is whether this will make them a visibly 'successful' community in their own right, without the need to be constantly compared to other communities.

Underachievement of Malays

For the state, it finds it effective to label some people as those who are not quite on par with rest of society. Why?

In order to recognise 'standard' Singaporeans versus 'non-standard' Singaporeans, some form of a differentiation is inevitably required. For instance, if we want to determine whether something is tall or dark, we always need a yardstick for comparison (i.e. taller than X; darker than X).

The majority can tell what the majority is and what it means by looking at those who are not majority.

This need to create someone different is met by the frequent change of instructions to Singaporeans by the government. The government constantly creates new targets, and therefore it can produce and demarcate in new ways those who are not coping quite as well as other communities such as the Chinese.

In this regard, Goh stated in his February speech: "In 2003, Manpower Ministry figures showed that Malays, who formed about 11 percent of the workforce, made up 14 percent of the retrenchments. Also, within 12 months of retrenchment, 74 percent of Chinese were able to find another job, compared to 69 per cent and 67 per cent, respectively, for Malays and Indians."

The gap shown by this figures is not large, but the point for the government is that there is a difference, which serves to demarcate the minority from the majority.

If the Malays have done well already - as Goh in fact acknowledged in his speech - then why does he point out this difference?

The 'underachievement' of Malays has to be constantly remembered, or more precisely re-created. Thus, in his speech, Goh sets new targets for Malays, such as "the acquisition of skills in new growth areas" as "globalisation accelerates the pace of economic change."

Will this end? Until Malays in Singapore can free themselves from their habitual way of perceiving jaya (success) and ubah sikap (change attitude), they will always function as the inevitable element of difference that validates the majority within Singapore.

Tomorrow: Re-legitimising ISA

YASUKO KOBAYASHI is a PhD student in the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University. This article is part of the Singapore Studies series edited by James Gomez .