1. When I was attending Lower Six at the Muar High School back in 1979, there were some 12-14 Malay girls and one Indian-Muslim male by the name of Kamaruddin, out of the total of about 35 students. The rest were ethnic Chinese boys and girls, some from a Chinese vernacular school background, including myself.

2. After six years (including Remove Class) in a all-boys school, we were excited to have female classmate. We had a lot of clean fun with our female Malay classmates. Many of them came from pretty good family backgrounds and were quite ‘modern’ (no tudung , no issue with eating on the same table with non-Muslim eating pork etc)

If not because of the need to masuk Melayu , some of my ethnic Chinese classmates would have courted and married these Malay girls. The point is, SRJK schools (Chinese or Tamil) do not really hinder integration between the different races.

3. By the end of 1979, all the Malay girls were ‘gone’… many went to universities in Western countries on government scholarships, some went to the Mara colleges.

The Indian-muslim boy got a place in pre-medic matriculation. He told us he put his ‘Race’ as ‘Bumiputera’ in his application form. He is a medical doctor somewhere in Malaysia today. Most, if not all of them obtained only a ‘Grade 2’ in the MCE examination of 1978.

Interestingly, there was not even one Malay boy in my class (Bio-Maths)

4. The class was left with 20 ethnic Chinese students, many of them who obtained 5As or more in the MCE. Quite a few of us, including myself, came from very poor families. On the contrary, most of the Malay girls came from the middle/upper middle income group (these are the parents who sent their children for an English education).

Naturally, we felt bitter. Nevertheless, we struggled through our HSC examination and most of us went on to university in KL/Penang/Singapore/Australia/USA/England. Ironically, a good friend of mine, an ethnic Chinese who came from very poor family, was awarded a Datuk Onn scholarship to the US, even though his HSC result was poorer compared to others.

I later learnt that he was awarded the scholarship since Form One and would continue to receive it until he got into university. Interesting way of awarding scholarships.

5. As I grew older and maybe a little wiser, I come to the conclusion that race-based affirmative action was necessary and is still necessary today. Maybe it is genetics (as Dr Mahathir Mohamad pointed out in his famous book), it may be cultural, most probably a bit of both. No one knows.

The Malays could not and I guess still cannot compete with the Chinese and Indians in school.

If university admission and the awarding of scholarships were based strictly on academic results, I guess over 70% of them would be taken up by the ethnic Chinese.

I would not be surprise if there would be more Indians than Malays in the universities, especially in those highly sought-after faculties (medicine, law, accountancy). Imagine how Malaysia society would be if almost all doctors/dentists/lawyers/professors/dean/ accountants were non- Malay?

6. Those who advocate race-blind meritocracy to replace race-based affirmative action are na ï ve/ idealistic. It would not work now and it would not work for the next 50 years.

7. Similarly on the business front and for promotions to higher positions in government organisations and the GLCs. The Malays should be given a ‘handicap’ in order to compete with the non-bumiputera.

8. The real issue is with ‘abusing’ affirmative action and the NEP (cronyism and corruption).

9. A bigger issue is that some Malays see ‘affirmative action’ as ‘bumi rights’. Such as 65% of university places and scholarship to be reserved for Malay students even if their parents are millionaires.

Such as a 7%-10% discount in property purchase, even if they are millionaires. Such as deans, vice-chancellors of universities, head of hospitals etc must be Malay.

10. In summary, race-based affirmative action is still needed. The challenge is how to manage it.

Malaysia is heading to become a ‘failed state’ unless the educated/ selfless Malay wakes up and mobilises and educates the Malay masses. The one person most to blame for the current pathetic situation the Malays are in is none other than Mahathir.