I refer to a New Straits Times report, 'Armed forces for non-Bumis too' (Sept 17, 2002). The article said Defence Minister Najib Abdul Razak wants leaders of non-Malay communities to explain the need to balance the number of non-Malay and Malay Malaysians in the armed forces.

I retired after serving the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) for 13 years. During my time, there were quite a big number of non-Malay Malaysians serving in RMN too.

But of the 115,000 officers in the Armed Forces now, the non-Malay Malaysians are "less than 10 percent", according to Armed Forces chief General Zahidi Zainuddin on the Sunday Times recently.

Most non-Malay Malaysians like myself have either opted for early retirement or retired upon expiry of contract. Not many renewed their contract and the new recruitment did not attract many non-Malay to join RMN.

I think there are two main factors to this:

  • During my time, RMN practised flagrant racial discrimination in the promotion of non-bumiputra personnel. I personally know of so many cases of junior Malay Malaysian officers outranking senior non-Malay Malaysian officers.

    • There is a classic case involving a Chinese Malaysian who was a captain then. He was my commanding officer when I first enlisted in RMN in 1980. When I retired 13 years later, he was still a captain.

    Most of his very junior Malay Malaysian officers were promoted to commodore, vice and rear admiral and some even have become chief of RMN. Just imagine how the said captain and other non-Malay Malaysians felt when they were required (in RMN tradition) to salute and take orders from their junior (in terms of age and seniority) Malay Malaysian officers who had out-ranked them by then.

    I believe RMN eventually compensated the poor captain by sending him as a defence attaché abroad for a few years.

  • Salaries for armed forces personnel are very low compared with salaries in the private sector. During my time in the 1980s, our housing allowances were insufficient to even rent a squatter house in Kuala Lumpur, believe it or not!

    • In my humble opinion, in order for the Defence Ministry to encourage more non-Malays to join the armed forces, they need to consider at least improving the above factors.