I find Aizuddin Danian's letter (Meritocracy's merit, July 30) on Dr Mahathir Mohamad's move to introduce meritocracy as a criterion to university admissions next year very insightful and would like to explore some of the things mentioned in the letter.

It would appear that the crux of the problem mentioned by the writer lies in the Malay psyche. Such being the case, any solution would have to be directed squarely at it. And Mahathir appears to be doing this in the full knowledge that the price he has to pay would be very high.

For more than 50 years, Umno, which claims itself to be the saviour of the Malays, has drummed into the Malay psyche that while meritocracy threatens their status as the bumiputras of the country, special rights seek to enforce and reaffirm this status. Therefore meritocracy is the very enemy that special rights seek to remove or at least contain to manageable levels.

Since the commencement of the New Economic Policy in 1971, university admission has become an integral component of special rights, going by the quota system which ensures that the majority of student admissions are Malays.

The whole issue, where meritocracy and special rights have become opposite sides of the same coin, has become very emotionally charged because Umno has made special rights the core of its assertion - i.e. that the Malays are the bumiputras and have more rights than the other races in the country because of their traditionally weaker economic position vis-a-vis the Chinese.

The Malays must be protected at all costs by special rights. Otherwise Tanah Melayu would be lost to the Chinese and the "Malays would disappear from the face of the earth", so goes the argument of many an Umno politician.

This assertion which began more than 50 years ago, has not changed despite the new millennium and the dynamic international environment in which Malaysia operates. On the contrary there are indications that it is being reinforced and strengthened through the realm of Umno-dominated politics which has become entwined with race and religion.

After the racial riot incident in 1969, special rights had been entrenched in the Constitution in such a way that they could never be challenged again by the non-Malays as in the pre-1969 situation. Since then, no non-Malay leader has ever dared to raise this issue openly, and the few who did so had been dealt with severely under the Seditions Act

Coming back to the meritocracy issue, it appears that Mahathir and Umno are now reaping what they had sown. Mahathir, whose The Malay Dilemma made him the foremost advocate of special rights, has found to his dismay that after 30 years of affirmative action, where special rights in relation to university quotas favouring Malays were pursued relentlessly and with great conviction, he is not getting the results he expects.

Instead of progressive Malay graduates able to compete with their Chinese and Indian counterparts on more or less equal terms as professionals, he finds that many Malay students were not interested in their studies and, instead, had spent much of their time criticising him and Umno.

Looking at the issue critically, Umno had in the first place associated meritocracy with the Chinese, and successfully instilled in the Malay psyche that meritocracy was a formidable threat to special rights. A zero-sum situation - in which special rights and meritocracy were pitted against each other, and where the victory of one would be perceived as the defeat of the other and vice versa - thus ensued.

Thanks to over 30 years of indoctrination and exhortations of 'Malay unity', practically all the Malays - irrespective of whether they are from Umno, PAS, Keadilan or PRM - have consciously or unconsciously succumbed to Umno's contention that special rights, including entry into university, are not only necessary to uplift them economically, but also a matter of right and a reflection of their status as the bumiputra of the country.

The logical argument goes that any challenge, perceived or otherwise, by the Chinese to review, let alone, remove special rights, must be vehemently resisted at all costs. Some Umno elements have even gone to the extent of using force, if necessary, to ensure that special rights be retained in perpetuity, as in the recent case when Umno Youth threatened to burn down the headquarters of Suqiu in KL.

With the Chinese politically marginalised after the 1969 riots, all the scores have been in favour of special rights and against meritocracy so far. But now the realisation that special rights also have their negative aspects has slowly but surely crept in, and is being felt by many Malays, including Mahathir.

As a doctor seeking to cure a sick patient, Mahathir has an uphill task because the medicine he prescribes to jolt the Malays out of what he sees as their complacency would smack hard at the very core of their entrenched position, something which he had worked hard to bring about in the first place.

Not only would there be tremendous loss of face at the tacit admission that something sacrosanct had been compromised, but that the cure appears to be the very prescription which the patient had been indoctrinated to get rid off in the first place.

It takes great courage and conviction for Mahathir to tacitly admit the failure of a sacrosanct policy and be prepared to place his head on the chopping block in attempting to redress the situation - even on a trial basis for a year - because he sees no other way out for the Malays to catch up with others who had been forced to work hard and excel to rise above the discriminatory effects of special rights.