All our prime ministers have been ‘pendatang’. It is almost certain that our next prime minister will be a pendatang. Based on our census data, practically 89 percent of us Malaysians qualify as pendatang. Yes, if you want to play that pendatang game, please be sure you have your facts straight.

If you want to play that pendatang game, then Malaysians of Chinese, Indian and Malay ancestry are, technically speaking, pendatang . And we have a negligible and dwindling number of Orang Asli – Malaysians of various indigenous ethnicities – who can legitimately and genuinely refer to the rest of us as pendatang.

I’m personally not in favour of invoking such a concept, let alone exploit it for making illegitimate, bogus, artificial and racist distinctions among ourselves. But the Umnoputeras who like to distort, exploit, and politicise this term to suit their narrow and bigoted agenda will find that this too, like the rest of their racist programme, simply does not have cache.

More importantly, we – fair-minded Malaysians who have become tired of your abuses and exploits - are not going to remain so silent anymore and let such distortions and machinations of you Umnoputeras to continue to manipulate and divide us.

If you want to play that pendatang game, then be prepared to own up to the truth. Much like the Conquistadors in Latin America have been forced – slowly but surely - to own up to the fact that the only ones who are not pendatang in the western hemisphere are the indigenous Indians, North Americans of European ancestry who have also shown xenophobic tendencies have been made to own up to the realisation of their own pendatang status in the US.

As much as Americans of European ancestry like to think of themselves as ‘natives,’ they have been increasingly made to recognise that they are as much pendatang to that world as are the more recent immigrants to America.

With the exception of the Native (indigenous) Americans, all Americans – however extensive their ancestry in America – are pendatang.

So, Umnoputeras, if you want to play that pendatang game, then however extensive our Malaysian ancestry is – whatever our race – we’re all pendatang . Like the indigenous Americans, only the Orang Asli, against whom - I might add - we pendatang of Malay, Chinese, Indian and European ancestry have done much to oppress and exploit, are the only non -pendatang.

Mind you, I’m not one who likes to indulge in such racist games that the Umnoputera like to do.

But my fellow warnanegara Malaysia, do take a moment and first look in the mirror before you try to play this pendatang game again.