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Must we pointlessly debate racist proposals about FTs?

COMMENT It belies belief that a debate about federal territories is still alive a week after Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor’s ridiculous suggestion to turn Penang into a federal territory.

The smart response from DAP et al would have been: “No, thank you very much, we will not turn Penang into a federal territory, please stop dreaming. Let’s move on to political matters that, well, matter.”

Instead, things have now spiralled into manufactured outrage, and counter-proposals of ever-increasing ridiculousness.

The most generous interpretation is that this is merely symptomatic of a boring week in politics; the least generous interpretation is that this shows how all sides of the political divide continue to thrive on divisive, racial politics.

Impossible impracticalities

I’ll start with my belief that from every starting point - legal, administrative, political - it would be impossibly impractical for the federal government to successfully federalise the state of Penang.

I would put the odds of doing so at less than one in ten thousand. If there are any serious, neutral experts or scholars who would like to point out otherwise, I will happily stand to be corrected.

If I am right in this regard however, why on earth are we debating this ridiculous, purposely provocative proposal?

A likely answer unfortunately seems to be that it is because this proposal, and the many counter-proposals that have followed, have an ugly racial twinge to them.

Needless to say, an attempt to make Penang into Kuala Lumpur - a federally-administered entity without an elected leader - is easily couched by old school politicians as an attempt by Malays to encroach on Chinese political power.

We love to go on and on about how Umno stays in power by preying maliciously on manufactured fears that the rich and powerful Chinese are out to subvert and dominate the Malays.

Will we turn a blind eye when DAP makes political hay by doing the exact same fear-mongering, by exaggerating fears of Malay dominance of the Chinese for self-benefit?

Truly, how much longer do we want to perpetuate this backwards, counter-productive, racist brand of politics?

Wrong priorities

It does no one good to deny facts. Yes, Kuala Lumpur was carved out of Selangor in 1974 so as to maintain a Malay majority state of Selangor, and most likely (at least somewhat unjustly) federalised in an effort to reduce Chinese political influence - that I believe is a fair interpretation.

I also agree, of course, that Kuala Lumpur would be better served by some sort of elected, accountable representative, rather than a federally-appointed one.

That does not mean I support DAP’s Liew Chin Tong’s latest suggestion - that (in today’s political climate) Kuala Lumpur be made into a state, with its own elected state government.

I remember many years ago, being at a meeting where the formation of some sort of common policy framework for Pakatan Rakyat was being attempted.

Liew informally began thinking aloud that perhaps Pakatan Rakyat should push for Kuala Lumpur to be defederalised and reintegrated into the state of Selangor, presumably to right the wrongs of 1974.

The idea made me want to bang my head against the table in frustration then, and his latest proposal this week did not elicit a particularly different response.

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