On the occasion of Mara's golden anniversary, Prime Minister Mahathir saw fit to once again chastise and castigate Malays for not measuring up. On the very next day, Defense Minister Najib Razak, as if on cue, chimed in.

Soon the tirade reverberated in and was amplified by Mahathir's echo chamber. In the past such insults came from colonialists and contributors of Encyclopedia Britannica ; today they are from our own supposedly enlightened leaders.

As a Malay, I am deeply offended. We Malays are battle-fatigued with such constant denigrations. Frankly we are fed up with being scolded, upbraided and ridiculed.

What is particularly galling is that while our leaders are badgering us to change, they themselves are stuck in their own feudal mentality and primitive ways.

While they with nauseating frequency exhort us to be thrifty and frugal, they themselves indulge in ostentatious lifestyles: lavish weddings, palatial mansions, fancy vacations, and other vulgar displays of wealth.

While they endlessly lecture our young to opt for the sciences, they cannot convince even their own children to do so. And as they stridently hector us not to be dependent on government dole, they and their kin are the first to hog the public trough.

Malays, like others, are rational beings. Our present behavior is the direct result of the social climate fostered by our leaders.

Jungle habit

When young Malays see the likes of former Umno Youth leader Ahmad Zahid, a man with absolutely no experience in banking, being appointed chairman of Bank Simpanan Nasional, we indelibly imprint on their impressionable minds that the way to the top is not through hard work but political chicanery.

Similarly, when our young visit our cities and see those beautiful government bungalows occupied not by scientists or engineers but bureaucrats and politicians, we are again sending clear signals.

When we award Tan Sris and Datoships to 'has been' civil servants and discredited politicians but not to the discoverer of the Nipah virus or the developer of the poultry vaccine, the message becomes even louder.

It is now an annual ritual for Mahathir to beg and cajole Umno members to resist 'money politics' and other corrupt practices. And just as predictably, they ignore him. It is hard to break that jungle habit of monkey see, monkey do.

To the rakyat our leaders have lost their credibility. We have heard their grating slogans too often before: Revolusi Mental (mental revolution), Melayu Baru (New Malay), Berdikari (self reliant), and the latest, Reformasi (reformation).

The loud-mouthed Melayu Baru leader in particular, wants Malays to become 'new' and presumably 'modern', but he has yet to learn that there are modern and safer alternatives to cash when traveling.

Reform-basi

As for berdikari , that's strictly for the masses. Many years ago, a teacher's daughter was desperate to secure a scholarship after she was accepted at Cambridge to study science. No government agency would sponsor her.

At the very same time, the daughter of a cabinet minister was given a public scholarship at a provincial university to pursue an arts degree. Incidentally, both girls were Malays.

Reformasi meanwhile is fast degenerating from a genuine reform movement to a slick campaign to resurrect a disgraced politician. To cynics it is now reformbasi (stale reform).

Living abroad, I have the privilege and pleasure of meeting many brilliant and talented young Malays. But what breaks my heart is visiting them later in Malaysia and finding them stuck in some remote corner of academia or the bowels of bureaucracy.

Only last month, an engineer with a PhD from a leading university is back here in America scouting for a job, his seven-year government obligation ending. He is finally packing it up, fed up with being unappreciated.

While Mara proudly proclaimed it had sent 160,000 Malays abroad, what is not exposed is that the vast majority ended up at mediocre universities where for every 100 applicants, 110 are accepted. (No, the numbers are not typos.)

The students are not to be blamed; those running the program should be made accountable. Mara is synonymous with mediocrity; how ironic for an organization entrusted to help Malays. But at that ceremony mentioned above, the former head of Mara was, as usual, dutifully honored. The sorry pattern continues.

Given on a silver platter

Last year, a Malay lawyer was accepted to the prestigious LLM program at Harvard. Again, Mara denied him a scholarship. The excuse? We do not recognize American law degree, not even Harvard's!

Perhaps he should have applied to a third-rate British university, the kind of institution Mara is very familiar with.

At that same Mara celebration, Mahathir criticised Malay landowners of yore for leasing out their tin-rich properties to non-Malays instead of mining the land themselves. There may not be many such landowners these days but their Melayu Baru counterparts are still very much around.

This time they are subcontracting and leasing out their lucrative government contracts, company shares, and timber concessions. In fact these pemugut pajak (rent collectors) are the backbone of Umno.

At least those earlier landowners were mortgaging something that rightly belonged to them; the Melayu Baru variety are collecting their 'tolls' on bounties that were handed to them on a silver platter by a benevolent government.

These pemugut pajak do not bring any added value to a transaction or enterprise; on the contrary they impose additional costs. They are a significant drag on our economy.

Malay leaders should emulate Prophet Mohammad who inspired us with his sterling qualities and personal examples. Contrast him to our leaders who preach "do as I say, not as I do".

Juicy public contracts

In the early years of our nation they endlessly urged parents to send their children to vernacular schools while these leaders educated their own children in English. Tun Razak, for instance, sent his to England.

We should take the same yardstick our leaders use on us to measure them. Examine, for example, Umno's senior leaders. How many have excelled in the professions, successfully run a corporation, or been exemplary scholars?

They may be former academics, but the last time they published anything original was when they submitted their thesis. Similarly, they may be 'businessmen', but their companies are solely dependent on juicy public contracts conveniently doled out on non-competitive bids.

Stripped of their political appointments, their resume would be very short indeed. Severed from their political connections, they rapidly descend into obscurity.

Yet these are the very people who have no compulsion in lecturing us to be competitive. They are the ones desperately in need of a revolusi mental .

The next time our leaders harangue us, we should place a mirror in front of them. A Malay proverb says it best. A mother crab can never hope to teach her progenies to walk straight if she herself is crawling sideways.

Once Malay leaders begin walking straight, the masses would surely follow.

SEEING IT MY WAY is a regular commentary by M BAKRI MUSA, a surgeon in Silicon Valley, California, and the author of The Malay Dilemma Revisited: Race Dynamics in Modern Malaysia . Bakri's column appears every first weekend of the month. His views on Malaysia can be stated thus: Ours is a diverse nation; we can accept and celebrate this reality or by default, it becomes a liability.