The important thing is, while Dr Mahathir may have been guilty of ‘reversing’ what Tunku Abdul Rahman did, he did not act alone. This was not one man’s plan on how to ensure that Barisan Nasional and Umno do not lose power. It was a GOVERNMENT plan, with Dr Mahathir as head of that government, of course. And we must remember that in 1991 Anwar was Malaysia’s Finance Minister and in 1993 he became the Deputy Prime Minister. And the ‘Christian’ government of Sabah was toppled in 1994.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Over the last two years my studies in British and European history has been able to help me look at events from a fresh perspective. When we studied history back in our school days in Malaysia it was merely a study of dates and events, and maybe the personalities behind those events.

Later they changed the syllabus to objective and you just marked the correct answer: A, B, C, D or E. That brought the level of education down drastically and sometimes you passed your exams by just making a lucky guess at what the right answer is.

Here in Oxford we need to look at the broader picture to understand why what happened, happened. And if we apply the Oxford module rather than the ‘Pendidekan Malaysia’ module (I am not even sure of the ‘modern’ Malay spelling any more) then the Sabah ‘illegal immigrants given Malaysian citizenship’ issue can be better understood.

Many of you reading this are probably quite young, born after Merdeka of 1957 or after ‘May 13’ of 1969 -- or maybe you were still a kid then and did not know what was happening around you. Hence you will look at the ‘Sabah issue’ from today’s perspective. And hence, also, you just want to know who the guilty person is in what you consider a most heinous ‘crime’ -- in your opinion tantamount to treachery.

Now, I am not saying what they did in Sabah is legal or illegal, or even moral or immoral. This piece is not about right and wrong. Historians do not pass judgement about events in history. They just analyse what happened and what, in their opinion, were the causes of that event.

First let us go to back to 1946, the year Umno was formed.

In 1946, the British Colonial government introduced the Malayan Union, which reduced the powers of the Raja-raja Melayu (Malay Rulers). This, in turn, meant that the Malays would lose some of their powers. Hence the elite and intellectuals amongst the Malays opposed the Malayan Union.

Yes, it was the Malay elite class and the intellectual community -- and not the fishermen and farmers -- who opposed the Malayan Union. The kampong people did not really care because their lives would remain the same never mind who ran the country.

Because of this opposition to the Malayan Union, in 1948 the British abandoned the idea and instead introduced the Federation of Malaya or Persekutuan Tanah Melayu.

Next came the idea of Merdeka or independence. And this took many years of negotiations (no blood on the streets, as what Umno tells us). One issue of concern to Britain was what to do with the more than one million Chinese and Indians after Malaya was given Merdeka. They can’t be sent back to China and India so an independent Malaya had to absorb them by giving them citizenship.

Now, note what Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday. He said that Tunku Abdul Rahman was worse. The Tunku gave citizenship to more than one million foreigners. Maybe Dr Mahathir is trying to say that he gave citizenship to less than one million foreigners.

What Dr Mahathir did not explain is that the Tunku had to agree to the granting of citizenship to more than one million Chinese and Indians, which was the British term and condition for agreeing to Merdeka for Malaya. If the Tunku did not agree then the British would probably disagree to Merdeka for Malaya mainly because they had to ‘protect’ the more than one million Chinese and Indians who would otherwise become stateless.

It was a sort of trade off. Malaya would absorb the more than one million Chinese and Indians. The Chinese and Indians, in turn, must agree to special privileges for the Malays (plus Malay becomes the national language and Islam the religion of the Federation). And then Britain would grant Malaya independence.

In 1955, two years before Merdeka, the first elections were held in Malaya and the Alliance Party (a coalition of Umno, MCA and MIC) won 51 of the 52 seats. That meant the Alliance Party was ‘stable’ and could rule an independent Malaya with a clear mandate from the voters. Two years later, in 1957, Malaya gained independence.

But that ‘honeymoon’ was short-lived. Twelve years later, in 1969, the Alliance party received a beating in the Third General Election. It garnered less than 50% of the popular votes and lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament.

The Alliance Party (meaning all three: Umno, MCA and MIC) knew that it was losing power. Hence Barisan Nasional was formed to replace the Alliance Party so that the opposition parties could be brought into the ruling coalition. And that was how the Alliance Party got back control of the country -- by forming a new coalition with the opposition parties (what we could call a ‘unity government’, I suppose).

But that was not enough and they needed to do more. Selangor, the jewel in the crown, was in jeopardy (it still is today). So they created new ‘Malay’ cities, such as Shah Alam, and ‘flooded’ these cities with Malays to ‘dilute’ the Chinese voters.

Then they created a separate Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur so that the majority Chinese in Kuala Lumpur could be ‘kicked out’ of Selangor. Thus the ruling party can afford to lose Kuala Lumpur but they would not also lose Selangor.

By then, of course, Malaysia had been created with the agreement that 25% of the Parliament seats would come from Sabah and Sarawak. This would mean that Sabah and Sarawak would be the ruling party’s ‘fixed deposit’ and there was no way 1969 could be repeated as long as Sabah and Sarawak remained under the ruling party.

But that soon changed in 1985 when PBS, seen as a Christian-based party, kicked out the ‘Muslim’ government and replaced it with a ‘Christian’ government.

This meant, yet again, the ruling party was in danger of losing power like what happened in 1969. And they were in danger of losing power because the Muslims, who used to be 85-90% of the population, pre-Merdeka, had been reduced to a mere 50% or so -- in the first instance when more than one million Chinese and Indians had been given citizenship in 1957 and in the second instance when Sabah and Sarawak became part of Malaysia and the Muslim population was diluted even further.

Hence Barisan Nasional (in particular Umno) needed to dilute the non-Muslim population, in particular in their ‘fixed deposit’ states in East Malaysia which control a very critical 25% of the seats in Parliament and where the Muslims are not the majority like in West Malaysia.

And that was when the idea was mooted to ‘create’ an additional Muslim population of at least one million. And they could not wait for this to happen gradually over 50 years by encouraging Malays to have more children. They had to ‘fast track’ this exercise, which means they had to ‘import’ the population.

The first step was for Umno to get into Sabah. The next step was to ‘import’ one million Muslims into Sabah and give them citizenship. In 1994, this exercise over those few years proved successful when the ‘Christian’ government got kicked out and a ‘Muslim’ government took over the state and has held it ever since.

Now, certainly Dr Mahathir was Prime Minister of Malaysia at that time. But it was the Barisan Nasional government (which means it was more than just Umno) that came out with this game plan on how to grab back and/or retain power by diluting the non-Muslim population by importing a large Muslim population.

In 1957, they granted citizenship to one million ‘foreign’ Chinese and Indians and 30 years later they ‘balanced’ this by granting citizenship to one million foreign Muslims. There was nothing illegal about what they did but whether it was moral or not is another thing altogether.

The important thing is, while Dr Mahathir may have been guilty of ‘reversing’ what Tunku Abdul Rahman did, he did not act alone. This was not one man’s plan on how to ensure that Barisan Nasional and Umno do not lose power. It was a GOVERNMENT plan, with Dr Mahathir as head of that government, of course. And we must remember that in 1991 Anwar was Malaysia’s Finance Minister and in 1993 he became the Deputy Prime Minister. And the ‘Christian’ government of Sabah was toppled in 1994.

And this happened not because of one man, Dr Mahathir, but because of what the government did. And Anwar was a key person in that government at that time. Hence I would be very careful about how the opposition plays up the Sabah issue because if the truth were to emerge it may cost PKR a lot of votes in Sabah. And if they can’t win Sabah then they can’t form the next federal government.