Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Clive Kessler:The Haughty And Idiotic Professor

Hantu Laut

The social engineer

Isn't it commanding of a learned person to know his subject well before he put his thoughts to pen.

Clive Kessler's denunciation of the social contract enshrined in the constitution goes to show his shallow knowledge of Malaysian politics and the Malaysian Constitution or he just simply meddling in the affairs of this country for the benefits of the oppositions.
There is no Ketuanan Melayu, there is only Malay majority rule.

Majority rule is common in many countries.The same fear  White Australians have of the continuing migration of Asians to Australia that one day may dilute their power to control the political future of the country, the Malays have the same fear and have every rights to defend the erosion of Malay political power.


Would White Australians accede majority control of their political power to the minority Chinese or Vietnamese or for that matter to the minority Muslim population?

Perhaps, Clive Kessler
could answer this question if he still hanged to his tenacious belief that the Malays should not protect the political hegemony in their own country and succor for more support if they felt threatened of losing their grip on political power.

'Ketuanan Melayu' is implicit, social contract is not, it is explicitly defined in Article 153 of the Malaysian Constitution that clearly spelled out what the social contract entails.


I would invite the learned professor to read this particular article and see for himself whether the social contract is imaginary or explicitly addressed in the Constitution.

The claim is not plain and simple 'historical revisionist' as inferred by him.It is a plain and simple 'contract' in the Constitution and one that does not need 'historical revisionists' to manufacture it.It is there plain and simple.

You are not happy, you want to change it and you think changing the government would solve the problem. You have to get two-thirds majority in Parliament to agree to kick it out of the Constitution.Can you get all the Malay MPs from both sides of the political fence to agree? No where mates! So stop cursing the Malays for your political troubles.It ain't their making.If you want to curse ..... it's the Brits, they are the culprits.

The proviso is primarily a continuation of previous laws made by the British to protect the indigenous peoples from being overwhelmed by the migrant races, mostly Chinese and Indians, who were much well to do urban dwellers as compared to the Bumiputras, who, at that time, were mostly poor farmers and labourers. The British saw the economic disequilibrium among the races that placed the indigenous peoples at a big disadvantage economically.

To protect the natives further the British even introduced 'Malay Reserve' lands in the then Malaya and 'Native Title' lands in the then British North Borneo and Sarawak.These lands can only be transacted among indigenous people. The British fear that the natives could be robbed of their lands if no such protection is made mandatory.Was the British wrong then? Perhaps, Kessler could also give an answer to this pertinent question.


Why did the British introduced affirmative actions even then.Did they not foresee the precarious economic position of the Malays and the natives of the Bornean states? Those considerations were part and parcel of a 'social contract'.As late as the early seventies the bumiputras controlled less than 5 per cent of the economy.


The Constitution and Article 153 was written on the basis of a report from the 'Reid Commission' which included recommendation for protective clause in the Constitution for safeguarding Malay rights and later the inclusion of natives of Sabah and Sarawak when Malaysia was formed.Article 153 in particular, was incorporated to address the economic imbalance.Kessler, was clearly muted on this.

Even more disappointing is Kessler's haughty remarks that showed his headful of garbage using pseudo-cleft sentences trying to win over uninitiated Malaysians into believing his craps. Because of his academic background some would fall into his web of deceit.

He said:

"Yet there was no “social contract” as such at the time. People have only inferred and argued subsequently that there was, because there somehow must have been, such a contract at the time of Merdeka — and, driven by retrospective wish-fulfilment, they have then “filled in” what it pleases them to believe, or passionately desire, that its terms must have been. They “read back” the politics of the present, and their preferred political future that they like to imagine for themselves, into the historic past."

If Article 153 is not a social contract, what is?

I am not a great proponent of the NEP as it is, I do believe, for the sake of the Malays, it should not be allowed to go on forever. It will only add more sins to the already burdening rent-seeking mentality and demands of certain group of bumiputras who want it easy.


Prime Minister Najib would be better off ignoring the militancy of such groups.

Being a Malay he has every right to perpetuate Malay political power within the ambit of the laws of this country and ignore people like Clive Kessler who can flush his anthropological scroll down the toilet bowl.Knowing anthropology did not make him an expert in Malaysian politics.

His closing paragraph:

"This, quite simply and evidently, is historically erroneous. It is sheer revisionism. It is retrospective meddling with national historical truth and the nation’s constitutional foundations."

Keep your social engineering bullshit at home, Mr Kessler !

What Malaysians should be fighting against is not Malay powers or Ketuanan Melayu , they should be fighting against corruptions, abuses of power and mismanagement of the nation resources.