When policies of a country indicates bias, can the people be united.

In Malaysia, there is a policy of giving one particular race a five percent discount in the price of a house, regardless of the person’s economic position.

Thus, a poor citizen of one race would have to pay the full price to afford a house while a rich citizen of this privileged race can get the same house at a price 5% cheaper than the price the other poor citizen has to pay.

This is because the policy stipulates that all new house buyers from that race, regardless of financial status which means even a millionaire, must be given a five percent discount. The other races, regardless of their financial status, be they rich or poor, must pay the price in full.

Since the housing development is a private enterprise, the developer would want his profit margin to remain the same, it merely means that the developer will have to raise the price a little and the little extra paid by the other races, some of whom are comparatively poorer, would be used as a kind of subsidy for the buyers of that privileged race, some of whom are very rich. How unfair such a policy is!

First, such a policy is not just to help the poorer citizens own houses. If that is the case, I believe many would not feel any unfairness; the people would in fact support it. Doing charity work must be encouraged. However, this is certainly not the case. The policy is divisive as it separates the citizens of one country into two groups, giving financial aid to one community despite the fact that some of them are so rich that they can even afford mansions.

And such feelings of being treated less equal will exist as long as the policy continues when some of the citizens, who have incomes of RM2,000 or less a month, realize the unfairness of having to pay more for the same type of house than another neighbor of that privileged race although that neighbour is receiving an income of more than RM5,000 or more a month.

Despite the clear cut unfairness of such a policy we are told by the Managing editor of the Star newspaper, P. Gunasegaram, who took a tour of the Malaysian Government Transformation Programme at the Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre that one of the eight booths there, the 1Malaysia booth which is the country's national unity booth, did not have ‘an assessment of the overall problem, the proposed solutions and a clearly defined action plan’. According to him, he was given to understand that this was so because some politicians had objected to some of the recommendations by the 1Malaysia lab. One of the recommendations was the giving of discounts to houses for all communities based on needs. Such a recommendation, I feel, is very fair and ought not to be objected to by any sane, matured politician. It is the right move towards establishing the unity of a country.
(Read ‘Progressing towards a free and open society’ in ‘Question Time’ dated Friday December 18, 2009 by P. Gunasegaram at thestaronline.)

After all, if the main objective is to correct the economical imbalance and if most of the people in a particular race need the financial assistance, then those people will get the discount to help them own a house. This will never deprive the truly poor from being assisted. What other citizens find unfair is the fact that the very rich is being assisted or subsidised by people who are financially worse off than such people just because these rich people belong to a particular race.


It is most unfortunate for a country to have one-community-only leaders heading the country. Apparently, 1Malaysia and national unity cannot be a reality unless and until we get national leaders who can truly represent all citizens. The fact that our political leaders cannot accept such a fair policy tells us how backward our political leaders are. Does any country need such kind of leaders?

And the strangeness of this is that the ordinary people, those I talked to, of this particular race feel that such a recommendation is fair. Like they said, "It will not deprive the poor Malays of being given the 5% discount when buying houses." If P. Gunasegaram's source is accurate, it looks like it is the rich politicians (Are there any who are poor?)who wish to hold on to such privileges.

Only when all citizens are, without a doubt, treated really equal in their own country can unity be said to exist.For that to happen all divisive policies must be replaced with policies to assist all citizens who need assistance in every sphere of life regardless of race and religion.

Let us pray for a true leader who will genuinely implement such uniting policies. Until then, there can be no real progress.