Kuala Lumpur, Feb 6 – Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak missed a golden opportunity to capture the hearts and minds of Malaysian Indians when he delivered a disappointing speech at the unity ponggal festival held on the 2nd of February at Dataran Merdeka.
The prime minister could have struck the right nod with the Indian community gathered at the function and not forgetting that hundreds of thousands of them were also watching the show live through astro Vaanavil channel.
From the clear and visible response, the estimated crowd of 50,000 did not cheer up nor were they excited about the announcements made by the prime minister which were usual promises without any specific agenda for the Indian community.
The prime minister or his advisers should have realised that probably this is the final occasion before the general election where the prime minister would be attending an Indian function with such a mammoth crowd which was simultaneously streamed live through a popular TV channel.
What PM could have done?
To begin with, the Indian community has been demanding for years that Thaipusam and Ponggal be declared as public holidays. The unity ponggal occasion was the perfect forum to make such an announcement and the Indian community would have been elated.
The prime minister failed to take note of this and for some reasons did not touch on the public holiday issue. The least he could have done is to announce Thaipusam as a national holiday as some of the states have already declared it as a state-level public holiday.
Furthermore, Thaipusam is one Malaysian festival that has become internationally popular attracting thousands of tourists from all over the world who come to Malaysian just to witness the unique occasion.
The Indian community is also eagerly waiting for some form of specific and more tangible proposals from the BN government before GE-13 on their social and economic problems, for them to be convinced that they should vote to retain BN at the federal level.
Indians are fed up of usual promises and ‘Namikkei’ talks and we should not forget that a strong opposition front is constantly reminding the Indian community on the past failures of BN government and about their empty promises.
PM’s disappointing announcements…
None of the announcements made by the PM interested the Indian community and the issues were usual run-off-the-mill stuff.
On upgrading Tamil schools to fully aided schools:
Upgrading the Tamil schools to fully aided schools is a century long issue which has been raised as resolutions at almost all the MIC general assemblies. This should have been done long ago.
Even now PM’s announcement on this matter was evasive as he merely said that he will discuss with the Education minister Muhyiddin Yassin on the implementation of the proposal.
On increasing Indian corporate equity to 3%;
Next was the issue of increasing the corporate equity of Indian community to 3%. Again this has been announced several times in parliament and outside by every prime ministers from Mahathir to Badawi without any specific agenda.
The nation’s corporate equity increases every year but the Indian share of corporate equity is not increasing correspondingly. So something must be seriously done if the government really wants the Indian community to rise up to owning 3% of the nation’s corporate wealth.
If Najib is serious about increasing the Indian corporate equity his announcement should be accompanied by some specific proposals on how the BN government proposes to reach the target. Again this was another repeated promise.
On upgrading TAFE college as a Technical university…
Although this was something new but this announcement is not something which will excite the overall Indian community who were eagerly waiting for business, economic and educational opportunities from the BN government.
MCA’s TAR college has also been upgraded to university status and so this looks more like a political favour to one of the component parties of BN rather than a community issue.
There are so many private colleges which have achieved university-college status or university status through their sheer performance and going by its own standards TAFE College could have achieved this recognition without any political favour from Najib.
TAFE was able to meet the required standard guidelines set by the Higher Education Ministry and it is only because of that Najib was able to accord the College a university status.
TAFE college has been providing certificate and diploma courses for years to all Malaysians irrespective of their racial background and this recognition will probably enable TAFE to recruit more foreign students and to increase its student intake.
Therefore upgrading a college owned by MIC’s educational arm only benefits the party and not the Indian community directly.
On increasing the grant for Cabinet Committee on Indian affairs..
Again this is something privy to the BN government and cannot be considered a beneficial announcement for the Indian community.
Without doubt, the Cabinet committee on Indian affairs is doing a good job in identifying and solving some of the problems faced by the Indian community and this additional grant would help them to do the job effectively.
However this committee is merely raising the issues and is still unable to solve the Indian community’s woes. Classic example is that of stateless Indians and those with red ICs.
A key member of the Cabinet committee Dato Sivasubramaniam recently said that because of the attitude of Home Ministry staff they are unable to solve the problems of the Indian applicants.
PM missed a golden opportunity….
In conclusion, the 50,000 strong crowd which came to witness the cultural show and the others who were watching the PM’s speech live over television were not convinced that the BN government is seriously addressing the real problems faced by the Indian community.
Clearly there were no specific agendas or proposals to convince the Indians as to what the BN government is determined to do for them.
In this context the Prime minister clearly missed a golden opportunity to pull some fence sitting Indian voters in favour of BN.
-MUTHARASAN
