By C C Pung JP
GOD created men and women.
Along the way came ‘pondan’ (transvestites), LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQ+ and what have you.
When churches and governments start to change their doctrines by accepting women into priesthood and recognise same-sex marriages, lines are blurred and the debate on DEI (diversity, equity, inclusiveness) has innumerable dimensions added to it to accommodate all the newly-minted gender pronouns.
Malaysia seems unmoved by the rage.
I think DEI is simply an inconvenient subject because an overwhelming number of public policies, from the decidedly discriminatory New Economic Policy and its mutated equivalents to government-funded Islamic programme to university admission, there’s little or no DEI to speak of especially when looked through the race lens.
Islam, through JAKIM, the religious department, gets over RM1 billion a year to develop Islam while other beliefs (granted in the Constitution) get alms-size grants on and off.
Public universities (funded by tax payers) have thinly veiled quota policy favouring a certain ethnicity.
This is beside the fact that one university (UiTM) which has a dozen or so campus in the country, whose admission is restricted to only Malays and Bumiputeras.
The Malaysian civil service, one of the biggest in the world in relation to population, is about two million- strong of which 92+% Malays/Bumi although they make up under 70% of the Malaysian population.
With DEI so heavily favouring the Malay/bumi group, it makes me wonder why some Malay nationalists, such as former prime minister Mahathir, are still complaining about the lack of progress among them, and are still playing the victimhood card unashamedly talking about ‘threats’ to Malay rights, ‘loss’of economic opportuni t ies, etc.
I need more time on Google to see if DEI is being understood from a Malaysia angle, or if DEI is being put in a basket to understand the development malaise in the country.
Or, perhaps DEI is more like ‘Discrimination, Excluvism Inequity’?
Happy 2025.
