Hey Melayu! Why you so scared ahh?
By Zan Azlee

Recently, the Cabinet has announced that they will take the required steps to legalise the e-hailing ride services of Uber and Grab. Good news all around, except for taxi drivers I guess.

The ridiculous spat between taxi drivers and Uber and Grab drivers went on for so long. The babies doing all the crying really are the taxi drivers who couldn’t handle the competition.

I don’t really want to discuss this issue. What I really want to bring up in this particular piece is the cowardice and insecure feeling that so many Malaysians, particularly the Malays, have.

It has always been happening and I have always been regularly raising the issue because we need to realise it and come up with a way to end this crippling mentality.

Why can’t the taxi drivers accept stiff competition and take it as a sign that they need to up their game in order to survive? Isn’t that the objective of an open market?

But no. They want an environment that suits them totally, eliminating any other better options for transport. Who the hell said they could have that right?

They would rather turn to threatening e-hailing drivers with violence than actually doing the easier thing of improving their services.

Then there is the issue of the separation of Bahasa Malaysia and non-Bahasa films that were nominated for the 2016 Festival Filem Malaysia.

It just showed off the insecurity of Malay filmmakers who were afraid that their films wouldn’t stand a chance competing with with non-Malays.

And just like the taxi drivers, rather than improving the quality of their films, they would rather create alternative award categories just so that they can win and pat themselves on their backs.

It doesn’t matter if the categories would only be filled with sub-par nominations. Why the need for a higher benchmark when it’s just going to be guaranteed win, right?

And of course, we all know how it is in the corporate world. With the affirmative action that has been going on in Malaysia for so long, the Malays now feel that they are an entitled bunch.

With the different required quotas in corporate ownership and leadership roles, who the hell cares if you have the necessary skills or not.

All you need to do is just bank on the race factor to be given the position, then just sit back and let those who really know what they’re doing to steer the ship.

It’s the same with education. With all the local public universities having set quotas for student numbers, why would students want to strive to perform well?

All you need to do is get the minimum requirements and then bank on the fact that the enrolment statistics will be on your side because of the ethnic group you’ve been born into.

And then, when anything crops that starts threatening that privileged positions that the Malays have, they start to throw a tantrum like the little babies they are.

They think that they are brave and strong like pahlawans when they protest against whatever that threatens their ‘rights’, and that they are fighting for their people.

But what they are really fighting for is a handicapped and crutched environment that doesn’t improve anything for their people.

Sure. I understand the objective of affirmative action when the situation demands it, when the environment is too crippling. But what about in a situation which is already conducive?

Then, affirmative action will only become a cradle that creates mediocrity and insecurity. And that may just be what we are seeing right now in Malaysia.

You know what? I’d much rather see affirmative action being taken to rectify social immobility that transcends racial and ethnic groups. Now that would be a situation that demands it.