gundam916

SINGAPORE - Malaysia can "do better" than Singapore if only it would treat its minority Chinese and Indian populations fairly, the city-state's founding leader has said in unexpectedly blunt comments about the rival neighbor.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's comments are likely to touch a raw nerve in Malaysia where ethnic tensions are never far below the surface over minority complaints about discrimination by the Malay Muslim dominated government.

Lee even suggested that Singapore wouldn't mind rejoining Malaysia if the latter accepted meritocracy instead of sticking to an affirmative action policy favoring the Malay majority.

"If they would just educate the Chinese and Indians, use them and treat them as their citizens, they can equal us and even do better than us and we would be happy to rejoin them," Lee told two academics in a recent interview.

"We are a standing indictment of all the things that they can be doing differently," he said.

Singapore, led by Lee, split from the Malay federation in 1965, after a short-lived merger that soured amid concerns that Lee's Chinese-dominated party would influence politics in Malay Muslim dominated Malaysia.

Lee was the city state's prime minister until 1990 and now occupies an advisory position in the Cabinet, and is still believed to wield considerable influence over the government.

His comments about rejoining Malaysia, however, were rhetorical. There is zero chance of the two countries merging principally because neither government would want it, given the immense differences between the two countries and their cultures.

Malaysia's 26 million population is about 60 percent Malay, who control the government and many government-linked companies. Chinese are about 25 percent and Indians 10 percent. In Singapore, Chinese form 77 percent of its 4 million population while Malays are 14 percent and Indians 8 percent.

Singapore's economy _ driven by manufacturing, financial services and a growing biotechnology sector _ also is far more developed than Malaysia's, which is largely dependent on manufacturing and commodities exports such as palm oil and rubber.

Lee's interview was conducted Sept. 27 by Tom Plate of the University of California's Los Angeles Media Center and Jeffrey Cole of the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center.

Source: Yahoo! News Singapore

Wah... Very daredevil of him to step on their toes again... wait later that Dr. M cannot tahan then heart attack peng sah how?!? :biggrin4:

1) Earn $ juz by readin emails as you surf the Net.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


2) Get paid 4 ur views via simple online surveys? Tried & tested & it's [b]TRUE
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


3) Own the Internet & get paid while surfin!! Act FAST!!!

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


4) Another GREAT PTC [Paid to Click] lobang! [i]Click on ads & earn $.
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


5)
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Haru

lol... well Lee is kinda right, but its kinda racist.

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
\


To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

jencrs

Nothing racist about it, he's not stereotyping anyone, he's just making observations about policies.

I believe affirmative action hurts M'sia more than it helps. Even Dr. M admits that it has led to complacency. Non-bumiputras are at quite a disadvantage and have been understandably bitter about it.

Haru

hmm... hope they wont be like "eh Why u say me" lol

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
\


To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

id_peace

Dr M had actually secretly nodding his head even through he had publicly supported the policy that Tengku Abdul rahman had uses. What had once thought to be a short term gap had ended up as a long one cos the people that whom they want to improved had become complaenced about it.

When we are still in malaya, they had already been havign this in place. In one of the last or in fact the last parliament in Malaya, MM Lee had slammed on the policy hard and that it left many speechless. Many years down the road, in someone biography, it was said that Tengku had wanted Singapore out cos he feared that the next minister of Malaya would be a chinese (mm Lee) and likely that he would revert whatever policy that he has in place.

Even a fraction of the UMNO highly educated people saw and agreed with the problem back then but the problem is that the malays then were in a bad state and only with such help they are likely to be able to improve but however, now it created a problem in the country. When compare to the singaporean malays, the malaysian malays are much more worse off. Not only that their education standards and etcs are not as good as their singaporeans counter parts.

While mostly failure and some success, he still slammed the entire policy and blamed it on his fellow men for not making use fully of what had been a chance for them to be on par with the other races.

I would say that what MM lee said is collect. The chinese provide the business and the capital while the indian provide the professional and the labour whereby the country could thrive perfectly well with the natural resources that they had.

They have every chance to be one of the top economy in the world if they have the right person to lead them.

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

wenchong1985

what is he going to do then? send our boy boy NSF to go there help fighting? or our first class MP go there and help to government their country?

The Secret of our Esplanade:

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.




A site for all Final Fantasy series lovers

New updates: Singapore Cosplay Festival Photo Gallery

in
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.



To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

zhudage

hmm i realli tink m'sia shld tink abt wat Mr lee said. its time for m'sia to do something abt themselves

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.