Malaysia Is for Malaysians.
Hadi Awang’s daughter-in-law is Chinese. Let that sink in. The same political ecosystem that weaponises “pendatang” every election cycle has intermarried with the very communities it otherises. This is not a gotcha for the sake of it. It is evidence that the rhetoric is selective, opportunistic, and hollow.
Every time elections approach, the same script returns: Indians belong to India, Chinese to China, Bugis to Sulawesi, Jawa to Java, Minang, Rawa and Kerinci to Sumatra, Aceh to Aceh.
Suddenly Mahathir’s roots in Kerala become relevant. Sanusi’s grandfather from China is whispered about. Zahid Hamidi’s father from Yogyakarta is noted. Some can even be traced to Taiwan or Yunnan.
The list is endless and the point is always the same: create distance, manufacture suspicion, and extract political capital.
When does this end?
Malaysians only have Malaysia. The people being labelled were born here. They will die here. This is their motherland. There is no mass return ticket to India, China, Indonesia or anywhere else.
Treating citizens as temporary guests is not patriotism. It is political arson.
Suffering is not exclusive to any one community.
When one group is struggling, others are too.
The claim that an entire community is rich because a handful of individuals succeeded is lazy and dishonest.
31.5% of Chinese households and 45.5% of Indian households are B40.
38.6% of Chinese households and 38.5% of Indian households are M40.
These are not the numbers of a privileged class living off others.
They are the numbers of ordinary Malaysians facing the same cost-of-living pressures as everyone else.
Look at public university intake. Chinese and Indian students combined made up only about 11% of the latest intake despite comprising roughly 30% of the population and contributing disproportionately to the tax base.
That is not “dominance.” That is under-representation dressed up as grievance.
Look at the money. Non-Islamic houses of worship — Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Christian — share a total of RM50 million a year.
That is one-quarter of the RM200 million Malaysia has spent on international aid in a comparable period. Priorities are revealed by budgets, not by speeches.
The wealth of certain communities was not stolen by minorities. It has been extracted, concentrated, and protected by elite networks that use race and religion as tools to keep their own communities divided and dependent. The real theft is not ethnic.
It is political.
We cannot keep living in a recycled past while pretending it is national defence.
The people born on this soil, who pay taxes here, raise children here, and will be buried here, are Malaysians.
Full stop.
Malaysia is for Malaysians. The rest is election theatre, and it is long past time the audience stopped clapping.
