Malaysia is split into east and west Malaysia. West is where I grew up and like many westies, when I think about Malaysia, I invariably think about west Malaysia. I often forget what it’s like in east Malaysia. This is unforgivable, seeing that I really liked places like Kuching, Miri and Sabah and that many of my great friends are from Sarawak. In fact, Sabah continues to give me great memories – mount KK was exciting and the islands at the TAR Park are gorgeous, as is the Karambrunai resort off Kota Kinabalu.

Just how different east Malaysia is from its cousins in the peninsular, came into apparent focus last Saturday night, when I met up with 2 other lawyers to chat about work and life in general. 1 of them was a Sarawakian and the other was a westie. When this westie and I talked about the discrimination we experienced in Malaysia, our eastern friend had a curious look on his face. It was apparent that he didn’t agree and thought it strange we should say that.

My father was a self-employed trader. In his younger days he’d ply his trade from a commercial vehicle, often a lorry or a commercial van. There was a chendol man (chendol is a Malaysian sweet dessert) who told me he could sell his chendol anywhere and not worry about local council enforcement agencies hounding him, as he was a Malay. If it was a Chinese selling noodles, there would be summons galore for sure. Ditto the Indian rojak seller (rojak is a Malaysian salad with spicy peanut sauce – mouth watering stuff). Whenever I buy my chendol from this Malay seller, I’d wonder what it was like when my father had to ply his trade on the streets, vending anything from soy and chilli sauce to toys and playing cards. Certainly my father in law constantly regaled how the Klang Council harass him over his textile shop on a constant basis, whereas the Malay foodstalls on the same street as his shop barely copped anything. Didn’t my east Malaysian friend on Saturday night experience this?

When I was in primary school, if you scored 5A’s in the primary assessment exam, you stood a chance of getting into a select school in the capital. We all knew in these schools, a Chinese would be totally out-numbered by Malays. A good friend of ours went there and confirmed that to be true, not that it needed verification. The big number Malay students tend to suggest there are many of them with 5As’ but we all knew if you were a Malay, you didn’t need 5A’s to get into those schools. Didn’t my east Malaysian friend on Saturday night experience this?

The primary school assessment exam was the first of many levels in school, where we learned we were different from the Malays not just in terms of the colour of our skin or the sort of food we ate. They could do things we couldn’t do, go places we couldn’t go. They were special. This differentiation went all the way to the University. Didn’t my east Malaysian friend on Saturday night experience this?

When I was in University in Sydney (UNSW), I stayed in various places, as each year I would seek out cheaper rooms or flats. In my final years, I found a really cheap place – in a dilapidated backroom on top of a shop. To go to the loo, I had to get out of my room, walk down a corridor and get into the flat. I had to work to pay for my fees and my board, cheap as it was. I worked on weekends in a fish market – did it for close to 6 years. Had to be in by 5am and worked through till 5-6 pm on Saturdays and often on Sundays as well. I delivered newspapers at 5.30 in the morning 3-4 times a week, on weekdays. In between classes, I worked in the University faculty doing odd jobs – in the print room, moving furniture, etc. I worked full time in a hospital as a ward assistant during each summer, while also holding down the fish market and newspaper delivery jobs. All through this, I knew a Malay guy who lived nearby. He was alone when I first met him. He later got married and had kids. He didn’t do any part time work. While I slogged away trying to make ends meet, he was busy having babies. I earned every penny while every one of his came from the Malaysian government. I think many of us know someone like this Malay friend of mine. Didn’t my east Malaysian friend on Saturday night experience this?

When I was working in Malaysia, I regularly drew up contracts for Chinese who used Malays to tender for contracts. Stock standard requirements in Malaysia. Every commercial lawyer in Malaysia has loan contracts, trust deeds, powers of attorney, transfer instruments, management agreements, shareholder agreements and all these other instruments locked away in a drawer somewhere, designed to protect the Chinese businessman who needed the Malay to open doors. They were known as the Ali Baba schemes. Didn’t my east Malaysian friend on Saturday night experience this?

As a lawyer in financial institutions in Malaysia, I had also had to draw up correspondence with regulators, either telling them we have the required minimum 30% Malay staff in a given level of management, or explaining why we didn’t. I had to sit in meetings where management had to agonize over paying Malay graduates just to fill the payrolls and report to the regulators. The Malaysian Securities Commission and the KL Stock Exchange had to be satisfied that you had enough Malay licensed dealers, before they agreed to issue licenses to non-Malay dealers. Every month I had to go over the reports and come up with the requisite correspondence with the regulators. Many securities dealing companies simply employ Malay graduates to fill up the quotas and as these “staff” could not be trusted to sit at the dealing board, they were asked to perform other tasks, including clerical tasks. Some don’t even bother to show up for work. This was true when I first got involved in the securities dealing industry in 1994 and when I left it in 2004. Didn’t my east Malaysian friend on Saturday night experience this?

When I was the Company secretary of a bank in Malaysia, I had to submit profiles of potential board candidates to Bank Negara, the regulator of banks in Malaysia. The forms invariably had Malay/Non Malay boxes which you had to tick. The more Malays you had on your board, the better you got on with the regulator, especially if these Malays were from the establishment, ie approved by the ruling party and its goons. Each board meeting is preceded by long talks about golf and women and trips abroad. They would come in their jacket and tie and know next to nothing about the industry. They wouldn’t take a second look at the minutes, resolutions, letters or contracts you drafted. They only needed a nod from their puppet masters in the ruling party to put their signatures down. In my present place, each director is an industry expert. Their contribution is quick, meaningful and weighty. They had to be interviewed by the company through a selection process. The draft you gave them would be circulated and re-worked through half a dozen times before all are happy to sign, and it all takes 2-3 days. That imbecile in that Malaysian bank would probably have taken the whole week to get to speak to his master, before returning the document to you without any questions asked, signature grandiosely and artistically penned. Why were these buffoons there? Simply because they are Malays. Didn’t my east Malaysian friend on Saturday night experience this?

The list goes on – subsidised housing, scholarships, promotions, I once foolishly got into an argument with a Malay in a parking lot. Over a car park space, obviously. I was so incensed at his “holier than thou, you migrant” attitude I told him there wasn’t yet a Malay quota for car parks, and walked off without giving in. The discrimination is so pervasive in the peninsular I wonder how my east Malaysian friend could have denied it. Maybe it is very different in the east.

We don’t like P Kenyon at Man United. So when we get a chance to whack one over him, the temptation is almost always too good to pass. So now I think I found one. He has now said Chelsea’s problems – on and off the field – is now behind them. But we all thought everything was fine – P Kenyon said so himself!

I guess Kenyon would always remain the slimeball double dealing toothpick that he has proven himself to be.

John Howard the Prime Minister has done it again – he has pulled off another act to add to his “Honest John” reputation.

I first heard him speak when he was in the Opposition over 20 years ago, bushy eyebrows and all. His forte was his honesty and he really came across as someone you can trust, certainly a lot more than his opponents at that time, Andrew Peacock internally and Bob Hawke on the other side.

Of course honesty doesn’t always make you look good, as in the case of a murderer, for example, who confesses. This sort of honesty doesn’t exculpate. Unfortunately for the PM, this time it is this sort of honesty. He has now admitted to ganging up with Bush and Blair against Iraq to secure oil supply. I think he’s the first to so admit. Blair has stepped down, and Bush will too, soon. According to polls here, Howard will, before the year is out, join these alumni of ex-leaders who ganged up against and wrecked Iraq. However I don’t recall the other two admitting to oil supply as a reason for the terrible war.

Elections are due this year (and I have to vote – it is compulsory here) and many have assumed Labour under Kevin Rudd will romp in. Rudd is a bit of a Blair type – a smooth and suave communicator but not always solid on substance. Unfortunately there is no Gordon Brown in the Australian version of New Labour. In fact there aren’t too many solid candidates in Rudd’s shadow line-up (though not quite Malaysian cabinet standard, not by any means) so I’m not sure why Labour is ahead in the polls and is expected to win. I certainly don’t see the equivalents of a Costello or a Turnbull.

I don’t know if John Howard’s latest act of honesty was driven by any attempt to regain lost electoral grounds. Maybe he is going to announce the elections soon. I haven’t read the context of the admission as I only caught one of those Beeb one-liner news items (see earlier entry). I will of course, look it up and there will no doubt be op-ed pieces on it in the next few days. The interesting thing is the openness of a leader who has again demonstrated that doing the right thing in the here and now has its place, no matter how much damage has been done in the past. Maybe it is a sort of confession on his part, knowing his days are now numbered. Either way, there’s a lesson somewhere for some leaders in other parts of the world.

I was in Malaysia in December 2006, not long after the explosive matter of the murdered Mongolian translator hit the newsstands.  Within a space of a couple of dinners with some friends and old colleagues, it became obvious that there was more than meet the eye and as usual, it involved allegations of wanton abuse of power by powerful public figures who think of themselves more as feudal lords than public servants. All the dirt is coming out now, as the murder trials of the piñatas take on their usual farcical course. The star witness of the prosecution is now a victim of prosecution impeachment proceedings. A significant but previously absent piece of evidence has suddenly emerged in the form of a mysterious man and his vehicle, elements totally unreported before. It is as though an author of a bad script has suddenly inserted a brand new act into this comic tragedy. Comical in that the shenanigans of the legal fraternity of Malaysia have become a joke which has long turned into a source of annoyance, nay a scourge, to the frustrated public. While Malaysians used to laugh at the “irrelevant” remarks of Augustine Paul the high court judge, they now face the prospect of having a totally ineffectual and irrelevant judiciary and public prosecutor’s office and so can no longer afford to laugh. It is more obviously a tragedy on at least two fronts. The emotional storms the family of the victim must be going through, are sins for which the perpetrators of this heinous crime would hopefully, at least grieve over if not severely punished. The other tragedy is the continuing degradation of the sense accountability and law enforcement/public order machineries which has plagued Malaysia for so long. Malaysians are fast losing any hope of salvaging its public institutions and the sense of what’s right. Nothing short of deliberate and concerted public meetings to strongly and aggressively voice total disaffection would do.

Many would have read Kit Siang’s entry on the alleged JAWI heroics in an eatery in Bangsar. While the reaction has been predictably hot under the collar, it is just another piece in the big picture of the government thinking minority Malaysians would always just cower and do what Harry Lee Kuan Yew said Malays in Malaysia expect of the minority – Ya Tuan. If the minority groups in Malaysia are fed up and want to put an end to this nonsense, they have to rise up and stand up to these idiots for who they are – idiotic bigots.

Someone emailed me today, saying Eric has been acquited of all those charges he was charged with, in relation to one of the biggest corporate scandals involving government funds. The typical Malaysian would shrugh his shoulders and ask what else is new. Billions of dollars down the proverbial tube. Billions of dollars lost to ordinary Malaysians. many of whom are struggling everyday to put food on the table.

I ask again – are ordinary Malaysians going to ever care enough to rise up and make themselves heard?

There was high drama in the Melbourne CBD this morning. We were having our weekly Monday morning team meeting, when my boss took a call about the incident. A bar scuffle near the courtyard of the Rialto building had turned ugly and a man in his 20s fired several shots, killing one and critically wounding another two. It happened around 8.30am and by noon, the perpetrator was still on the run. Over lunch, I looked at the Age’s site and it said the incident had started in the bar as early as 6am. This is ridiculous – why are these people in a bar at 6am on a Monday morning? It sounded like a recipe for trouble at the very least, and a disaster as it turned out. Maybe these were shift workers who had just finished work and were having a few drinks. I still don’t get it – at 6am it was 7 deg. I know because I felt stupid in my shorts waiting in my car a few minutes before 6, begging for the gym to open so that I could dash in. The radio had announced the temperature and it was 7 degrees. In that condition, had I been a shift worker, I would have hurried home for a hot shower and bed, or maybe a hot coffee. But a bar? Even someone with a propensity for self inebriation such as yours truly, thinks this a farce.

The Rialto is on the western end of the city. I didn’t know if there were any museums in that part of the CBD so when I remembered that kiddo was supposed to be on a train a little after 9 with a group from school, heading into the city for a museum excursion, I had a momentary panic. I emailed Theresa for the details of the excursion. She didn’t know. I called the school and was put through to the principal, who assured me she has been in contact with the police, who would remain in touch with her. They were heading to the Parliament station, which is on the Spring Street – the eastern end of the CBD. I felt a little safer but the thought of an enraged and possibly intoxicated gunman on the loose in the city made me nervous throughout the day. Theresa and I kept trying to call kiddo on her mobile every half an hour or so, to no avail. At around 4pm, I had an email from Theresa saying they had actually cancelled the trip. Barely half an hour after getting into the city, they took the next train out of the city and headed back to school. The education minister had jumped in to interfere by cancelling all school excursions into the city. Curiously enough, my first reaction was that kiddo was going to be disappointed. There was another occasion when they went into the city and someone took a fall, hurt her head and the whole group had to return to school. Again, a zero risk tolerance may have caused disappointment but safety first obviously prevailed.