PPSMI in the eye of Social Contract

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“BAHASA akan mencorakkan penuturnya. Contohnya mereka yang belajar di Singapura, jika dia bercakap dalam bahasa Inggeris, ia akan mengubah gaya hidup, sekaligus mengubah jati diri seseorang itu. Kita kini bersedia mengubah generasi baru kita ke arah kehilangan jati diri” – Sasterawan Muda, Faisal Tehrani.

7 of March 2009 was ended to be part of our historical moment for Malaysian society after more than 50 thousand peoples took part in the road demonstration protested about PPSMI. From now on, it will be probably become part of our children syllabus in their History subject in School. However, we’ll never know what would be the way the historians might demonstrate about this precious event. Should it be kept transparently or the true story about it might be changed, we couldn’t answer it yet. Nevertheless, only those who watched it today with their full consciousness will understand on what was basically happened behind this event.

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Prio to this issue, it was accidently to be my topic of assignment to make a research on Malaysian Social Contract, and I’m sure many of us do not know about this term of ‘Social Contract’ because when I presented it in front of my fellow friends (of other faculties) during my EAP class, most of them and even each of them did not know about it. No wonder as this term only narrowed among law students as it has a close relation with law.

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Talking about Social Contract, what is its relation with PPSMI? What is so important of knowing this in order to know PPSMI? Lets look what is the answer.

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Before I go into deep, let me explain briefly about Social Contract so that we can find the rationality of it with our recent issue of PPSMI. In my opinion, it has such a connection with our recent issue whether one would interprate it to be direct or indirect.

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The Social Contract as the term herewith is in fact an unwritten agreement that was agreed by the founding fathers of the Federation of Malaysia as it was known to be the Federation of Tanah Melayu. The effect of this contract is that, the Malays and the Indigenous people (Bumiputra) will enjoy certain privileges and special treatments compared to the other non-Bumiputra. In short, it had become a bargaining subject matter before the non-Bumiputra (Chinese and Indian) were to be accepted as part of Malaysian citizen in Tanah Melayu.

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Historically, before August 1957, shortly after the World War II, Malaysia as it was known as Tanah Melayu at the time being was under the ruling of British. The Malay, being the majority of the population in the colony had only little power compared to the power that they had before it was colonized started back in 1511. Prior to the day of Independent, the British had tried to make Tanah Melayu to become one of its Territories by the introduction of the Malayan Union, in which under it, Malay, Chinese and Indian were to be given an EQUAL treatment as to the citizenship. But then, it had been heavily opposed by the Malays as it would deny the authority and civilization that they had built for thousand of decades under the Malay Sultanate.
This had caused to the establishment of United Malay National Organization (UMNO) for which, its primary purpose is to oppose the establishment of Malayan Union. Most of our pre-Independence Malay generations during those times had give their infinite supports to UMNO to uphold the Malays and their privileges. Their sacrification had been impliedly translated in our Federal Constitution by which certain privileges and special treatment for Malays are still been preserved such as to the issue of Religion, Sultans, Malays positions, Education and etc.

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Lets take the issue of Religion. Article 3 of the Federal Constitution states that “Islam is the religion of the Federation”. It would be sufficient to read this article independently without referring to Article 160 in order to understand the Malay position in its context. Article 160 defines the Malays as “A person professing the religion of Islam, habitually speaks Malay language and practice the Malay custom”. In this context, Islam and Malay had been closely associated as one would define another. On the other hand, when somebody asked you, who is Muslim in Malaysia, you’ll automatically answer it as Malay people. Meaning that, the result of the inclusion of this Article 3 would mean that the drafter of this Constitution had intended to give certain privileges to the Malay, and the exclusion of this Article 3 would have intended to scrap one of the Malays privileges.

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Even later this issue still continues to be debated among writers in field, academician and certain people, viewing that it should be reviewed and even amended for it objective had caused to discriminating other races and deem to deny their right of equality as citizen of Malaysian, but then this contract still maintain to be operative.

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Therefore, if you are interested to know why Gabungan Mansuhkan PPSMI (GMP) was established and lead the road demonstration which was held on March 7 recently, you may get the answer from this issue of Social Contract. Why this Social Contract was very desirably been uphold by our previous Malay leaders and their people in fact has the same answer on why PPSMI was extremely been objected.

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I hope this article still not too late to our recent issue nowadays.