2015: Is Singapura Ready for its First Malay Prime Minister?

I refer to: 2015: Is Singapore Ready For An Indian Prime Minister? 

By: Shasha Ali

I was asked to write an article in response to this yesterday. Truth be told, when I first saw the headline, I felt dreaded to click it. I am sure it was written by a very passionate Indian Singaporean who has had an unfair share of racial discrimination growing up. I am sure his story speaks to thousands of others in his community and will be 'shared' and 'liked' like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter. But I've heard this story before too many times, and in the same kind of languages. I mean this in two ways.

Firstly, the narratives of people who identify as ethnic minorities, diaspora, people of colour, Black, Asian, native/ indigenous are increasingly populating the global blogosphere. Whether it be in the East or West, there is a growing movement of writers with origins across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, working to deepen their political consciousness by acknowledging the historical traumas of colonialism, so that all of those who experience racism can connect across time and space in building bridges of solidarity within the anti-racist struggle globally. They speak in the language of decolonisation. It is powerful and empowering, and damn right overdue. These writers are also the most difficult people to listen to, if you are a white person in the West, or in the context of Singapore, a Chinese person.

And then, there's the writers who write within the language of nationalism. That blog was one of such I think. These people pen their stories to voice their frustrations with immediate realities of experiencing racialised prejudices and/or ethnic segregation, and looking to self-determine their citizenship rights as equal members of society. In the context of Singapore, they actually believe in the words they pledge to every morning since primary school. They want to be treated, validated and valued “regardless of language, race and religion”, as “equal citizens” and “on their own merits”. These stories are still quite endearing or palatable to most, including Chinese people in Singapore, of whom the more 'compassionate' ones would say, “If the Indian man can do the job, why not?”

But what does it mean to read this if you are a Malay - you know, the indigenous people of Singapore, according to Article 152 of our Constitution?

Well, my initial fleeting response was sigh, Singapore is still missing the point, and as a multicultural country with an eventful history of ethnic riots, its citizens have yet to understand what racism is and how racial inequality operates. And then I thought, oh come on, it's not fair to expect Singaporeans to have the same analysis of race as migrant/ diasporic communities do in the West. We are a South East Asian country after all, we do it differently here, Singaporeans might say. But I kept thinking about it in terms of my subjectivity as an indigenous person, a Malay. I let the assumption of the writer's question as to whether Singapore was ready for an Indian PM rest in the same vein as when the United States was preparing for its first Black American president (without so much as acknowledging the aboriginal natives of Americas by the way). I began to believe that such an assumption taken by an ethnic minority writer, tells me that a similar history very specific to Singapore, was ignored in his writing pursuit.

It tells me that it does not matter that Yusof Ishak was the first President of Singapura. It tells me that it does not matter that Zubir Said gifted the country its national anthem. It tells me that no matter how many books, plays and Facebook status updates Alfian Saat writes, Singaporeans have yet to realise that such a question quietly and insensitively dismisses the legacy of Malays in the building of its nation.

To be fair, I don’t blame the guy. Indians, specifically Singaporeans of South Indian ancestry, bear the brunt of atrocious derogatory remarks and prejudice based on their skin colour in Singapore. Even in Muslim communities, where Malays and Indians are predominant and thought to be able to mingle harmoniously, this is not the case. Racial prejudice along colour lines run deep. It is made even worse when our predominantly Chinese government tokenises and polarizes our people according to model minorities (Indian intellectual / Malay pacifist) and negative stereotypes of each other (drug addicts, gangsters, wife beaters and drunkards). I’ll cut the brother some slack.

Alright then, my Singaporean activist friend asks. Can you write about whether Singapore is ready for a Malay Prime Minister then? What an even sillier question, I thought to myself while agreeing to write it. A Malay Prime Minister? A Malay? For Prime Minister?! Of course the answer is no! How can I imagine a Malay Prime Minister for Singapore. I am still trying to confidently assert myself as an indigenous person of Singapura, without having to prove my legitimacy by way of the percentage of Malay ancestry in my bloodline or the recurring pushback of such assertions by nonMalay Singaporeans who like to refer to the non-threatening faces of Orang Laut, found intact in archived photographs, as “true natives of Singapore”. I am still trying to uncover what happened to my ancestors in the Nusantara archipelago, and the lost lands occupied across generations through Indus invasion, Dutch/British colonisation, Japanese occupation and Chinese settler governance. Hell, I am still trying to unpack thirty years of indoctrination of a so-called merits based system that continues to bring me back to a time in school when I thought that no matter how hard I study, I as a Malay (and worse, a girl) will never be as good as the Chinese boy in Maths and/or Indian boy in English! And don't even get me started on the repetitive speeches LKY has made about the Malays being a “soft race” - I grew up believing it true!