Indians support towards Najib's administration growing?

13thJuly09

MIC President Dato Seri Samy Vellu has commented that the Prime Minister's rating among the Indian community is good and encouraging.

He said that the Indian community was very happy with Najib and that it had expected more “goodies” from him.

People like goodies and it is only natural that the people will express their "happiness" when asked to express their opinion after various populist measures have been announced by the Prime Minister over the last 3 months.

I believe that the rating would be different if the Indians were asked whether they felt Najib had done enough for the community and rate him on this basis.

Hence, Samy Vellu should be cautious in his praises on the Indian support for Najib.
Over the decades since independence the Indians have been left out from the main stream of development .In fact, they have been overlooked although the economic development of the country has been progressing.

In 2007, it was revealed in Parliament that "the number of Indians in the civil service has plunged in the past 34 years, from 17.4% in 1971 to 5.12 % in 2005.

The initial plan of the Federal government to increase the economic equity participation of Indians was to achieve a target of 3 % by 2010. At time of independence , the Indians had only around 1% of the economic cake. This rose to 1.2% in the late 80’s. Subsequently , the government revised the target date and extended it from 2010 to 2020. Why?

One of the main reasons is the BN government's failure to thoroughly look into the weaknesses of the Indian community and address them. There are no clear ,concrete and clear polices to assist the Indians and other minorities

Way back in 2004, the DAP has suggested the setting up of a Parliamentary Select Committee to specifically ascertain the economic and social problems of the minorities in the country. Unfortunately the BN rejected this noble idea.

FOMCA has openly mentioned that over 50,000 Indians are facing statelessness in Malaysia. Almost all the 50,000 were born in Malaysia.

I have consistently raised this matter in Parliament. The government has recently set up as special task force to tackle this issue. Todate only less then 2000 have been identified by the Home Ministry but what about the rest as revealed by FOMCA?

We are given to understand many stateless persons cannot communicate with the Home Ministry officials who either speak only Bahasa Malaysia or just make it difficult for these stateless people.

If the government is serious, sincere and eager to resolve this statelessness problem, I suggest that these entire stateless people and other deserving cases be given blanket immunity for them to become citizens.

Although many real problems of the Indian community have yet to to addressed , Najib's improved ratings among the Indians is still an indication that many Indians who expect more things from him are prepared to express their encouragement for him, perhaps even voting for BN in the next general election.

In this respect the Pakatan Rakyat Government should not overlook the various grouses of the Indian community and must be proactive in addressing them.