Barisan Nasional and Racial Polarisation

by prabu

Barisan National or The National Front can be seen as one of the main cause on why the multiracial society remain unintegrated. The racial based party coliation is the core to the other racial based organisation in the country. Racial based societies are even encouraged at school levels. This should be replaced with National Societies (Persatuan Kebangsaan) which comprises all races. This promotes participation of all races in any single racial based activity.

Though the UMNO (United Malay National Organisation) led National Front coliation implemented various projects and activities at all levels to strengthen racial integration but as long as racial politics are practiced in Malaysia, there does not seem any real inspiration within the society towards real integration.

The ultimate barrier from forming a single party to replace the coalition certainly is the Bumiputera (son of the soil or generally Malays) special rights which being strongly upheld by UMNO even after strong opposition by the non-Bumiputeras (mainly Chinese and Indian). This recently intensified after a government agency recently published a statistic which showed the Bumiputera have achieved the initial 30% economic equity target in the country as outlined in the first New Economic Policy (DEB) in 1971.

On 31 August 2007, Malaysia shall celebrate 50 years of independence. The National Front has been the government since the British granted Malaysia independence from British Colonial rule. However, it would appear that any move to dissolve the coalition to form a single party remains almost an impossible task due to strong racial divides in the party system.