SHAH ALAM: The gleaming university campus on a hill in the Malaysian city of Shah Alam is seen by some Malaysians as symbolising much that is wrong in this Southeast Asian Muslim country.

Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) accepts only ethnic Malay students as part of an affirmative action policy that Malaysia adopted in 1971 to help the economically disadvantaged Malay majority compete against the Chinese and Indian minorities.

Yet that policy of affirmative action is now under fire by government critics who say the lack of competition and preferential treatment towards Malays has hurt the country’s economic competitiveness in the region.

They are calling for the university to accept at least some students from other ethnic groups as a first step towards abandoning the affirmative action system altogether.

Students at the university, the largest in Malaysia, beg to differ. They protested in their thousands last month against calls to allow ethnic Chinese and Indian students to study at the university.

“UiTM is a Malay right. UiTM collapses, Malays collapse,” read a billboard hanging outside a university mosque.

The argument cuts to the core of a bitter battle between the government, which has ruled the country for five decades and wants to preserve Malay rights, and the opposition, led by reformist former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim who wants to end the system.

While Malays are politically dominant in Malaysia, they lack economic clout and accounted for only 19 per cent of the country’s wealth in 2006, whereas ethnic Chinese account for a quarter of the population and 42 per cent of wealth, according to government data.

The constitution, drawn up in 1957, prescribes legal rights for the Malays and Bumiputras, a Malay word that mans ‘sons of the soil’, by giving them special access to certain jobs and business licences.

UiTM began in 1956 as a modest college to teach Malays basic accounting and other skills. Since then, it has grown into a fully-fledged university with about 120,000 Bumiputras taking up degree courses ranging from engineering to medicine and law at any one time. It churns out about 30,000 graduates a year.

Analysts and some employers say many graduates from UiTM and other state universities that have quotas favouring Malays simply cannot compete for the best private sector jobs and either swell the ranks of the civil service or the unemployed.

“UiTM has been politicised. It reflects years of providing a crutch so that Malays cannot compete on a level playing field,” said Bridget Welsh, a Malaysia expert at Johns Hopkins University.

“It contributes to reducing performance standards limiting understanding of the marketplace and ultimately makes many Malays less suited for employment,” she said.

Fight for investment

Southeast Asia’s third biggest economy is already facing falling foreign investment, eroding competitiveness and a worsening brain drain.

Data from the United Nations shows that foreign direct investments to Malaysia has stagnated this decade, while foreign direct investment to neighbours such as Singapore has surged. In 2006 FDI to Malaysia totalled $53.58 billion, little changed from $52.75 billion in 2000.

Many analysts trace the stagnation in foreign investment to the racial and religious politics that divide the country.

Malays are Muslims by state definition, while Chinese and Indians are mostly Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs.

UiTM is the only university in Malaysia that is closed to other races, although other state-run institutions generally have high Malay enrolments because of quotas.

This has forced ethnic Chinese and Indians to turn to private universities or move abroad, creating an economically damaging brain drain that might hurt Malaysia’s competitiveness for years to come.

Some Malay political leaders have recently joined a growing chorus for UiTM to open its doors to non-Malays.

“It is time for the Malays to take a step (towards a multiracial approach),” opposition leader Anwar said, throwing his weight behind his political party’s proposal to open up 10 per cent of UiTM places to non-Malays.

Anwar, himself an ethnic Malay, was returned to parliament in a by-election after a decade-long absence. Despite pledging to end ethnic-based affirmative action programmes, he romped home in a constituency that was largely rural and Malay.

Long history, fears of Malays

The government, fearful of losing power, and UiTM have baulked at the plan, with the university galvanising its students to march on the streets waving pro-Malay banners.

Malay newspapers have condemned plans to open up the university, with one quoting a Malay leader warning of a repeat of the 1969 race riots between ethnic Malays and ethnic Chinese and Indians which left hundreds dead.

Lifting ethnic restrictions on the UiTM student body might be a small step towards resolving the woes of modern-day Malaysia, critics of affirmation action believe.

Yet that step is unlikely to be taken unless Anwar and his resurgent opposition take power by setting up a new majority bloc in parliament. The jury is still out whether that will happen despite Anwar’s confidence that he might be able to set up a new government with the support of opposition parties.

Meanwhile, Malaysia has fallen completely off the list of the world’s top 200 universities in 2007, according to a ranking by London’s Times Higher Education Supplement and Quacquarelli Symonds. By comparison, Singapore’s NUS was ranked in 33rd place.“Investors are concerned with the quality of the graduates,” said Mohamad Sofi Othman, who heads a grouping of foreign and local investors in Penang, Malaysia’s industrial state controlled by the opposition.

Still, UiTM defends its policy, saying that non-Malays form the majority of students in critical courses such as accountancy and pharmacy at state universities. At private universities, 90 per cent of the students are non-Malays.

“Nobody should begrudge UiTM as the only public university for Bumiputras,” Vice-Chancellor Ibrahim Abu Shah said.—Reuters