Seven years ago, on 11th October 2003, the PAP Malay MPs together with their Mendaki organisation formed a Community Leaders Forum project following a series of focus group discussions to discuss issues and strategies to propel the Malay community forward. The event was graced and witnessed by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.
The PAP Malay MPs devised four four sectoral networks and split the responsibilities of leading each network amongst themselves. The networks focused on the areas of Education, Youth, Family and Employability.
In 2004, the PAP Malay MPs formed the CLF Steering Committee to implement a coordinated framework to facilitate the collaborative efforts across all sectoral networks.
The Community Leaders Forum Steering Committee is chaired by none other than Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and Minister-In-Charge of Muslim Affairs. His role was to provide guidance and overall direction for the networks in implementing various CLF programmes.
Yayasan MENDAKI was designated the role as the CLF Secretariat. Each of the other PAP Malay MPs was to serve as Co-Chairperson of the respective network. Masagos Zulkifli and Hawizi Daipi were designated as co-chairmen of the Education Network. Over the last seven years, both Masagos and Hawizi are known to have implemented no major policy in the education area. Whatever they may claim to have done also did not close any gap in the education achievements of Malays and other ethnic groups. Seven years is ample time to bring major reforms and achieve decent leaps in outcomes in education area.
PAP Malay MPs Zaqy Mohamed and Fathimah Lateef were designated as co-chairpersons of Youth Development. From the beginning it was never clear what that meant. Nevertheless the opportunities that Malay youth require and the Malay youth capabilities that needs to be developed are not little or trivial. Instead the backwardness of Malay youth in educational achievements, their high representation in crime, their job issues, their addiction problems etc etc clearly provide ample areas for both Zaqy and Fatimah to work on. Once again both PAP Malay MPs have never implemented any major policy for Malay Youths in the last seven years even though they were co-chairpersons in charge of Malay Youth Development.
Maliki Osman and Faishal Ibrahim were two other PAP MPs who were designated the role of co-chairmen to lead the area of Malay Families Development. Again the agenda for this was never clear from the beginning. Yet the high rate of divorce in Malays, employment issues, health issues etc clearly provided ample areas for the two Malay MPs to work on and bring change. Both Maliki and Faishal never implemented any major policy to improve various dismal conditions of Malay Families. There has also been no improvement in outcomes of Malay Families from any of the work that Maliki or Faishal may claim to have done in the last seven years.
Halimah Yacob, Zainudin Nordin and Ahmad Magad were appointed to lead as co-chairpersons looking at Malay employability. Of the three, only Halimah attempted some minor efforts but then also in her other capacity for labour. The three PAP Malay MPs had not major policies in the last seven years to improve Malay employability. They achieved no serious improvement in Malay employability in the last seven years either.
Abdullah Tarmuggi and Zainul Abidin Rasheed were supposed to serve as resource persons though it was never clear from the beginning what that was supposed to mean.
The Community Leaders Forum was an excellent platform for the PAP Malay MPs to have brought reforms at least in some scale to the Malay community. More importantly they had ample resources and time over the last seven years. PAP’s claim for single party rule has been how fast they can move in policy making and implementing with the absence of opposition. The failure of PAP Malay MPs to have brought zero reforms to Malay community simply proves single party rule will not guarantee fast reforms.
These PAP Malay MPs’ combined salary for the last seven years comes to close to $50million. An enormous amount of Singaporeans’ resources for absolutely zero reforms and zero change in outcomes.
The supporters of PAP Malay MPs have totally no basis to justify their claims that no other party can do better than PAP Malay MPs. When it is clear the PAP Malay MPs have not achieved anything at all in the last seven years, there is nothing which equates to achieving less than nothing. Hence any opposition party stands to present Malay MPs who can achieve as poorly or better than PAP MPs. No opposition party can quite present Malay MPs who will achieve worse than PAP Malay MPs. That is practically impossible given PAP Malay MPs have not changed any outcomes in Malay community despite their complete control of parliament and government agencies, full range of resources, full control of media and incredibly high salaries.
