Word: borneo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Malaysia's most complex and festering problem is the simmering racial hostility between the new nation's Chinese and Malay populations. Throughout the federation, the astute, prosperous, hard-bargaining Chinese dominate business, industry and trade, have economically far outstripped the rural, easygoing Malays. Chinese tycoons control North Borneo's booming young timber industry and Sarawak's vast, rolling pepper gardens; in Malaya. Abdul Rahman's government has complained that the rich, inbred Chinese business community has erected a "wall of prejudice" against ambitious young Malay businessmen...
...their own. By Malayan law. only one-quarter of the government jobs can go to non-Malays, while Malays get special concessions in the granting of scholarships and licenses for new businesses. Rigid citizenship requirements have been set up for the Chinese (Malays are automatically citizens), and the Borneo territories plan immigration restrictions to keep Chinese businessmen out. "Special privileges are like a golf handicap." rationalizes Malaya's Chinese Finance Minister Tan Siew Sin. "They are not to hold the Chinese down, but to help the Malays along...
...Tunku shuddered at the prospect of upsetting his nation's Malay racial preponderance by the addition of Singapore's 1,300,000 Chinese. "In order to balance the population," he says, "I thought of the Borneo territories...
Wining & Dining. Sarawak, Brunei and North Borneo, however, were less than enthusiastic about the federation scheme. Borneo leaders resented being invited to join merely as a political and racial accommodation, desired instead some sort of independence of their own. Then Britain began putting quiet pressure on the three territorial governments, tried to persuade them that union in Malaysia offered them far more economic and political power than they could ever achieve by themselves...
...Abdul Rahman who sold the scheme. The Tunku wined and dined a continuous stream of Borneo delegations in Kuala Lumpur, warmed up Borneo leaders cool to the federation with promises of favored political positions in the new nation. He shrewdly offered the Borneo territories 70 seats in the federal parliament, against only 15 for far more populous Singapore and 104 for Malaya. He promised tax concessions and a $12 million dollop of Malayan aid annually to the territories, agreed to keep federal hands off Brunei's oil reserves. It was the Tunku's fondest hope that...