Quora Answer: Should Malaysia Offer Citizenship to Singaporean Malays Who It Claims are Treated Unfairly?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Should Malaysia offer citizenship to Singaporean Malays, who it claims are not treated fairly?”

When Malaysian politicians claim that Singapore Malays are not treated fairly, it is for a domestic audience.  They do not necessarily believe that.  Whilst there are grievances in some sections of the Malay community in Singapore, they do not necessarily believe that either.

Malaysia is an apartheid state that elevates the rights of the Malays over the rights of other citizens.  UMNO, PAS, and their proxies have positioned themselves as the defenders of Malay rights, and the “Malay” version of Islam.  Whenever inconvenient news such as their incompetence, corruption, and overall idiocy is extent, they talk about Malay rights, and sectarian issues.  The claim is that if a party like the DAP came to power, the Malays would lose their pre-eminent position just like the Malays in Singapore.  Now that they are out of power, they are still making those claims.

Assuming there is an exodus of Singaporean Malays, much of the community is wealthy enough to migrate to better countries such as Australia or New Zealand.  There are already such communities there.  Why would most of them want to stay in Malaysia?  That would literally be moving from a developed country, to a developing country that is in a state of frozen race war.

From a Malaysian perspective, it would be politically inconvenient to offer citizenship to thousands of foreigners, even if they are Malays.  The only thing they have in common is their shared ethnic heritage.  In terms of ethics, expectations, education, and even the way they speak Malay, they are two different groups.  Malaysia welcomes large groups of Singaporeans as a source of revenue; they do not want competition.