'No such thing as a social contract'

"There is no such thing as social contract. It was a fantasy created by politicians of all sorts of colours depending on their interest," -Prof Dr Ungku Aziz-

Those words were uttered over the weekend at a forum in Shah Alam by the revered royal professor in the presence of Tun Dr M who later went on to disagree and reaffirm that the social contract is indeed real. No mention of it though in any of the Main Stream Media (MSM), perhaps there's been a blackout due to external pressure from those in power.

Anyway, kudos to the prof for speaking his mind, I must say he's got balls to say that in public. The social contract as we all know has been used time and time again to justify unfair policies (e.g. NEP) in favour of the 'natives' at the expense of the 'imigrants'. It is one contract I dare say that has kept UMNO relevant all this while as the sole defender of 'Ketuanan Melayu' in the eyes of many. The gist of it is basically, Ali's forefathers would make a great sacrifice by granting citizenship to my rubber tapping forefathers and Ah Kong's tin mining forefathers and in return they get 'special rights'. As a direct result, the 'natives' get everything, the others get the leftovers, despite having settled down for ages and contributed so much to the progress of the country. And they wonder why there has been a brain drain going on in the country and we've yet to achieve a successful nation building process even after 50 years of merdeka.

Malaysiakini followed up the story up anyway, getting a mixed response from other academicians. Some skirted around the issue, some took it head on, criticising the prof for lacking political insight having trained as an economist, others agreed with him based on the lack of legal and historical documents proving the existence of the contract and legitimizing it. Full article available here.


Btw, was done with another exam, CP written two days ago. Didn't go too well, have one more chance for salvation at the OSCE next week on the 21st. Before that though, Epidemiology and Public Health paper on the 19th. Don't know anything about epi, so need to start cramming soon. Meanwhile, heading off to clinical skills lab for some practice sessions before the OSCE.