Two Banks In Malaysia Perpetuating Never Ending Policy

Image - A Leech In Action
From the NST: A new regulation by two major banks that requires Bumiputera legal firms’ involvement has irked the legal community. The regulation requires law firms to have a minimum of three partners of which one must be Bumiputera with a minimum 50 per cent stake in the firm before they can do any business with the banks. The letter was sent to all legal firms last month.

What can we infer from this new regulation? It will not be wrong to surmise that Bumiputera lawyers are so hopeless that they simply cannot survive without unfair racial quotas being imposed on the other ethnic groups. Only with the Ali-Baba type collaboration (which our government ostensibly denounces) can they make easy money without doing any work. By virtue of being a Bumi, 50% of the stake in a law firm is theirs, for not lifting even a pencil! What sort of perverse logic went into the conceiving and formulating of this monstrously unjust and inequitable rule beats me. Who are the banks trying to help? Is it their job in the first place to attempt to perpetuate racist policies on behalf of the government?

As it is Bumis, especially Malays are given places in our increasing number of law faculties on an 'out-of-turn' basis. Many of them in the normal course of events would have been denied admission because of insufficient academic qualifications. Yet they find themselves studying and graduating as lawyers. Ideally the preferential treatment must end there. Having made it to the field largely due to the government's charitable policies instead of their own steam and merit, shouldn't at least at this juncture Bumi lawyers be allowed to strike out on their own and find their true place and calling in the legal profession? By right they should, and any self-respecting lawyer would be ashamed to be mollycoddled in this fashion. However the Never Ending Policy (NEP) has made many of these people into shameless receivers of handouts not unlike a beggar waiting with his/her begging bowl. Now this bank regulation has introduced a new "cradle-to-grave" concept for the future protection and promotion of Bumi professionals who don't have the wherewithal to compete on merit and can't or won't see the necessity to work as hard and as cleverly as their non-Bumi counterparts.

Read the entire NST report and feel depressed:

A new regulation by two major banks that requires Bumiputera legal firms’ involvement has irked the legal community. The regulation requires law firms to have a minimum of three partners of which one must be Bumiputera with a minimum 50 per cent stake in the firm before they can do any business with the banks. The letter was sent to all legal firms last month.

The Bar Council has cried foul over the conditions set by the banks. Council chairman Ambiga Sreenevasan described the requirement as "totally discriminatory". "There is no legal basis for such a condition and it’s certainly in breach of the spirit of the Federal Constitution.

"All our lawyers should be judged on merit. That is the correct basis for selection," she told the New Straits Times. "Most of all, we are concerned that such preferences will give rise to tokenism and that it will affect the quality of the legal services provided," she added.

The Bar Council, she said, imposed no such conditions on members of the Bar. "We don’t stipulate how law firms should be run, we leave it to the lawyers themselves."

Ambiga said the Bar Council had written to the banks in the last two days expressing concern and asking them to review their policies. "We will be following up on this matter with Bank Negara Malaysia," she added.

It was reported that the requirements would take effect on July 1 while the deadline for existing firms was a year after the new ruling was implemented. It is learnt that at the moment there are no specific requirements for legal firms to be appointed by financial institutions.

***** Do you think that such preferential policies are going to be of much use to the Bumi lawyer in the long run? Sure, some of them will become rich much faster. But those with any conscience would know that they do not really deserve it and that too with the best (read non-Bumi) out there in the courts of law making a name for themselves and proving what it means to be a genuine lawyer and not just a highly-placed and fabulously paid leech, employed as very expensive window-dressing, nothing more.
Image - Source