Only 1,720 Malays Have Migrated, Semuanya OK! Or Is It?

Someone is lying through his teeth and it'll be interesting to find out who. Only a few days ago the Deputy Home Affairs Minister Datuk Tan Chai Ho shockingly revealed that more than 79,000 Malays have surrendered their citizenship to live abroad.

Many a Malaysian was startled by this information. Why should the Bumis especially the Malays leave this soil of golden opportunity for them? Why migrate when they can never expect to have it so good anywhere else in this whole wide world? The inference was that despite the many avenues available to them here, they are basically dissatisfied with the government and its policies and especially its wrongdoings. Bloggers and commenters had a field day castigating so-called national policies, matlamat etc which even the Malays nowadays accept are based on racist grounds.

However there was much gnashing of teeth in the Malay press which went into instant denial as they tend to do whenever an adverse report or finding is considered unacceptable or inconvenient. Never mind if it is true or not. How Pavlovian!

Along comes our dark brown knight in shiny green armour to save the day. Tuan Haji Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, Home Affairs Minister extraordinaire, without directly calling his deputy Tan Chai Ho a numbskull and arithmetically challenged idiot, implied just that by plainly disputing the figures and substituting it with his own 'politically correct and acceptable-to-the-Malays' statistics.

Put yourself in Tan Chai Ho's shoes. Do you think for a minute that he would not have triple-checked the surprising numbers that he had announced? Upon seeing those statistics the first thing he would have done is probably to remark, "eh, betul ke ni?" And you can be sure he would have taken steps to confirm that the details he gave were genuine and not cooked up in some Ah Pek's restaurant outside Putrajaya. How those figures escaped Radzi's attention prior to the announcement beats me. Perhaps he was too busy planning damage control after that monumentally stupid Najib claim about we being in an Islamic state!

When the metaphorical shit hit the kipas at the Home Ministry, Radzi woke up or was woken up. Realizing the potentially disastrous figures released by his deputy and probably after referring to his ketua2 and a quick peek into the recipe books he came out with brand new numbers. "Not 79,000 Malays bradder, ONLY 1,720!" Hey presto! Done! Semuanya OK! Let's get back to 'struggling' for the rakyat.

Now the choice is yours. Whom do you believe? The Home Minister or his deputy?
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