COMMENT | Why Wan Saiful is spooked about class warfare

“But as time goes by, despite the original good intention, the affirmative action policy turned into an ugly beast. What was supposed to be a temporary assistance programme evolved into a sense of entitlement, and then morphed into a monster called Malay rights that cannot be debated, let alone be removed.”

- Wan Saiful Wan Jan (“Affirmative action is morally wrong”)

“The reality of Malaysian political system is affirmative action is needed today. However, It must be framed and evaluated in the right way and it must be seen as a program that will help to improve the livelihood of people. Affirmative action also should not last forever. It must be to the extent where we have a proud Malay population that can stand on its own and state they want affirmative action to be removed.’’

– Wan Saiful said after joining Bersatu

COMMENT | The reason why Tasek Gelugor MP Wan Saiful Wan Jan is spooked about class warfare is because he is on the wrong side of it.

Back when he was one of the big brains of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas), he wrote two big think pieces – “Affirmative action is morally wrong” and “Bring back morality into economics”.

He even took it to the road, where he was a panellist at the Penang Institute which hosted a discussion titled “Affirmative Action in Malaysia: Who Gains? Who Loses?” where it was reported he was “…strongly opposed to the stance of affirmative action.

Calling affirmative action policies to be “morally wrong” and unjustifiable, even from the perspective of data and the Constitution, Wan Saiful (above) was of opinion that affirmative action policies, at the root of it, are discriminatory.

Discrimination, as it is, is wrong, he claimed, and even if affirmative action is positive, it cannot be used as a means or a reason to justify discrimination. He saw Malaysia, as it is now, as a divided nation, and the line between needs and race for affirmative action becoming increasingly unclear.

They were good old-fashioned talking points and Wan Saiful even back then was dismissive of “leftist” politics. Back in the day, he would have been considered a race traitor and leftist himself, by the Malay uber alles establishment, which just goes to show you how ill-informed these people are...