JPA scholarships - who wins, who loses

Since some of our readers are not Mkini subscribers, I'll post my two articles in full here. Hope that Mkini doesn't mind. This is part 1. Part 2 will follow.

JPA scholarships - who loses, who wins?
Ong Kian Ming and Oon Yeoh | Jun 6, 08 12:59pm

Why this sudden increase in the non-Malay scholarship quota? What are some of the political implications arising from this policy change?
Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, announced last week that the JPA (Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam or Public Service Department) overseas scholarships allocation would be changed from a bumiputera-non-bumiputera ratio of 90/10 to 55/45.

This is a subject which is close to the heart of Kian Ming, who runs a blog covering education issues, together with PJ Utara MP Tony Pua. In this first article, we discuss the political rationale underlying such a move and what the political impact might be. In the next article, we move beyond the racial and political rhetoric and discuss certain shortcomings of this scholarship, none of which have been brought up by those who are supportive or protesting against this policy change.

The allocation of the JPA overseas scholarship is of symbolic importance for the Chinese and Indian Malysians, since year after year, complaints about top SPM scorers who are of Chinese and Indian descent failing to obtain the JPA scholarships are always featured in our newspapers. Indeed, Malaysiakini has seen a deluge of such letters from disappointed students and parents in the past month or so. (The actual number of non-Malays affected by this particular policy is actually quite small when considering the number of SPM students in one cohort).

tunku abdul rahman tar college 290307 studentsThis is not the first time that the BN has shifted its policy on the racial allocation of the JPA overseas scholarship. It was widely speculated that after the 1999 general elections, the number of JPA overseas scholarships given to non-Malays were increased. But that was never publicised in the same manner as this policy change and the more than four-fold increase in the number of scholarships given to non-Malays took many people by surprise, including Kian Ming, who has been following issues to do with education in Malaysia for some time.

Why this sudden increase in the non-Malay scholarship quota? What are some of the political implications arising from this policy change?

A charitable view of this policy change is that the government finally succumbed to public pressure and to rejecting the large number of otherwise qualified non-Malays and listening to their appeals, time and again.

Of course, one can also see this as a political move to appease the non-Malay voter base which abandoned the BN in large number in the previous election. By changing a policy which has symbolic value in the eyes of the non-Malays, the BN is hoping to win back the hearts and minds and votes among members of these communities.

A more cynical and perhaps nefarious view of this policy change is that it is a subtle political strategy by BN, more specifically Umno, to create a climate of fear among the Malays that their rights are slowly being eroded because of the rise in the power of Pakatan. Of course, this would require a lot of subtle maneuvering on the part of the BN since they are the ones who actually approved this policy change and not Pakatan.

Protests from the usual suspects

To be fair to the government, there actually has been a subtle shift in the language used in defining education policy over the past decade or so. While we may debate the comparability of the matriculation course which is largely taken by Malays, and the STPM course which is largely taken by non-Malays as the entry requirements to our public universities, the word used to define the entry process has been ‘meritocracy’ in the past few years.

This despite the initial protests by Umno Youth which still surfaces from time to time. One does not anticipate that the meritocracy process for entering our public universities will be changed in the near future. Similarly, one does not anticipate this JPA scholarship policy change to be reversed any time soon despite the protests from some of the usual suspects including Umno Youth, Abim and GPMS, just to name a few.

But even the reservations expressed by Umno Youth were couched in terms that were more ‘flexible’, in a manner of speaking. Their representative did not ask for the quotas to go back to the 90/10 allocation but instead proposed that the total number of scholarships should be increased and the allocation quota revised to 70/30 so that no scholarships would be taken away from the Malays while giving an additional allocation to the non-Malays.

school students 220606 01Do we expect the non-Malays to respond to this policy change by swinging their support back to the BN? We think not.

It would take more than just one policy measure of this nature to win back the hearts and minds of the non-Malays. While this may have worked in the aftermath of previous elections when the non-Malay opposition parties performed well, we are in living in a different political environment. Pakatan can always respond to this by promising the non-Malays that they would implement a more equitable allocation policy across the board and not just for the JPA overseas scholarship.

One strategy used by PAS in past elections has been to ask voters and its supporters to take whatever goodies which the BN offers them, including free rice and the like, and then vote for PAS in the voting booth. It is not hard to imagine the non-Malays behaving in a similar fashion.

The reaction among the Malay grassroots has been harder to judge. Kian Ming senses a subtle and gradual shift in the Malay ground in terms of coming to terms with the eventuality of competing on a more level-playing field with the non-Malays beginning with the education realm. The fact that there has been a noticeable increase in the number of Malays performing well at the SPM level has perhaps helped assuage the fears among Malays that they cannot compete with the non-Malays.

The noticeable silence among the Pakatan parties will probably help in not making this issue one which the BN can capitalise on. DAP has not made any statements either in support of this policy perhaps because they do not want to give undue credit to the government, and PAS, not wanting to incite the Malay ground, has not made any statements critical of this policy.

Pakatan has also been helped by the fact that this issue has been overshadowed by other more demanding and headline grabbing issues such as the petrol price hike and the on-going speculation of political crossovers. Under more normal political circumstances, this policy change would have had much more political coverage.

Even more changes to come?

Is this a sign of the things to come, that there will be similar liberalisations in racial quotas in other areas be it in the education or the economic realm?

We are more guarded in this respect. As mentioned before, the push for more ‘meritocracy’ has been an ongoing initiative in the education realm. It would be a stretch to extend this to the business and economic realm, for example, at least in the near future. One would not expect government contracts or top government positions to be suddenly allocated in a more equitable fashion, many of them which currently are not even distributed according to a 90/10 ratio.

One also cannot discount the role of government agency here. Nazri has been consistently unpredictable in his policy statements and decisions but one thing that has been consistent about him is his desire for publicity. He could have pushed for this policy change not only because he felt that it might have been the expedient thing to do but that it would also garner him positive publicity, especially from the non-Malays. Other Umno politicians, who might not want to stick their necks out on the chopping block, would likely not do the same in other policy areas.

To summarise, the significance of this policy change should not be discounted, even if it is limited to one small area of education policy in this country. It is part of a more gradual shift in defining the terms of competition, at least in the education realm. Whether this will translate into the business and economic realms is harder to predict.

While the non-Malays would welcome this policy, the political circumstances of the day will limit the swing in their support back to the BN. The effect on the Malay ground is harder to judge but so far, the grassroot reaction seems slightly muted. It probably helps that the hike in petrol prices quickly knocked this particular issue of the front pages and minds of voters.