>> Demography
>> Views of a foreigner

Data on the country:
Geography
Capital Kuala Lumpur
Area: 329,750 total sq. km; 328,550 land sq. km;
1,200 water sq. km; Coastline 4,675 km
Land Use: 3% arable land; 12% permanent crops;
68% forests and woodlands; 17% other Irrigated Land 2,941 sq. km
National Flag: See top of page, nicknamed 'Jalur Gemilang' or sparkling stripes.
National Hymn: Negara Ku

Demographics: Population 24 million
Age Structure 35% 0-14 yrs; 61% 15-64 yrs; 4% 65 yrs+ Population Growth Rate 2.01% !!
Birth Rate 25.3 births/1,000 population
Death Rate 5.25 deaths/1,000 population
Total Fertility Rate 3.29 children born/woman
Literacy 83.5% total population

East Malaysia consists of the states of Sarawak and Sabah and is separated from Peninsular Malaysia by some 400 miles of the South China Sea.
These two states occupy most of the northwestern coastal part of the large island of Borneo and share a land boundary with the Indonesian portion (Kalimantan) of the island.
Within Sarawak is a small coastal enclave containing the sultanate of Brunei.

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Demography:
Ethnic composition, languages, and religions The Malay Peninsula, situated at one of the great maritime crossroads of the world, has long been the meeting place of peoples from other parts of Asia.
As a result, the population shows the ethnographic complexity typical of Southeast Asia as a whole. In general, there are four groups of people, given in the order of their appearance on the peninsula: the Orang Asli (aborigines), the Malays, the Chinese, and the South Asians.
In addition, there are small numbers of Europeans, Americans, Eurasians, Arabs, and Thai.
The Orang Asli constitute the smallest group and can be divided ethnically into the Jakun, who speak an archaic Malay, and the Semang and Senoi, who speak languages of the Mon-Khmer language family.
They are primarily adherents of traditional religions, but a number have been converted to Islam.
The Malays originated in different parts of the peninsula and archipelagic Southeast Asia. They constitute about two-thirds of the population and are politically the most important group. They share with each other a common culture, speak a common Austronesian language—Malay (officially called Bahasa Malaysia), which is the national language—and are overwhelmingly Muslim. Adherence to Islam is regarded as one of the most important factors distinguishing a Malay from a non-Malay, and the number of Malays who are not Muslim is negligible.
Minor differences in dialect, culture, and physical characteristics are noticeable among the Malays living in the south in Johor state, on the east coast in the states of Kelantan and Terengganu, and on the west coast in the states of Negeri Sembilan, Perak, Kedah, and Perlis.
The Chinese, who make up about one-third of the peninsular population, originally migrated from southeastern China.
They are ethnically homogeneous but are less homogeneous than the Malays in language and religion.
Several different dialects are spoken, notably Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, and Hainanese.
Thus, it may be necessary for two Chinese to converse in Mandarin Chinese, English, or Malay.
A minority, the Baba Chinese, speak a Malay patois, although otherwise they remain Chinese in customs, manners, and habit.
The Chinese do not have a dominant religion; most of them, while subscribing to Confucian moral precepts, are either Buddhist or Taoist.
A small minority is Christian. The peoples from South Asia—Indians, Pakistanis, and Tamils from Sri Lanka—constitute about 10 percent of the population of Peninsular Malaysia.
Linguistically, they can be subdivided into speakers of Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and others) and speakers of Indo-European languages (PunjaGi, Bengali, Pashto, and Sinhalese).
Numerically, the Tamil speakers are the largest group.
Most of the Indians and Sri Lankans are Hindu, while the Pakistanis are predominantly Muslim.
Some Indians have been converted to Christianity.
The Sikhs, from the Punjab, adhere to their own religion, Sikhism. The population of East Malaysia is ethnographically even more complex than that of Peninsular Malaysia.
The government has tended to oversimplify the situation in Sarawak and Sabah, officially recognizing only some of the dozens of ethnolinguistic groups in those two states.
The main ethnic groups in Sarawak are the Chinese, various speakers of mutually unintelligible Austronesian languages including the Iban (Sea Dayak), the Malays, the Bidayuh (Land Dayak), and the Melanau.
The Chinese of Sarawak, like those on the peninsula, originally came from southeastern China.
The relative size of each dialect group is reversed, however, as speakers of Hakka and Fu-chou (Hokchiu) in Sarawak outnumber those speaking Cantonese and Hokkien.
As in Peninsular Malaysia, nearly all the Chinese of Sarawak follow Confucianism and practice Buddhism or Taoism.
The Iban are the largest and most important indigenous group in Sarawak. Their origins are obscure, but traditionally they were headhunters. The Iban are a homogeneous people speaking a language described as a type of pre-Islamic Sumatran Malay.
Most of them live in the interior uplands, where they are longhouse dwellers practicing shifting cultivation.
They have a distinctive culture, in which nearly every activity is influenced or governed by their animist religious beliefs.
The Malays of Sarawak are a heterogeneous group of people, among whom only a few are of peninsular origin.
Most are the descendants of aboriginal peoples who since the mid-15th century have converted to Islam and adopted the Malay way of life. Although ethnically diverse, they are culturally homogeneous, speaking a common language and practicing Islam.
The Bidayuh live in hill country, most being found in the far western portion of Sarawak.
Although all are of the same ethnic group, they speak a number of different but related dialects that to some extent are mutually intelligible. The majority of the Bidayuh practice traditional religions, but Christian missionaries have made some converts among them.
The Melanau differ ethnically from the Sarawak Malays, but their dialects, which are distinct from Malay, do not differ sufficiently to constitute a barrier to communication.
The great majority of Melanau are Muslim, with the rest (except for a small number of Christians), following traditional religions. Other indigenous peoples—including the Kenyah, Kayan, Kedayan, Murut, Kelabit, Bisaya (Bisayah), and Punan—contribute much to Sarawak's ethnic and cultural diversity. Sabah also has a kaleidoscopic mixture of peoples.
The largest groups are the Kadazan, Chinese, Bajau, and Murut, while a significant proportion consists of such indigenous peoples as the Kedayan, Orang Sungei, Bisaya, Sulu, and Tidong. Europeans, Eurasians, Malays, Indonesians, Filipinos, and South Asians make up the remainder.
Kadazan society consists of a number of tribes, each speaking a dialect that the others can understand.
The great majority of Kadazan are animists, although a significant proportion are Christian and a small number are Muslim.
Most of the Chinese are Hakka-speaking, the other important dialects being Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, and Hainanese.
The Bajau are not a cohesive community, as they are split into two main groups: sedentary agriculturists living on the north coast and those who live by the sea on the east coast.
Most are Muslim, but not all of them can communicate with each other. The Murut of Sabah are descended from the same people as the Kadazan and are ethnically different from the Murut of Sarawak.
They are shifting cultivators. Although they are divided into subtribes, their languages are mutually intelligible.
Most follow traditional religions, with a significant minority being Christian.
source ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

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The view of a foreigner:
Malaysia presents itself as a democracy, more or less based on the British system, which means there are constituancies where representatives are voted for the parliament (Dewan Rakyat).
This British system means that you can gather 49.99% of the votes and don't have a single representative in the parliament..... so much for democracy.

In the past 15 years Malaysia's ruling front Barisan National or National Front, have slowly changed the parliamentry system into a rubber stamp system.
Laws are pushed through without proper hearing and occasionally withdrawn sometime later without any proper reason given.Or so hastly pushed through that noone knows the consequences and things prove inworkable afterwards. Furthermore the Dewan Rakyat is a kind of circus. None of the ruling party members knows debating, they behave like an unruly mob because they know they still have (a small) majority.

Although the opposition got a foothold in W-Malaysia (several states ruled by the opposition) , it will at least take until the next elections before any serious changes can be expected.
The court case against former deputy PM Dr Sri Anwar Ibrahim has really split the malay community with the result that at present at least 50-60% already identifies itself with the opposition, not because they like the more or less extremist Party Islam (PAS), but because they are fed up with the ruling coalition and in special the PM. In the last elections the goverment returned only because votes from Sabah and Serawak.. If they would have to rely on West Malaysian votes they would have been ousted with a fast majority.

To much spending is going into prestigeous projects which actually don't serve the country, but only the image of the goverment (read PM). Billions were/are wasted on this and to much money is spent on the capital KL where the rest of the country gets peanuts. Many projects ended as white elephants.

The preference system in favour of Malays (Bumiputra or son of soil) is simply asking for problems in the future as the younger generation of other races is no longer accepting this nonsence. Besides who are bumiputra??, the indigeous (orang asli) people are the bumiputra, not the Malays.
For 40 years the Malays had their chance under this system and if you look at what they actually achieved ...almost nothing except for all kinds of ali- baba structures which gives them easy money, but makes every goverment project about 10% to expensive, and that is a pile of money over the years.

In comparison to Indonesia (the largest Malay speaking country, although slightly different from bahasa Malaysia) Malaysia has done a lot better since its independence.
But democratic values in Indonesia are way ahead of Malaysia.
Corruption is definitely smaller, and Malaysia has a giant middle class. Indonesia only knows two, super poor or super rich, with hardly anything in between.
For this reason the political situations can NOT be compared. It is very easy to fight with an empty stomach where you have nothing to loose, in Malaysia the middle class has a lot to loose, so any uprising will be much more moderate than Indonesia. And demonstrations so far have shown this.

The education system has been turned into a degraded system over the past years. To much fiddling with standards, to many schools based on religion (especially Malay schools), these religious schools only produce small 'Talibans' their focus is on religion and not education.
Furthermore the education system is split among racial lines which is not exactly promoting racial integration.
Because the goverment schools so poor most chinese will work their butts of to send their children to a chinese or private school, because the education is so much better.
The universities have quota based on race. This funny system, has degraded the value of the degrees. Since Malays can go to university with less qualifications than anyone of another race, a big number will either drop out or being pushed through against different norms (take your pick).
The above system is now partially abolished but still different scales apply for different races.
This results in a lot of people trying to go to private universities (expensive) or going abroad for education (prohibitive expensive).
Goverment scholarships almost all go to Malays and the other races will have to fend for themselves.

Sabah / Sarawak joined the Malaysion federation in a later stage.
It is some kind of mariage of conveniance. Alone they are to small and they did not want to join Indonesia.
So as long as the federal goverment does not meddle in their internal affairs everything is ok. You can see that as UMNO the malay party is not in Sabah and Sarawak. The whole of West Malaysia does not allow parabola for tv receiption, in Sabah and Sarawak they are everywhere.
A West Malaysion needs a passport to go to Sabah/Sarawak (can you imagine...in your own country!)
Sabah/Sarawak can expell west malaysian from their territory, can refuse working permits and so on.
So really a confusing kind of mariage of conveniance.

Malaysia is a country with a bright future, if equality is given to everybody. You can not spoon feed one community on the cost of the other......this is asking for trouble in the future. If future goverments can rectify this, nothing will stand in the way of achieving its vision of being a developped nation by 2020 !!
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