About 1,000 people came to discuss the matter of ethnic unity and to listen to an impressive group of panelists, including many representatives of the Malaysian government, parliament and political parties, both of the ruling coalition and the opposition.

Parti Gerakan brought the entire leadership, consisting of the Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Vice Chairmen, the Secretary General, the Youth Committee Chairman and his Deputy. They called for further efforts to cautiously abandon politics along ethnic lines, which currently characterise all political institutions in Malaysia. Tan Sri Chan Choon Tak passionately called for the restructuring of all political parties with exclusive membership of a single ethnic group. YB Dato’ Lee Kah Choon pointed out that globalisation demands to overcome racial politics, especially in the education and business sectors, and to create equal opportunities for all. He believes the alternative to reducing quotas and barriers lies only in the Burmese way of isolation and self-inflicted stagnation.

Meanwhile, YB Dato’ Seri Hishamuddin Tun Hussein and Khairy Jamaluddin, Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Barisan Nasional Youth, insisted that in Malaysia today there are still distinct, yet overlapping, ethnic communities. Both followed the general rhetoric of Barisan Nasional that emphasises distinctiveness rather than uniformity. To Dato’ Seri Hishamuddin this distinctiveness should not be regarded as a compromise, nor as a weakness, but rather as the strength of Malaysia.

Also represented at the convention were members of other political parties, the MCA, the MIC and also the DAP. Lim Guan Eng, Secretary General of the Democratic Action Party, made a much welcomed contribution by requesting to strengthen the Malaysian democratic institutions as part of the agenda for a Bangsa Malaysia. In particular he called for a strong parliament, an independent judiciary and a free press. This point was supported in the speech of the Project Director of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

The convention was recorded by Malaysia.tv and can be viewed on their website.

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