Challenge to Barisan candidate Ramli Mohd Nor whether he dares to admit that the report card for the 60-year-old Barisan Nasional programme to uplift the Orang Asli is a big “F”

Dare the Barisan Nasional candidate for Cameron Highlands, Ramli Mohd Nor admit that the report card for the 60-year-old Barisan Nasional programme to uplift the 200,000 Orang Aslis in Malaysia is a big “F”?

During my visits to the many Orang Asli posts and kampongs in Cameron Highlands, I was shocked to see the atrocious conditions of the Orang Asli community, where in many cases there is no proper roads or basic infrastructure of clean water and electricity, housing, the basic facilities of education and health, and most important of all, the long-standing denial of the land rights of the Orang Asli which are under the jurisdiction of the state governments.

I just cannot imagine how a caring Government could leave the Orang Asli community in such a shocking plight, not for one, five or ten years but for over 60 years.

The solution for the problem of the Orang Asli cannot begin unless we are prepared to admit that it exists, and this is why I ask the Barisan candidate for Cameron Highlands, Ramli, whether he dared to admit that the Barisan Nasional has completely failed in its efforts to end the poverty, backwardness and marginalisation of the Orang Aslis by bringing them into the mainstream of national development.

In fact the first appointment of an Orang Asli as a BN parliamentary candidate and the appointment of an Orang Asli as the Director-General of the Jabatan Kemajuan Orang Asli (JAKOA) in the last eight months are themselves the best proof of the failure of BN policies in over six decades to uplift the economic condition of the Orang Aslis.

This is because after 60 years, there should be more Orang Aslis occupying various high posts in the police and the civil service, and not just one Orang Asli to have served the highest post of a state director of commercial crime, and several Orang Asli should have helmed the post of JAKOA Director-General for the past few decades.