The exodus among those going back to their hometowns to celebrate Chinese New Year (CNY) has already begun. I’ll be staying put in Selangor and enjoying the traffic, or the lack thereof. This year, however, I’ll be celebrating CNY with a bit of a heavy heart due to a self-inflicted wound. One of the things I do every three months is to examine the quarterly electoral roll updates. To check on the number of newly registered voters, those who have changed their voting address and those who have been struck off the electoral roll. Recently, I was alerted by a colleague that a number of Malaysians had been taken off the electoral roll because they had been stripped of their citizenship (In BM: Dilucutkan kewarganegaraan). My curiosity was piqued. Were these individuals on some sort of terrorist watchlist which necessitated their citizenship being revoked? Were they guilty of some heinous crime such as treason? I had to investigate further.
My findings were both surprising and sad. Firstly, I discovered that 7828 individuals had lost their eligibility to vote because they were no longer considered citizens. These individuals were removed from the electoral roll in 2014 and 2015. As a comparison, the Returning Expert’s Programme (REP) under TalentCorp attracted 3600 Malaysians to return home over the past four years. This figure understates the number of Malaysians who have given up their citizenship over the past two years. It also does not include those who have given up their citizenship but were never registered on the electoral roll. It almost certainly excludes those who have given up their Malaysian citizenship and have taken up citizenship in countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the other usual migration destinations for Malaysians. This list of names are almost certainly Malaysians who have given up their citizenship for Singapore citizenship because of the strictly enforced requirement that Malaysians who take up the Singapore citizenship need to officially give up their Malaysian citizenship within a stipulated time.
Given the country of destination, it is not surprising that a majority of the 7828 individuals are Chinese (96.7 per cent). The rest are Indians (2.7 per cent), Malays (0.4 per cent) and others (0.2 per cent). The largest number of ex-Malaysians come from Johor (36.6 per cent), followed by Perak (19.5 per cent), Selangor (9.4 per cent), WP Kuala Lumpur (6.7 per cent), Melaka (5.6 per cent), Penang (5.4 per cent) and Negeri Sembilan (5.3 per cent). (See Table 1 below)
TABLE 1: VOTERS WHO HAVE GIVEN UP THEIR MALAYSIAN CITIZENSHIP FOR SINGAPORE CITIZENSHIP BY STATE OF ORIGIN AND ETHNICITY
What is sad is that these are ex-Malaysians who cared enough about the country that they registered as voters but for various reasons, decided to give up their Malaysian citizenship for greener pastures across the causeway. A majority of them also fall into the 30 to 50 age group (80.5 per cent), which means that they are in the most productive years of their working life (See Table 2 below).
TABLE 2: VOTERS WHO HAVE GIVEN UP THEIR MALAYSIAN CITIZENSHIP FOR SINGAPORE CITIZENSHIP BY AGE
56 per cent of these ex-Malaysians are women while 44 per cent are men. Without additional information, it is hard to gauge the reasons behind this gender difference e.g. the nature of their qualifications and jobs, whether they gave up their citizenship because of marriage and so on.
Aside from these statistics, what saddened me the most was when I spotted a name on the list which looked familiar. He is almost certainly an Asean scholar from my year. A Klang boy, he is now a medical specialist in infectious diseases and currently works in a government hospital in Singapore. His case is but the tip of the iceberg of talented ex-Malaysians who have left the country and are thriving elsewhere. What makes this reality more ‘real’ (and hence, sadder) for me personally is seeing a name I recognised.
If any ex-Malaysian is reading this piece, I hope that you have not totally given up on our country. Perhaps in the future, when there has been a change in government in Malaysia, you will be motivated to come back and contribute in some way. And if you are coming back to Malaysia for Chinese New Year, travel safe and eat well!
Ong Kian Ming of DAP is the Member of Parliament for Serdang.
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