A few days after Maybank’s new ruling on selection of law firms based on race equity for empanelment, the country’s largest bank has decided to revise the aforesaid ruling. According to Bernama, ‘Malayan Banking Bhd, Wednesday said it will continue to select solicitor firms based primarily on performance, efficiency and merit, revising earlier guidelines requiring legal firms to have Bumiputera equity if they wanted to do business with the bank.’
In the same Bernama report, Ambank Group released a separate statement saying that ‘it has been practising a policy of appointing legal firms that do not have Bumiputera partners for the past 20 years.’ The group said it does not impose restrictions of quota of shares on the equity participation of Bumiputera partners. Though the report did not mention the name of the second bank which intended to emulate Maybank’s criticized empanelment policy, this latest press statement would cast suspicions on Ambank’s identity as that second bank. Nevertheless, it is not anyone’s business to cast imputations, and as such we may never truly know the name of Maybank’s sidekick, or if that second bank even revised their rulings at all.
The revision of Maybank’s rulings is a victory for meritocracy, at least on paper. A couple of letters to Malaysiakini highlighted the implementation of race-based policies in everyday commercial life, most of which are not formally realized and are purely discriminatory practices at its bare minimum. However, with Maybank’s latest revision, we can at least keep such practices from being legitimately institutionalized (aside from those which we have already borne). Though such racism exists in our everyday life, it is too important not to allow it to rise up and settle in the public sphere; if that happens, only a path to perdition awaits. For now, let it simmer beneath the surface, and one day we will be able to take measures, as the Bar Council and the other various organizations who spoke out against Maybank have done, to bury it forever.
Such untenable actions/policies continue to exist and are now perhaps a culture in the overall scheme of things in the country. While some of the policies are legit and acceptable (under protest), some however are authoured people for self serving interests. The positive side to all this is we still have a government that can continue to react logically.