Malaysian Races are Stuck in Prisoner's Dilemma

Let's talk about prisoner's dilemma and how this relates to Malaysia's interracial relationship.

You and your partner-in-crime are arrested and imprisoned. You are both in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with each other.

Each of you is given the opportunity either to betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. The offer is:

• If you betray each other, each of you serves two years in prison 
• If one betrays another but the other person remains silent, the traitor will be set free and the silent partner will serve three years in prison. 
• If you both remain silent, both of you will serve only one year in prison. 

Think about what you would do, and what would have been the best self-serving strategy.

• If you think your partner was going to betray you, then your best strategy is to betray him (as you would serve 2 instead of 3 years) 
• If you think your partner was going to stay silent, then your best strategy is still to betray him (as you would serve 0 instead of 1 year). 

Therefore, if both you and your partner are "smart", the most likely outcome would be that you both betray each other, and you both end up with two years. This unfortunately is non-ideal, as it turns out that both people remaining silent would have been the best case scenario, however the lack of information and the mutual distrust has driven you to choose the worst options.

Let's talk about how this relates to politics in Malaysia. Many of the more politically conservative Malays are holding the sanctity of the Malay special rights as the key to the race's survival and success in the country. Politicians continue to toy with this sentiment and encourage the continued affirmative action and discrimination of non-Malays in matters such as scholarship, business ownerships and other policymaking. They are keen to keep most non-Malays out of MARA and UiTM.

Chinese, on the other hand, have long had the besieged mentality. They fight to keep the vernacular school, and many continue to practise racial discrimination in employment and trades. Some major Chinese-owned companies discriminate against the Malays, citing "government already helps them, we have to protect our own people". On the topic of separate schooling system being a source of racial segregation, they say "you have to abolish UiTM and religious schools first before we even think about it".

Both Malays are Chinese are choosing the suboptimal strategy due to the distrust of each other. Any clear-thinking person could see that the best strategy for everyone is for all of us to abandon our own shields and mutually pointed spears, and start helping each other regardless of skin colour. However, almost every single day we continue to be disillusioned by betrayal of our leaders - people continue to speak of DAP's failure to protect the Chinese interests or PPBM's ability to protect the Malays.

In other words, we are like the two prisoners who choose to betray each other, unable to recognise that cooperating with each other is in fact the optimum strategy that we need.

Unfortunately mutual attack and "tit-for-tat" remains the "optimum" survival strategy in this racial game in Malaysia. Until a huge revolution or a brave leader is able to get us to play a different game altogether, it’s hard for us to leave this age-old game of survival between races in this country. This is the disappointing reality I have come to witness