LAST week, a short video went viral when a young Chinese officer, Lt Muda Chan Min Youn, earned his Grup Gerak Khas beret, and the conversation he had with his commander at the graduation ceremony.

His success at earning a commando title is impressive for a few reasons.

First, as he is a graduate who usually opts for officer training (which he already passed) that opens a pathway as a military careerist, rather than an operative, second, he comes from the volunteer Wataniah regiment, often thought of as second line defence and not as hardy as the regular or full-time regiments, and third, perhaps most impressive, is that he is an ethnic Chinese, a community known for aversion towards serving in the armed forces and police.

This buzz has social media clamouring, mostly impressed with this feat, with the Chinese community quick to use him as an example of the exception to the rule.

The military and government alike, should quickly build on this.

A major hurdle in our nation building is the bunching of various ethnic communities in the workplace.

Government service is overwhelmingly Bumiputera except for certain areas like health or teaching, which have a significant non-Bumi presence.

Private sector is the employment of choice for the Chinese, as are SMEs.

Where else GLCs tend to hire Bumiputeras with some non-Bumi expertise and managerial staff.

This isn’t done on purpose, it is just how the cards fall – from the socioeconomic distribution, geographical reasons, and even educational backgrounds.

If continued, this further lessens the common ground shared between Malaysians of different races.

The introduction of National Service, for instance, could be used to highlight the contributions of non-Bumi heroes and role models to inspire, for instance, vernacular school children who would be better able to picture themselves as emulating those roles.

It can further be tweaked to include lesser-known departments as part of service, instead of only the armed forces and police, to include the likes of the Fire Department, Immigration, MAQIS and so on, and the exposure serves both ways – for the civil servants themselves, as well.

The Kuala Kubu Baharu by-election highlights how split we are as a nation, as a person’s educational background from a vernacular school can be spun to imply non-nationalistic sentiment, despite scoring the highest possible accolades in a standardised national examination, with the accuser himself also from a non-mainstream national school, ironically.

At the end of the day, there is much intersectionality possible between various types of education systems, universities, social traditions, and even ethnic upbringing that can be a powerful strategic advantage and productivity multiplier, should we allow it to be, instead of playing them up as differences.

In a way, this resilience is demonstrated in the present global boycotts, in that Malaysian companies can weather them better due to our revolving ideological differences which act as a shield against total loss of business, preserving certain customer segments.

Similarly, our diverse workforce should earn us competitive advantage – something fully utilised by the over 40 countries that have a strong Malaysian skilled workforce, including Singapore, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Part of the appeal of Malaysian workers is their global outlook and ability to adapt to various cultural sensitivities, something that comes as second nature to us growing up in a multicultural country.

Let this newfound interest be a catalyst to greater things to come – if a Chinese kid from a Chinese Malaysian university from a Chinese part of KL can make good to fit into the GGK, we can certainly do better to get along better with ourselves! – May 1, 2024.

* Emmanuel Joseph firmly believes that Klang is the best place on Earth, and that motivated people can do far more good than any leader with motive.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.