BACK in the mid-1980s, a political joke was making the rounds.
To ease the contrasting conundrums of the three major races, the name "Baba" was weaved as the common thread.
It goes like this: for their spiritual needs, many Indians consulted Sathya Sai Baba and in the debilitating 1980s MCA power struggle, its warring Chinese leaders deferred to Tun Ghafar Baba's stoic mediation.
As the Malays needed fast and easy cash, they went with "Ali Baba".
For the undiscerning, Sathya Sai Baba was a venerated Indian spiritual guru, while Ghafar Baba, the late deputy prime minister, was then an Umno vice–president.
"Ali Baba" is the troublesome neologism of so-called Malay entrepreneurs "leasing out" their business licences and permits — secured through New Economic Policy entitlements and privileges — to non-eligible Chinese-owned companies.
Apparently, the "Ali Baba" scheming is still the rage after all these decades, but now reduced to smaller contracts for running hawker centres, convenience stores, eateries, car workshops or night market stalls as they are surrendered to foreign migrants.
An aghast Johor government drew first blood, starting a blacklist of these Malay business owners, while the federal government plans to draft an anti-Ali Baba law, though the idea is for the states to take the initiative.
The Finance Ministry underscored the seriousness of this disrepute: Malaysia loses 30 per cent of its gross domestic product to this shadow economy.
The measures are justified: the Ali Baba expedience exposes the rich hypocrisy of a certain segment of the Malay political-entrepreneurial class.
They were the ones who persisted loudly in their general assembly and congress, even Parliament, that Malays were so under-served in the bite of the economic cake that they deserved a bigger slice, or so big that practically all government contracts must go exclusively to them.
As these demands clanged in the mid-1990s, a former prime minister, in addressing them during his party's annual general assembly, deadpanned that yes, he could hand over all contracts to Malays.
But he cautioned of a terrible trade-off: the tribe, he guaranteed, will lose in the next general election.
Realistically, it makes no sense that upon securing a lion's share of government contracts, they are practically given away over small percentages the rent-seekers garnished with the scheming.
Besides being an insult to genuine Malay entrepreneurs deprived of such contracts because they had no political pull, the contrivance is probably why the same prime minister lamented a now famous but scorching narrative — the "lazy Malay who easily forgets".
If this was the case, then that ex-prime minister was spot on: the "Ali Baba" facade works the free contract on paper but rakes in the fast and easy money as an embarrassing sellout.
Still, it's grossly unfair to slather this reverberating narrative on all Malays, impaired by these "Ali Baba" slackers who woodenly ignore the sting of damnation as their double-dealing continues to flounder.