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Responses || Discussion || Debates || Commentaries

1. Good post. It’s about addressing poverty not racism. But you need to perhaps add that the government is also taking the whole responsibility of taking care of the ‘needy race’. Whereas those three brothers should learn to care for one another as well. So the parents should teach each brother how to work together and share.

   Each brother only knows how to share within their own extended family and not to each other. So the responsibility isn’t only upon the government, it’s also upon us. Our limited social structures within ourselves to eliminate poverty and lack of education is also to blame.

   Comment published by Rachel Foong on 6 June 2007.
   Was this a good comment?     +3

2. good article. but have a look at these points.

   if wealth (sweets) were to be distributed according to economic status (poor/well to do) - how would that be done? distributing wealth in terms of corporate equity to the poor - is unrealistic. but wealth distribution can be done in terms of subsidies, tax relief, loans, scholarships - all well and good. unfortunately, these are long term distributors of wealth.

   so what if we did away with race-based affirmative action - and implemented economic-status-based affirmative action? would that cause a faster accumulation of wealth to non-bumis and impair our intention of redistributing wealth to the poor as well?

   my hypothesis is - maintain existing race-based affirmative action, but put in place a transparent, measurable timetable to gradually remove it. concurrently, more economic-status-based policies be put in place to stamp out poverty by improving overall education levels and opportunities.

   Comment published by greenshrek on 6 June 2007.
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3. Lucid, focused piece - enjoyed it.

   One thing I suspect (although this isn’t particularly useful a thing to dwell on in the specific context of the NEP problem) is that acceptance of the first argument, as stated, renders the second issue redundant. In other words, if you accept that wealth is created and therefore your criterion for distribution ought to be individual levels of wealth-creation (which are a mark of merit and hence desert), this can lead to the negation of all social welfare as unfair. Robert Nozick’s ‘taxation of earnings from labour is on a par with forced labour’ thing. You would never have had the right to transfer excess sweets from your children to begin with, unless they handed them over charitably. To tax or reappropriate your children’s excess sweets would be to take from those who deserve (wealth-creators) and give to those who don’t (damned hippies).

   Of course, this is not a nice conclusion. So, maybe, some sort of condition ought to be appended to the ‘wealth is created’ principle, to the effect that we cannot assume, and hence need to work to ensure, a level playing field of wealth creation. This, of course, was one of the arguments for the NEP in the beginning - that the economic odds were stacked along racial lines. However, I think this argument is successfully defeated by your second argument, to the effect that if a certain ethnic group is in fact in a position of unfair social disadvantage, then a policy of race-blind social welfare will be just as effective (or perhaps even more effective) in helping them, and need not be predicated on race.

   What’s left over, then, is the other argument for ethnically-based racial discrimination, the one I like to refer to as Mahathir’s ‘Red Indian’ argument - that the Malays have a claim to the wealth of Malaysia based on history and heredity, and for this reason deserve (perhaps more than) a proportionate share of wealth. Using that argument at the first step would render less relevant the consideration that wealth is created, as anyone who is pro-NEP on the basis of heredity will simply state - “but the wealth-creators are not necessarily full partners in the ownership of the nation”. This argument, of course, becomes more ridiculous in the real world as the income disparity between poor and rich Malays (which you mention) is maintained or even increased, implying that while the NEP may be about indigenous rights, in practice it’s clearly not about the rights of all indigenes. Still, the argument from original ownership persists, and I feel is more troubling than the argument from population proportion alone, because it allows for the conclusion that in enforcing a proportionate division of wealth the Bumiputras are in fact being generous.

   Comment published by somethingmissing on 6 June 2007.
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4. Got this interesting comment regarding this entry on my blog:

   Jeg said…

   i’m guessing Elanor went to Cambridge with the government scholarship.

   Or did she? can someone confirm this to me?

   If Elanor was under scholarship, it’s a shame how she came out with this entry.

   But again, can someone confirm this to me?

   I fail to see why I should be ashamed if I took a Govt scholarship and wrote this. Why?

   Anyway, excellent comments from rachel, greenshrek and missingsomething. Thank you.

   Comment published by Elanor Tan on 7 June 2007.
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5. Amazing how “I” hypothetically adopted 3 kids from separate races without getting into trouble…..

   There are many reasons used to justify the Bumiputeras (I abhor anyone who insists to focus on simply on the Malays!) special privileges which have been taken advantage of by a majority of the Malay capitalists.

   And to simply put Malay as Bumiputera is also wrong. Apostates have their special privileges revoked, and they are no longer known as Bumiputeras.

   Some use the agreement signed by our forefathers. Others go so far to state that we were the first one in this country, and we should get special treatment for that.

   To the Malays who still believe this, unless you can trace your descendants down to an Orang Laut colony near Melaka, I suggest you drop it right now.

   I don’t like at heredity as an excuse for Bumiputera privileges. Besides, if I were to bring up ancestry, then I’m probably the most ineligible, seeing as how three of my grandparents were non-Malays, and two of their grandparents were immigrants to this wonderful country.

   I do believe poverty is an issue to be settled, but I doubt that the abolishment of the NEP will solve it.

   Comment published by Aput on 7 June 2007.
   Was this a good comment?     +3

6. Elanor:
   Firstly, it’s somethingmissing.

   Secondly, no, there’s no reason for you to be ashamed, scholar or not. In fact, if you were a government scholar then you ought to give some priority to putting what you’ve learnt to some sort of use for your nation - which is what you’ve done. Government scholarships are awarded by all Malaysians, not just the government or any specific group.

   Aput:
   “There are many reasons used to justify the Bumiputeras (I abhor anyone who insists to focus on simply on the Malays!)”

   The reason for this is real-world circumstances. People look around them and see how the policies are being misdirected to favour Malays, particularly, as you mention, a particular Malay elite (although the elite being favoured is in fact quite multi-racial). So they come to think of the policies as being specifically for Malays. I don’t think there are too many non-Malay Bumis around who are doing well as a result of the NEP and in the public eye (in fact some Orang Asli communities are still doing quite badly), so what’s happened is that the public have come to think of ‘Malay’ and ‘Bumiputra’ as interchangeable. Not accurate, yes, but I think considering the circumstances, it’s fair.

   “I do believe poverty is an issue to be settled, but I doubt that the abolishment of the NEP will solve it.”

   I’m not sure if you support the NEP or not, but you’re right - removing it alone won’t do a lot to stop poverty, but removing it and instituting a proper system of fair and non-discriminatory social welfare will. Furthermore, the NEP is not just invalid because it’s not meeting its aims, I believe its very basis is invalid, and that it cannot be defended as anything but a racist and morally wrong policy. At the very best, it may have been valid for a few years, if handled properly, but only as a necessary evil, and the time of its necessity has long past. So even if it were meeting its aims, it would be wrong because it would make people accountable for something beyond their control, something I believe is an illegitimate criteria for discrimination - namely the colour of their skin. To me, anyone who believes race is a valid and final criteria for discrimination in public policy is a racist of some flavour. Perhaps not the worst kind of racist, but a racist nonetheless.

   Comment published by somethingmissing on 8 June 2007.
   Was this a good comment?     --2

7. i think the government has thought of this and 101 other possibilities 35 years ago. They have the best brains at their disposal, be it hired internally or outsourced. If im not mistaken(correct me if im wrong), the person who formulated our initial NEP was a norwegian economist. And i still think they do consult foreign experts on economic policies. Wether or not they take the advice is another matter all together.

   What im trying to point out is they are politically driven. Politics takes precedence over economic decisions….Politically, umno has done very well over the pass 50 years albeit at the expense of the nation.

   Through the NEP, fear is embeded in our minds. Everytime opposition parties question the effectiveness of the policy, we are reminded by UMNO the repercussions of May 13th. Let me refresh your memory…

   “Umno is willing to risk lives and bathe in blood to defend the race and religion.”-the famous one

   “Don’t play with fire. If they (non-Malays) messed with our rights, we will mess with theirs”.-Hasnoor Hussien

   “If they question our rights, then we should question theirs. So far we have not heard the Malays questioning their right to citizenship when they came in droves from other countries.”-Hasnoor Hussien

   “We will not budge an inch to defend our rights, we will defend it to the last drop of our blood”-Mohd Zan Abu

   “Do not challenge the Malays - it will ignite our spirit to run amok”-Razali Idris

   And many more……

   Fear is an effective tool to win elections if administered correctly. Look at bush’s re-election. He harped on the 9/11 issue, american safety and security. He got re-elected.

   Lets imagine this……If our opposition achieves a landslide victory, the malays from kampung baru will come out stabbing chinese and indians at will and bam!, emergency ordinance kicks in. government takes control and we go back to square one. Then Najib will tell you to vote BN if you want peace, just like his father did. Oh how apt!

   If this happens, what are we minorities to do? What do you guys think? Foreign intervention a posibility?

   Comment published by democratic junkie on 8 June 2007.
   Was this a good comment?     +2

8. the only justification that UMNO (particularly UMNO Youth) falls back on frequently, is to suppose that bumiputeras on the whole (regardless of whether they are rich or poor) continue to deserve subsidies only because they were the ‘first’ to inherit this land. Hence, it is their God-given right.

   If Kua Kia Soong’s re-interpretation of May 13 based on de-classified official documents is to be taken seriously, then NEP is a tool to create Malay hegemony, not merely to redistribute wealth.

   Another common argument used to justifiy discrimination of this sort is to claim (somewhat erroneously) that non-bumis ‘control’ major portions of the economy. Not even bumiputera ‘entrepreneurs’ can penetrate the entry barriers. In reality, this view is simplistic as it overlooks the fact that incumbent firms have interest to prevent new entrants from coming into the market, irregardless of whether they are bumi or non-bumi players.

   The real problem here, which perpetuates support for NEP, is the bumis themselves who aren’t able to see beyond ethnicity and acknowledge that poverty is simply colour blind. It would be impossible to reason with the UMNO types since emotions take precedence over rational thinking.

   Comment published by elegant lily on 8 June 2007.
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9. No, somethingmissing, it is not fair to simply put the Malays as the only ones. Especially when you have assholes in Sabah and Sarawak, who are Bumiputeras, not Malays, who take advantage of the poor.

   Please note that Malaysia doesn’t just mean the Peninsula dangling off of Thailand.

   Comment published by Aput on 9 June 2007.
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10. Perhaps ‘fair’ is the wrong word. ‘Understandable’ would have been better. Because even though the public perception is not wholly accurate, it’s easy to see why it exists. Assholes exist on either side of the sea (and are both Bumi and non-Bumi), but the fact remains that the bulk of those assholes are on the Peninsula, and so is the bulk of the money. Hence the most visible offenders, and the ones who are between them making the biggest profits, are Bumis from the Peninsula - who are mostly Malay. Call it unfair if you like, but it is what’s most visible and what’s most visible always shapes the public consciousness. If you want to blame anything, blame the NEP. Ironically, the most effective way to get rid of these false perceptions that you seem so offended by would be to scrap the NEP.

    Comment published by somethingmissing on 10 June 2007.
    Was this a good comment?     --4

11. Actually, a bulk of Malaysian trade comes from Sabah and Sarawak in the form of timber and palm oil, so technically the money comes from there.

    And secondly, no, I don’t blame the NEP for the Malays being labeled as being the only Bumiputeras who take advantage of it. I blame education, or lack of it. The thing with the NEP, as I have mentioned several times, is that it is not working to help the poor, as it was supposed to.

    This is due to the fact that the poor are not educated nor given the resources, education and financial, to take advantage of it. You can go to any Malay kampung and ask these people what the NEP is, and they wouldn’t know anything about it. But when the general elections come, they’re told that they have to vote for BN to defend it.

    And they do, without any explanation to what it does for them.

    Let the public have their perceptions. I will work to change it.

    Comment published by Aput on 10 June 2007.
    Was this a good comment?     +3

12. “Actually, a bulk of Malaysian trade comes from Sabah and Sarawak in the form of timber and palm oil, so technically the money comes from there.”

    And you’re saying that most of the people who exploit these resources are from there as well? I thought most of them are from the Peninsula. So the raw materials may be from there, but the money that results from them doesn’t really hang about there, proportionately.

    “The thing with the NEP, as I have mentioned several times, is that it is not working to help the poor, as it was supposed to.

    This is due to the fact that the poor are not educated nor given the resources, education and financial, to take advantage of it.”

    For accuracy’s sake (you make a fairly strict point of not conflating Malays with Bumis, after all), let’s keep in mind that before the word ‘poor’ in those sentences, one should insert the word ‘Bumiputeras’. Even if the NEP were working, it would still do far less for the poor of other races and hence the only benefit would be that instead of Malays being viewed exclusively as unfair beneficiaries, it would be Malays plus Orang-orang Asli, the Portuguese and so on. The benefits would still be viewed as unfair by non-Bumis. And I think those non-Bumis would be right. This is a point on which we differ, but I consider the NEP to be fundamentally morally wrong. It’s a racist policy, not a socio-economic one. Even if it had worked perfectly, it would only have been valid as a last resort and a temporary fix, and ought to have been discarded long ago - it’s a funny sort of temporary fix that lasts for over three decades and is perpetuated with no apparent end in sight. At this point in time, Malaysia has been so damaged by the NEP (and its mismanagement) that the NEP alone, even if properly implemented, will hardly fix things. It will exacerbate the problems that it has created. The NEP has had its run, and it may have been mishandled, but the time has come for something new rather than further modifications to it.

    Comment published by somethingmissing on 11 June 2007.
    Was this a good comment?     --4

13. “And you’re saying that most of the people who exploit these resources are from there as well? I thought most of them are from the Peninsula. So the raw materials may be from there, but the money that results from them doesn’t really hang about there, proportionately.”

    Well, yeah, they are. The money does come back to conglomerates back on the Peninsula, but most of it is put back into mega projects in those states. If I’m not mistaken, one of those projects would be the Bakun project, managed by Sime Darby Engineering, who spends the cash this GLC gets from Sime Plantations, which owns palm oil estates there. The money basically circulates back into that state.

    “For accuracy’s sake (you make a fairly strict point of not conflating Malays with Bumis, after all), let’s keep in mind that before the word ‘poor’ in those sentences, one should insert the word ‘Bumiputeras’. Even if the NEP were working, it would still do far less for the poor of other races and hence the only benefit would be that instead of Malays being viewed exclusively as unfair beneficiaries, it would be Malays plus Orang-orang Asli, the Portuguese and so on.”

    Yes. How true. It would would be the poor Malays, the poor Orang Asli’s, the poor Babas and Nyonyas, the poor Seranis and all the poor members of the indigenous tribes of Sabah and Sarawak. And just what is the proportion of these people when compared to all other races in Malaysia?

    The NEP should be maintained but re-organized to focus more on eroding poverty of the other races classified as Bumiputeras.

    As for the non-Bumiputera races, I’m not saying that they do not have the same priority. However, the removal of the NEP will not help them, nor will it solve the problem of poverty among the Bumiputeras. Instead, we will see not only the Bumiputera rich exploiting the NEP, we will also see the non-Bumiputera rich exploiting the Bumiputeras as a whole, as well as the poor non-Bumis.

    Comment published by Aput on 11 June 2007.
    Was this a good comment?     +1

14. There’s no way the government will ever abolish the NEP just because of good reasoning alone. The net present value of this policy to the Malays is in the trillions of ringgit. There’s no way they’re going to willingly give this up. Nobody in their right mind, of any race or nationality, would do so without being overwhelmingly forced to.

    It follows that incumbent politicians would never acknowledge that the NEP is anything but fair and right. To do so would mean they would have to act accordingly. To act accordingly would destroy the collective net present value of the Malays by trillions. It would be stupid and irresponsible and worthy of being tortured and hanged.

    Comment published by anon on 12 June 2007.
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15. What anon points out is definitely correct, from a ruthless, greedy, logical point of view, especially if he means he rich fat Datuk’s up top.

    Comment published by Aput on 12 June 2007.
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16. From UMNO’s point of view, NEP is not to be justified. It is considered a GIVEN in the socioeconomic landscape of Malaysia. The dominant economic agenda is that of Malay agenda, and NEP is a tool with which to achieve the objectives of the agenda.

    This ironically makes this posting meaningless - while you can convince most non-Malays that NEP may not be the first best policy around, the majority (particularly bumis) remain sceptical and even suspicious about any calls to re-examine the policy. You are merely preaching to the converted.

    Moreover, it contributes little additional insights to an old problem. Last year, Dr Lim Teck Ghee and Edmund Terence Gomez spearheaded a team that did some research on NEP and the distribution of corporate equity under ASLI’s leadership. At least 2 insights can be confirmed from the report. One, NEP does not promote efficiency. Two, NEP may not always promote equity/fairness.

    As you all already know, ASLI has disassociated itself from the research findings. Dr Lim resigned from ASLI as a result, in order to protect the integrity of his team’s research. Having tested the waters, ASLI’s farcical denial of the said research report’s validity goes to show that any discourse on this issue can only be done in the dark alleys of the internet. Broad daylight discussion will never be allowed.

    That’s the political reality…sad but true.

    Comment published by elegant lily on 13 June 2007.
    Was this a good comment?     +3

17. The NEP doesn’t just benefit rich datuks. It has been responsible for making the entire Malay middle and lower-middle class. Without the NEP, few would have attended university, almost none would have attended university overseas, and consequently there would be far fewer Malay top executives. Malay top executives hire Malay middle managers, Malay middle managers hire Malay workers, clerks and engineers, etc. Malay purchasing officers prefer buying from Malay vendors, making the Malay contracting/supplier industry possible. Even highly trained and capable Malay graduates would not be executives if all the large companies in Malaysia were Chinese-run due to lack of cultural fit. You need to have companies in Malay ownership so that they are at all employable. This means you need to have Malay capitalists, and it is the making of these that is a little below table.

    Without the NEP, Malays would still primarily be farmers and fishermen. Now you see what a difference all those billions in Chinese-generated wealth have done for the Malays.

    Comment published by anon on 13 June 2007.
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18. The NEP is truly the goose that lays the golden eggs for the Malays. They’d never allow it to be killed.

    Comment published by anon on 13 June 2007.
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19. Aput:
    “The money does come back to conglomerates back on the Peninsula, but most of it is put back into mega projects in those states.”

    I have no figures to back up my stance on this matter, it’s simply on an intuitive level that I believe that the bulk of the wealth ends up on the Peninsula. I’d be very interested in figures to the contrary, though.

    Aput:
    “Yes. How true. It would would be the poor Malays, the poor Orang Asli’s, the poor Babas and Nyonyas, the poor Seranis and all the poor members of the indigenous tribes of Sabah and Sarawak. And just what is the proportion of these people when compared to all other races in Malaysia?”

    Does that really matter, as long as there are still poor people out there, and we’re not doing our best to help all of them equally? Right, let’s assume we overhaul the machinery of the NEP so that it ends up being implemented faultlessly, and then we’ll come up with a further, more traditional, social welfare system that helps the poorest of the other races too. This still doesn’t solve the problem of resources and opportunities being guaranteed to well-off Bumis, when they could be going to the poor who need them more. This is a problem for poor Bumis and poor non-Bumis alike - resources are finite and therefore any excess perks given to a middle-class Bumi could ostensibly have come at the expense of a poor Bumi, just as much as they could have come at the expense of a poor non-Bumi. So, how do we fix this? Perhaps modify the NEP so that it prioritises poor Bumis over rich Bumis, cutting people off from privileges after they are sufficiently well-off? This will avoid the problem of some Bumis getting handouts they clearly don’t need. Does this, then, solve things? Not really - resource redistribution will still be weighted so that a poor Bumi is prioritised over an equally poor, or even poorer, non-Bumi. The problem that I find most repugnant still remains - which is that the NEP creates an unfairly discriminatory environment along racial lines. I think it cannot avoid relying heavily on the premise that some races simply HAVE MORE RIGHTS than others. This is racism, pure and simple. Is it really hard to see why some of us hate it?

    elegant lily:
    “This ironically makes this posting meaningless - while you can convince most non-Malays that NEP may not be the first best policy around, the majority (particularly bumis) remain sceptical and even suspicious about any calls to re-examine the policy. You are merely preaching to the converted.”

    Firstly, even if you’re right, there’d be no irony involved at all. Secondly, I don’t believe you’re right. The fact of UMNO not accepting the arguments of this post does not in any way make them ‘meaningless’ or useless. Your contention regarding UMNO’s non-acceptance involves a separate justification for the NEP, one irrelevant to this post, which I referred to in an earlier comment as Mahathir’s ‘Red Indian’ argument - the argument for inherent indigenous rights. That argument is not addressed by the writer of this post - not because she fails to address it, but because in this post her intention was to address other things. She is making a coherent case from acceptable premisses, and even if it remains quite abstract I think that it’s valuable. I find very disturbing the belief that an argument is only useful if it changes the ‘political reality’ and ‘converts’ people, because this deprioritises the actual truth-value of the argument in favour of its real-world impact and the ease of its spread.

    anon:
    “Nobody in their right mind, of any race or nationality, would do so without being overwhelmingly forced to.”

    Someone interested in the long-term future of the nation might. But then perhaps it’s too idealistic to expect someone like that to reach a position of political authority. In any case, your arguments point to the NEP actually harming the Bumis in the long run - the relative value of the Malaysian labour force as opposed to that of other Asian countries is a strong indicator of this. Let’s face it, we won’t be exporting doctors or nurses en masse to Western countries anytime soon, the way India and the Philippines are doing. I’ve been told by foreigners who’ve worked in Malaysia or hired Malaysians that the perceived value of Bumi workers is lowest - they often turn out to be simply less competent than non-Bumi peers who have had to work harder for the same rewards. One of the things the NEP may have done is inadvertently create a weird incubator for a kind of awful experiment into social Darwinism. Unfortunately the rest of the world doesn’t operate like the incubator.

    anon:
    “Without the NEP, Malays would still primarily be farmers and fishermen.”

    I have more faith in Bumis than that, but you have a point - as things stood in the late sixties, something had to change. It was a matter of economic re-engineering, not simply social justice. This point I will readily concede. However the NEP is an exceedingly inelegant solution and one that has clearly been botched, despite being about as complicated as whacking a dead cow with a club. Race should never have operated as a criterion so widely across the board, covering everything from education to basic social welfare. More attention should have been paid to grassroots development rather than racial quotas - the education system is one thing that’s been criminally neglected and abused, and yet would have been pivotal to a proper solution to all the problems that the NEP was created to address. It’s true that the NEP has been exploited and misdirected, but it’s such a ludicous policy to begin with that I can’t imagine a situation where it would not have been hijacked.

    Comment published by somethingmissing on 14 June 2007.
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20. somethingismissing,

    you really are missing something. good moniker you have there.

    the reason why i said this article is meaningless is because a lot of people are already aware of the weaknesses of NEP. not that we are ignorant. also, there are a couple of good academic articles on the topic. the fact that there is yet another article about the problems of NEP, my first reaction was that of ‘oh no…not another article on NEP again’. i have learned nothing new from the article. no new insights that i cannot get from reading the works of, say, terence gomez and lim teck ghee. if there arent new insights, there is little satisfaction in reading something that does not blow your hair back.

    on a different note, i consider a good argument as one that can convert a non-believer. if an idea fails to convince the majority, it is a failed argument. the world is,after all, a huge market for ideas.

    Comment published by elegant lily on 16 June 2007.
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21. elegant lily:
    “the reason why i said this article is meaningless is because a lot of people are already aware of the weaknesses of NEP.”

    Okay, so because ‘a lot of people’ (including, most importantly, you) already know certain things, there’s no need for these things to be restated…ever. Never mind other people out there who might not already know or, more relevantly, those who might never have heard the arguments for and against the NEP pared down to a theoretical level and tackled individually, the way this article does. I myself have never read anything which takes this approach to the NEP, perhaps because I haven’t read enough Terence Gomez and Lim Teck Ghee. So let’s call this an article for ignoramuses like me, and you won’t have to waste your time sighing and moaning over how meaningless it all is and - O woe, O tragedy - why won’t anyone ever tell you anything you haven’t heard before? It’s ever so tiresome, isn’t it? And then you’re forced to join in and point out how unimpressed you are, and you even helpfully include suggestions as to how people can set about becoming as impressive as yourself. But are the plebs grateful? No, quite the contrary, they even have the cheek to suggest that you’re being patronising! Such gall! Leave them to their sweets and theories and good monikers, I say.

    elegant lily:
    “on a different note, i consider a good argument as one that can convert a non-believer. if an idea fails to convince the majority, it is a failed argument. the world is,after all, a huge market for ideas.”

    Yes, so I was right - you don’t care if an argument is right or wrong or true or false, as much as you care about its ability to convert other people. Whatever philosophy you choose, you want it to be evangelically successful. Well, I’m sorry but I care most about truth, which I think is most likely to be found in coherence. If a coherent, true argument fails to convince people or change society, then that’s a problem for society, not for the argument. Hence I believe that the risible capitalist cliche of a marketplace of ideas has run its course, because it assumes that the market always favours the truer idea - an assumption with little by way of logic to back it up, and one that relies on the myth of progress. Progress is no certain thing, and might even be an illusion altogether, so the best we can hope for is the immediately pragmatic, the truths we can use. And for that we need coherence, not marketability.

    Comment published by somethingmissing on 16 June 2007.
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22. So now it is about racism, and no longer about solving poverty, is it, somethingmissing?

    as you said, it does not guarantee the well off Bumis from getting hold of the special privileges.

    so are we talking about poverty eradication, or are we talking about ways to work toward poverty eradication with the abolishment of the NEP?

    Comment published by Aput on 18 June 2007.
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23. Continuing from my earlier comments, I think the NEP issue is talked too much about. The more important issue of national productivity doesn’t even get mentioned.

    Malaysia is horrifically unproductive, less productive even than some East European countries that were socialist until just two decades ago. Two decades ago citizens in these countries still had to line up 3 hours to get bananas. Pineapples were unknown. People worked in a centrally planned economy. At about that time, we in Malaysia already had foreign direct investment . Penang was just beginning to become the place responsible for Malaysia’s largest source of trade surplus — electrical goods.

    After all this while, electrical goods are still produced by multinationals as it was 20 years ago. To see how it really ought to have turned out, look at China. They’re copying everything, exactly like the Japanese 40 years ago. They don’t copy simple things either — they’re ambitious enough to copy even things like offset printing machines. If you’ve seen one of these things, you’ll just begin to grasp the extent of their audacity. You don’t see any trace of this audacity in Malaysia.

    China doesn’t just copy either. It is just beginning to make their own stuff. It is already the largest exporter of homegrown microwave ovens. Kitchen appliances are almost all designed and made in China. China has just begun exporting Chinese-designed cars to Europe.

    And the Chinese are doing all this without even speaking English properly. The Japanese, too, somehow managed to become the world’s second largest economy without widespread English proficiency.

    And China is operating with the sort of corruption on all levels of government that makes Malaysia look like a goddamned Switzerland.

    The only explanation for why the Chinese are surpassing us is because they are fixated with making widgets. All the great economies became great because of this. Make widgets. Malaysians put too much emphasis on stupid things, like the whole “chop” mentality, Amway-style direct selling, the fixation with the English language, and with the NEP.

    If we weren’t so cheap, the only thing we’d have to trade for the Camrys and the Rolexes and the XPs would be palm oil (and in this we are strong not because of our ingenuity but because of the environment and climate. We do not even begin to come close to the American cotton-growing industry.) If the Dells and the Intels in Penang were to desert us, that would be all we would have to trade with. We truly are the lamest widget makers who have ever crawled the earth.

    Comment published by anon on 23 June 2007.
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24. I do agree with anon…Malaysia has fallen behind many countries even inferior to us a decades ago. Foriegn investments are not coming to us now. If you were hardworking and check on the newspaper before 1997 from library, you will find that during those days, we prosper due to flush of foreign investment from other countries.

    To revive our economy, we need to open up more. Do you agree with me that most of our local companies make inferior products and services at hike up prices? If you disagree, just look at Proton, our housees and highways that we build, and our airline system. We need to open up for competition and make benefit the consumers of our country. The next level of economic growth should come from consumerism. But if we keep selling inferior products at mark up prices, how would we be able to convince consumers to buy more and spend more?

    You may ask what has opening up got to do with spurring consumer spending. Yes it does in every way. If foreigner corporations were to compete equally here, they will bring in their latest technology and capital to this country and hence bring down the prices of our goods. You were right to say that our local business were to be affected, only if they sit idle and do nothing. If they strenghthen up themselves, they may be able to learn from their peers and improve their productivity and efficiency. If they are able to fend of foreign competition locally, they would be able to compete with them internationally. Examples would be Maxis and Parkson retail (which done well in China). If local companies were to die due to foreign competition, they should be out of business in the first place as they are not fit to be business at all.

    So what has it all got to do with NEP? If you were a foreign company, will you want to invest in a country which impose such a stupid and ridiculous policy on your company as NEP? I will need to share my 30% (and maybe up to 60% if the stupid government were to impose what they thought is their right portion, in the future) to bumiputra people? I will definitely not wnat to share my portion that way. Malaysia is just a small country not worth a dime important for me to risk my company in. In south east asia, I can go to Indonesia, Thailand and even Singapore which do not impose such a restriction. So, if our government still pretend to be important and impose unreasonable demand trying to protect their clonies, not only will they keep foreigners away, many non bumi business people and the smarts will be going abroad. Thats the reason why we are getting worse and worse in terms of productivity and efficiency.

    Comment published by KwC on 23 June 2007.
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25. wow! simple but hard hitting.. great post

    Comment published by chunhoe on 2 August 2007.
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26. […] graduate from a top notch University. Perhaps this link will help: Distribution and equality using sweets. Simple enough for equal minded people to […]

    Comment published by Unamused on 19 December 2007.
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