Tribute to Tun Razak and Tun Ismail and the NEP's future, and by extension our future.

1.       We live in strange times in Malaysia, or perhaps not so strange. There’s such a thick miasma on all the Malay rights and ketuanan issues that it’s difficult to take a principled stand on what things should be, and even more difficult would be to decide on what things must be in the future. It is in this respect I feel the need to pen some thoughts on Tun Razak’s legacy, (after all I take this heavily jammed road named after him everyday!) and that of his purported ‘thinktank’ of a deputy, Tun Ismail (name of a place where I was brought up).

2.       Back in the 60s, Malaysia just had independence, and there was this euphoria. When issues of Malay economic dependence and solutions to overcome it was sought, obviously there would be tension, thought tp the credit of the Alliance then, MCA and MIC were magnanimous enough to recognise that this needed to be settled. 1969 changed things. Racial riots meant that the causalities had to be removed from the public sphere, and the policy implementation were then expedited through the NEP.

3.       NEP had brought about astounding changes. Since early 70s when Razak and Ismail put this into place, within a generation the Malays have improved their standing. Razak’s farsightedness and excellent leadership paved the way for this to happen. For this we are grateful.

4.       Sultan’s participation in all this is less clear. Obviously, they did not impede in NEP’s policy implementation, and were also beneficiaries. As constitutional monarch’s, they, of Malay origin, will always have the final constitutional authority on matters within their jurisdiction, but Razak and Ismail’s government were the architects and the constructors of this wonderful policy instrument.

5.       Fast forward 2010. Is this policy still useful? I saw Halija and Akbar’s figures where if we were to exclude foreign ownership, Malays have already exceeded their 30% target, but obviously it became less than 20 if we were to include it. The issue then becomes, which benchmark / KPI do we use to decide to sustain, modify or discontinue this policy?

6.       Issues then become that of (i) bastardisation of the policy by the privileges lingering only amongst the elite classes, (ii) what happens to the malays in poverty, (iii) quality of malays becoming entrenched in an entitlement mindset, (iv) erosion of the Malay political power, beginning with UMNO and potentially spreading to opposition (at federal level), thereby raising a risk with Islamic leadership, (v) overall national leadership mandate, and which includes revisiting the social contract between the various races with now this being the Malays turn to give up some ‘benefits’ ala MCA-MIC in the early 60s.

7.       From a bystander perspective, the best individual / entity that can articulate these concerns and propose a resolution to this stands the best chance. I’m uneasy with the way PKR lobs this issue very irresponsibly into the public space knowing the emotive volatility of the subject, and I shudder at the thought of a PKR-led government. PAS, a very moderate PAS, should be eased into a leadership position in the PR, and again that opens itself a different can of worms seeing the differing hardline and Erbakan-styled camps within it.

8.       In the meantime, the country continues to stumble along issue-to-issue, and there still remains the miasma that remains unresolved for some time in the near future. Upping sticks seems to be quite attractive in the next 5 years.