The importance of Malay entrepreneurship

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Sep 16, 2013

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UMNO’s Saifuddin Abdullah has been a regrettable victim of the indiscriminately blind ABU campaign which benefited undeserved blokes like someone in Gombak but only hurt a good Malaysian like Saifuddin Abdullah.

We need more people like Saifuddin Abdullah, especially in UMNO, not just because he’s a good man but we don’t want any coalition, even Pakatan, to be too powerful to the extent it has a 2/3 majority in parliament, which can then temptingly lead to unscrupulous and sinister constitutional amendments.

Today the Malay Mail Online reported Saifuddin Abdullah stating that the Creation of Bumiputera entrepreneurs [is] a must.

I fully agree with him. Why?

Please consider, our Malaysian population has a ethnic mix consisting mainly of 50% Malays (only 65% if we add in the non-Malay bumiputeras). Commonsense tells us we Malaysians won’t enjoy a healthy social situation when 50% of the population are economically miles behind the generally better-off Chinese minority.

Of course I am talking in general terms where there are still Chinese and Indian poor and evidence of their terrible poverty, but the truth is that in general the Chinese have been doing quite okay.

The Indians have their problems, perhaps even far worse than the Malays; likewise with the non-Malay bumiputeras.

Yes, the Malay nouveau riche which arose and is still arising overtly and obscenely obese from the UMNO gravy train have been an annoying distraction to and worse, for (not ‘in’) the eyes of the non-Malays, a sinister mask on the general poverty among the Malays.

Yes, we know some of them have expensive mansions, apartments, penthouses in London, Paris, New York and the Bahamas, etc, and they live opulent lives like the rich Saudis and Kuwaitis. But the general Malay community still struggle to eke out a decent living or enjoy facilities like electricity and tapped water or even safe bridges for their children to trek to schools – for example, read my 2006 posts:

(a) There are bridges & there are bridges!
(b) Kelantan’s bridges of death
(c) Bloody No Light, Bloody No Water, Bloody Nonsense!

In fact the need to address the Malays’ general poverty including uplift their economic well-being was (note the grammatical ‘was’) the objective of Tun Razak’s original NEP.

But alas, someone with a humongous chip on his shoulder strayed songsang-ishly (perhaps gradually?) from that objective, turning the program of affirmative action into one of obsessively creating (come what may) an elite group of Malay billionaires, which in turn metamorphoses into get-rich-overnight cronyism, and which in turn explains the ultra feral racist politics that dominate UMNO party politics that I alluded to briefly in a previous post The blowjob story.

Perhaps the songsang-ness of the so-called NEP in the last quarter century explains why Saifuddin commented wryly that:Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the current chambers or business organisations. We need to empower the young entrepreneurs or start-ups to group together and form new “communities” among them.

I perceive Saifuddin Abdullah’s statement as one that essentially divorces hopes for Malay business entrepreneurship from being fostered under UMNO aegis and/or sponsorship which only feeds cronies.

Saifuddin Abdullah is the newly elected Chief Executive Officer of an NGO, Global Movement of Moderates (GMM), where he succinctly emphasized that the Malay new entrepreneurial community must be led by entrepreneurs, not just ordinary officials to ensure its effectiveness.

Does his proposal imply the Chinese entrepreneurs should lend a supporting hand? I hope so and I trust the response will be forthcoming and sincere, if not for anything but for the well-being of our future Malaysian society. Teach the Malay entrepreneurs how to fish rather than give them each a fish.