Bumi Agenda: Step forward or backward?
The apparent failure of the ruling BN coalition of parties to even be minimally consulted on the new policy speaks volumes of how much respect Najib has for his non-Umno BN colleagues.
Koon Yew Yin, FMT
Forty two years after the New Economic Policy (NEP) was launched by his father, Tun Abdul Razak, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has now followed in his father’s footsteps with a new national policy specially aimed at enhancing Malay participation and control of the economy and which is expected to run into the year 2020.
There are many reasons to fear the worst from this new national policy. Firstly unlike the NEP which was initiated following the racial riots of May 1969, this policy is clearly linked to Najib’s fear of losing his position as president of Umno in the coming Umno general assembly elections.
Najib has also made references to the fact that the new policy is to reward the Malay voters who supported Umno during the last elections but this appears less strong a reason than his own survival as Umno leader.
Secondly, unlike the NEP which was at least endorsed by a larger multi-racial grouping in the form of the National Operations Council, the main catalyst for the so-called bumiputera empowerment policy has come from Malay pressure groups such as the Malay Economic Action Council (MTEM), Perkasa, right wing Malay media and bloggers and their godfather, Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
In fact the MTEM has claimed the credit for the new policy. Completely side-lined even though the nation is not under emergency rule has been the cabinet as well as Parliament.
The apparent failure of the ruling BN coalition of parties to even be minimally consulted on the new policy speaks volumes of how much respect Najib has for his non-Umno BN colleagues and for the principles of parliamentary democracy.
It also shows that Najib – despite all the rhetoric of 1Malaysia and the inclusive scope of the New Economic Model – is prepared to sacrifice the interest of the non-bumiputera component of the country’s population to secure his own and Umno’s Malay interest.
Thirdly, the policy appears to be an open-ended one. Its range of initiatives is the entire range of socio-economic sectors where Umno’s leadership feels that the Malay position needs to be strengthened – equity ownership, business, human capital, housing, state institutions, private sector jobs, etc.
Fourthly, even though the policy talks about bumiputera and Malay empowerment, it is clear that the main beneficiaries will be Umno members in the business community.
According to media reports, the new initiatives will amount to RM31billion worth but this is likely to be an underestimate. We can expect the figure of government expenditure on the new policy to run into the hundreds of billion by the year 2020.
Impact of the new NEP
Will this massive reallocation of public funds on a racial basis bring about positive benefits? What is likely to happen with the implementation of the new policy?
Policy analyst, Dr Lim Teck Ghee, who in 2006 exposed the government’s fiddling of the corporate equity statistics to under-estimate Malay share as well as recently also exposed the fiddling of crime statistics, expects the racial and political manipulation of official statistics to continue.
He also had this to say to an online news portal:
“It looks like the New Economic Model which was supposed to set the strategic policy direction for the country until 2020 and to de-emphasise ethnic based economic policies has now been effectively abandoned.
