Jangan biar Melayu dihina!

Wan Saiful Wan Janialah Ketua Eksekutif Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) dan juga editorAkademiMerdeka.org, sebuah platform yang mempromosikan idea-idea libertarian.

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6 APRIL — Saya gembira membaca laporan yang dikeluarkan oleh Majlis Penasihat Ekonomi Negara yang menggariskan Model Ekonomi Baru (MEB) buat Malaysia.  Secara umumnya dokumen tersebut membuktikan betapa pemerintah kita mula sedar bahawa satu-satunya cara untuk membawa pembangunan pesat di negara kita ialah dengan memperteguh pengamalan sistem ekonomi liberal.

Bab 2 dokumen tersebut dengan tegas menyatakan bahawa negara kini telah terjatuh dalam perangkap pendapatan pertengahan (middle income trap). Perangkap ini bermaksud bahawa kita sukar untuk bersaing dengan negara-negara yang menawarkan kos operasi lebih rendah tetapi pada waktu yang sama juga tidak dapat menyaingi negara-negara maju yang mempunyai kebolehan teknologi lebih tinggi. Akibatnya kita “terperangkap” di tengah-tengah.

Kelemahan-kelemahan yang dihadapi oleh negara juga dibincangkan dengan terbuka dalam Bab 2 dokumen tersebut. Dalam bab-bab selepas itu pula, terutamanya dalam Bab 6, dinyatakan beberapa cadangan untuk memastikan negara boleh keluar daripada perangkap pendapatan pertengahan dan terus mara ke hadapan. Hampir semua cadangan yang dikemukakan menjadikan sistem ekonomi kapitalisme pasaran bebas sebagai teras.

Contohnya, MEB mengatakan bahawa sektor swasta amat penting untuk memacu ekonomi negara. Untuk membolehkan sektor swasta memainkan peranan dengan efektif, maka dokumen itu mencadangkan agar dihapuskan pelbagai subsidi, kawalan harga dan insentif-insentif yang mengganggu perjalanan sistem pasaran bebas. Penghapusan semua ini akan membawa negara kepada satu sistem ekonomi yang lebih bebas dan berdayasaing.

Saya tidak mengatakan dokumen MEB ini adalah satu cadangan yang sempurna. Masih ada ketempangan di beberapa tempat. Tetapi saya tidak berhajat untuk membicarakan dengan terlalu mendalam mengenai MEB dalam dalam artikel ini. Insha-Allah saya akan cuba menulis lebih lanjut mengenai MEB dalam jangka masa terdekat.

Dalam artikel ini, saya hanya mahu memperakui bahawa dokumen MEB telah menggagaskan satu permulaan yang baik untuk proses transformasi negara. Kelihatannya penggubal dasar negara menerima juga bahawa sistem kapitalisme pasaran bebas sahajalah yang boleh menjamin Malaysia akan menjadi sebuah negara maju. Syukur alhamdulillah.

Dalam kesempatan ini saya sebenarnya mahu mengulas mengenai tindakan pihak-pihak seperti Perkasa dan Datuk Ibrahim Ali yang seolah-olah sengaja mahu menggagalkan usaha Datuk Seri Najib Razak untuk mentransformasi negara.

Saya amat marah dengan mereka ini kerana mereka berselindung dengan nama Melayu untuk menghina dan memperkecil-kecilkan orang Melayu. Dengan bertopengkan nama Melayu, mereka bersuka ria menuduh orang Melayu tidak boleh bersaing dan tidak boleh maju  jika tidak dihulurkan tongkat seumur hidup. Lemah sungguh Melayu di mata mereka!

Tatkala Najib begitu yakin dengan kebolehan bangsa Melayu untuk bersaing di arena global, tiba-tiba ada pihak yang memperlekeh kebolehan orang Melayu untuk berjaya dengan usaha sendiri.

Tatkala Najib mengambil langkah berani untuk mengurangkan kebergantungan orang Melayu terhadap bantuan dan subsidi kerajaan, ada pula orang Melayu yang bersungguh-sungguh mahu menggagalkan usaha-usaha pemimpin parti Melayu sendiri.

Kenapa kita terpengaruh dengan tohmahan bahawa orang Melayu tidak akan berjaya jika tidak dilindungi oleh kerajaan? Kenapa tidak yakin dengan kemampuan bangsa kita sendiri? Orang Melayu tidak diciptakan bodoh atau cacat sehingga perlukan tongkat subsidi dan hak istimewa seumur hidup. Tidak sama sekali!

Hakikatnya walaupun pemuka-pemuka ini berbangsa Melayu, tindakan mereka datangnya daripada satu punca sahaja, iaitu perangai memandang rendah kebolehan bangsa Melayu.

Benarlah kata Tun Mahathir Mohamad bahawa Melayu mudah lupa. Mungkin mereka sudah terlupa bahawa pemerintahan Melayu yang amat berjaya pernah wujud di rantau ini ratusan tahun dahulu.

Hakikatnya bangsa Melayu adalah satu bangsa yang boleh berjaya seperti mana-mana bangsa lain di muka bumi. Meragui kebolehan bangsa Melayu adalah sama seperti menghina dan merendah-rendahkan kebolehan bangsa Melayu.

Banyak tindakan-tindakan Najib yang menunjukkan beliau kini yakin dengan kebolehan orang Melayu untuk bersaing dalam pasaran terbuka. Bukan sahaja bersaing, tetapi Melayu boleh berjaya dalam persaingan itu.

Contohnya, beliau telah meliberalisasikan sebilangan sub-sektor perkhidmatan kepada pasaran bebas, menjemput pemodal asing melabur di negara kita, menurunkan kadar cukai, cuba mereformasi sistem percukaian dan berusaha mengurangkan kebergantungan orang Melayu terhadap subsidi.

Semua ini adalah langkah-langkah baik menuju ke arah sistem ekonomi liberal berteraskan pasaran bebas. Sistem pasaran bebas amat diperlukan untuk menjadikan Malaysia sebuah negara maju yang rakyatnya berpendapatan tinggi.

Lawan kepada sistem ekonomi liberal pasaran bebas ialah sistem ekonomi terkawal. Contoh paling senang sistem ekonomi terkawal ialah sistem komunis atau sosialis. Kita semua tahu bahana kemiskinan yang dibawa oleh sistem komunis dan sosialis. Melayu tidak memerlukan ekonomi terkawal seperti komunisme atau sosialisme.

Sebagai pemimpin yang telah memulakan langkah pendekar untuk mentransformasi nasib rakyat termasuklah bangsa Melayu di tanah air ini, Najib dan para pemimpin negara perlu terus iltizam membangunkan ekonomi negara supaya menjadi lebih terbuka.

Model Ekonomi Baru harus teguh menjadikan sistem pasaran bebas sebagai terasnya, dan berusaha menghilangkan mentaliti subsidi daripada pola pemikiran orang Melayu.

Orang Melayu perlu berhenti menghina dan memperlekeh kebolehan bangsa sendiri. Orang Melayu perlu menolak mana-mana individu atau pertubuhan yang mengatakan bahawa Melayu terus perlukan perlindungan kerajaan. Mereka itu adalah Melayu yang tidak yakin dengan kebolehan bangsa sendiri. Jangan kita percaya jika individu atau pertubuhan itu menyatakan mereka mahu “melindungi” bangsa Melayu. Sikap tidak yakin mereka kepada kebolehan Melayu sebenarnya adalah satu penghinaan kepada orang Melayu.

Melayu boleh bersaing. Melayu boleh berjaya. Jangan biarkan pemuka-pemuka itu terus menghina bangsa Melayu!

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.

* This article is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The blog owner does not endorse the view unless specified. To share the above article, please click the followings:

 

 

Malay Chutzpah, Productivity and Creativity vital ingredients of a High Income Economy

by SakmongkolAK47 (March 12, 2010)

How do we get to a high income economy? By leveraging on productivity and creativity says the PM. Productivity depends on personalized knowledge- how deep you cultivate yourself with the required knowledge and skills. This is the key to wealth creation- infusing oneself with the ‘want’ and will to succeed. This, you can’t legislate nor can you depend on others to do it for you.

Has Been led-MPM, Perkasa and Ibrahim Ali can’t do it for the Malays

MPM can’t do it for the Malays. Ibrahim Ali certainly can’t. Perkasa can’t. It  is just an organization for has beens to stay politically relevant. See and be seen place. You can’t plan for the myriad of urges that reside in people. This you leave to the market system. It will prove to be liberating for the Malays who have had centuries of inhibiting culture. How do you know they cannot thrive under a regime that is freer?

Successful Malays are self made

Those Malays, who have turned out to be successful, shared one common characteristic- each has developed more or less under of regime of freedom from central command. They have cultivated themselves with the skills and creativity under a regime of self-made success.

It’s not that when you adopt a freer market system, those Malays in power will abandon their inclination to help out, will they? It’s not that when you adopt a freer market system, Malays immediately lose their demographic advantage? Or Article 153 will disappear. Or the institution of the monarchy will disappear. Or the religion that resides in each individual’s bosom will go up in smoke!

What the elites fear is that when we adopt a more liberal climate, we have competition and those lay-abouts and loafer-mentality leaders will be booted out. What the elites fear is the emergence of competing good leadership. What’s missing is good leadership at the implementing levels. Dedicated, selfless, efficient and visionary leadership at the implementing levels.

Good Leadership: No Second Raters, only creme de la cre’me

Let’s start by bringing good leadership here. Let’s not have second raters as department heads, second raters at the front line. Let’s make the civil service exemplary, the repository of the Malay creme de la crème. Creativity in turn, depends on willingness to push your imagination to the limits. Both thrive on freedom of the individual. This is directly opposite the economic philosophies of those pushing for a revitalized NEP.

NEP has failed the Malays at large

Has the NEP failed? For the Malays at large it has. They have pointed out to me the facts about every branch of the executive and most of the legislative being controlled by Malays. Yet the position of Malays has not moved even to the 75% mark. We targeted 30% ownership of corporate wealth; we now have only 19%. What about land ownership? What about many other things which are of economic significance? What about ownership of housing, land, factories and business premises, capital goods?

How do you reconcile these economic outcomes with the fact that almost all decision making resources are controlled by Malays? The answer: the Malays controlling decision making resources have not assisted Malays in getting their economic share. They helped themselves more as evidenced by the highest GINI ratio within the Malays. Income disparities between Malays have widened most when compared to income disparities between races.

This clearly suggest that those who helped themselves to having special relationships, to having shared ‘market’ knowledge have advanced more than those dependent on others; this was the system that resulted from the implementation of the NEP.

Someone said 20 acre may not be much.  But FELDA is the only land ownership scheme that has successfully elevated Malays economically and any land schemes that replicated the FELDA methods have more or less succeeded in elevating Malays economically. FELCRA, RISDA etc. Because land is an important wealth creating resource. They have empowered the common man. So giving 20 acres each directly to economic actors is no small and shallow matter.

My friend in Kampung Jaya Gading in Kuantan aged 65 has more economic sense than Ibrahim Ali. It’s because people like Ibrahim Ali who has been shouting loudly about Malay this and Malay that have not been genuinely helping out Malays like my friend. There is no need to talk about complex economic theories and economic conspiracies secretly planned by non-Malays to take over this country.

The real enemies are not non-Malays- every business venture carried out by the shouting Malays are done in partnership with Chinese towkays. Many of the UMNO leaders up there have Chinese as partners running their businesses. So how can the Chinese be the enemy of the Puteras in the Bumi? No, it failed because  transforming  Malay leadership is not there.

So my kampong friend has his own vision 2020. He says it bluntly- 2020 means, 2 for Chinese 0 for Malays; 2 for Indians, 0 for Malays. Looking at the Malaysian Business top 10 richest Malaysian, his vision 2020 is more prescient than Mahathir’s 2020. Let us see what the NEM is all about.

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MCA’s harakiri and its repercussions on the Chinese

CPI Writings

WRITTEN BY DR LIM TECK GHEE

FRIDAY, 12 MARCH 2010 15:30

MCA is an ineffective political force in part because it has long played only a marginal role in the previous Malaysia Plans — implemented by the Umno-aligned, Malay dominated civil service — that have shaped socio-economic development in the country. The Malaysian public, especially the Chinese, must be wondering if MCA can ever get its house in order so that it can attend to the important affairs of state, especially the economy. Besides the economy which affects the wellbeing of all households in one way or another, there are many other issues that should occupy the time and attention of the party. Rising religious tensions; increasing intolerance of Islamic zealots; growth of rightwing Malay NGOs and extremism; lack of education opportunities for young Chinese and other Malaysians – the list is formidable. Many of these issues have implications not only for the Chinese but for the whole country. The Najib administration’s New Economic Model (NEM) is being touted as the way forward. Do the MCA leaders know or even care what is in the model? Should the New Economic Policy (NEP) be a key part of the NEM as suggested by some Umno leaders? NEP was a policy that was supposed to have ended in 1990 but has in fact been continued with new labels during the past 20 years. Is there a danger that NEM will in fact be a retreat to the obsolete NEP strategy as demanded by Perkasa? Will there be a continuation of the crony capitalism that has blighted the earlier economic model? The Deputy Prime Minister has said that no Malaysian will be sidelined by the NEM and that “every Malaysian will be given the opportunity to look at what is being proposed and can provide their input”. Can the MCA vouch that the interests of all the communities will be safeguarded in the NEM? Can MCA assure the party members and public that they have not only closely monitored the drafting of the soon to be unveiled NEM but also contributed to its final form? If so, what are the inputs the party has provided or has this crucial strategy been left to others to formulate while the party has been twiddling its thumbs in between the preoccupation with party games. It will be interesting to know not only the party’s inputs but also the specific suggestions for the economic transformation of the country provided by the contenders jostling for party leadership. Input to economic planning There has been absolutely no word on NEM from MCA’s rival factions, so the public can be forgiven if they assume that these factions are either clueless or couldn’t give a damn as to what is in the new model. The concern is not only with regard to NEM but more immediately, the 10th Malaysia Plan, which will decide on how public expenditure is to be spent during the next five years. What is the specific input of the MCA to this national blueprint? For example, has the party consulted the best experts as well as the affected businesses on how to get the small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) out from their low-value-added, low-wage and low-productivity structure? And again, what inputs (assuming that the party leadership has been furnished with early drafts of the 10th Malaysia Plan by the Economic Planning Unit) have MCA provided on the plan? Presumably MCA has access to a wide range of expertise available from the Chinese business community and intelligentsia. This feedback if collated should be useful in providing pragmatic guidance on how to achieve a breakthrough in the many challenges we face. For the coming MCA elections on March 28, the party members should insist that each of the candidates contesting key positions provide a full report card on their views on the NEM and 10th Malaysia Plan and how they intend to ensure that their policy proposals are taken up by the party and government. This report card, including their record of service and accomplishments at the community and national level – rather than the dinners and other perks aimed at wooing supporters –should be the main focus of their campaign. A disclosure of the candidate’s policy position on the major economic, social and political challenges that the country faces is the first step to realizing the party’s aspiration to be a credible political force. Marginalizing itself or being marginalized? The consensus of analysts is that the MCA has been an ineffective political force in part because it has only played a marginal role in the previous Malaysia Plans that have shaped socio-economic development in the country. Because of Malay dominance of the civil service and the close relationship between Umno and the civil service, past development plans, for example, have been skewed against vernacular schools and education for the children of minority communities. At the same time, billions of dollars have been disproportionately spent on Mara junior science colleges and other Bumiputra elitist educational institutions. Some of the outcomes of the earlier economic model and past development expenditure have been the failure of the country to grow to its full potential; the economic dominance of Umno- and MCA-affiliated tycoons and business interests; the widening income inequalities within all communities; and the extraordinary growth of a super rich and wealthy class. The resulting inequalities and persistence of Bumiputra poverty is now unfairly blamed on the ‘greed’ of the ‘pendatang’ community by extremist Malay and Umno quarters seeking a continuation of NEP and Malay-oriented development policies. Quite apart from concern over how the national economic cake is being shared, surely the party must be fully aware that among our neighbours such as China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, Malaysia’s real GDP growth in the last three years was the second lowest at 5.5 percent. Or that private sector investment has stagnated and in some cases even regressed. If the party is aware of the bleak economic scenario facing Malaysians, what key proposals has it formulated to reenergize the swooning Malaysian economy and how have these been incorporated into the 10th Plan? The ongoing power struggle Junfa, or its English equivalents ‘warlords’ and ‘warlordism’, when used in the context of Chinese polity and society during the first part of the twentieth century, are pejorative expressions….The warlord era was marked by constant warfare, thrusting China into perpetual economic and political instability…. Official history …denounces warlords and characterizes the era as reactionary to China's endeavour toward national unity and progress. Both Chinese and English scholarship describe the warlords as regional militarists, possessing personal armies that they constantly strove to expand and heavily relied on to advance their own interests in power and money. — Excerpt on Chinese ‘warlordism’ which is found in the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (2005) by Yu Shen Over the last 18 months, we have seen the leaders of this communal component of the BN coalition engage in bitter and open conflict, mainly due to personality clashes and craze for power that has made the party a laughing stock. MCA has become a subject of derision to non-members and a cause for heartburn among the party supporters. We are all aware that most politics in Malaysia begins and ends with personal interests, especially for those individuals who belong to the top echelons of the ruling parties. There are of course the ethical few who see political power as a moral calling to serve the nation and who dedicate their life to doing the best for their constituents and the nation. The endless squabbling for positions in the MCA has led to the perception that the party has very few leaders of integrity and more than its fair share of opportunists. Even the top man, Ong Tee Keat has gone on record in his presidential speech at the previous annual general meeting to state that his attempt at party reformation had caused discomfort to some people, especially opportunists. The MCA’s lowered standing after 56 years of existence is not only a view held by the general public or the opposition parties. Its partners in BN are shaking their heads in despair or privately crowing with glee as the spectacle of infighting and backstabbing intensifies. As for the future, it is the ultimate indictment of MCA that its President has had to publicly apologize several times for the so-called aggressive investigation of the Port Klang Free Trade scandal, in which various leaders and associates of the party have been implicated. The question that comes to mind is why should Ong apologize for seeking the truth on the scandal and in the process stirring a hornet’s nest? Is this apology a result of pressure from party leaders and members that the MCA should see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil? Is the President sending out a message that the party should condone what has taken place? Or that he should hide from the public the truth on cronyism, corruption, mismanagement, inefficiency and abuse of power? If this is the logical conclusion, then the sooner the party is consigned to the dustbin of history, the better.

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