Malaysia rocked to the economic
core By Anil Netto
PENANG - Malaysia's race-based affirmative
action policies have come under the spotlight in
the aftermath of a pivotal general election which
saw opposition parties making sweeping gains.
Opposition parties captured the
"rice-bowl" state of Kedah and the industrialized
states of Penang, Perak and Selangor in addition
to retaining power in the Muslim heartland state
of Kelantan on the east coast in the March 8
general election.
The three industrial
states will be ruled by coalition governments made
up of the multi-ethnic - but largely ethnic
Chinese - Democratic Action Party (DAP), the
multi-ethnic People's Justice Party (PKR) and the
Islamic party PAS. The opposition parties won 82
of 222 parliamentary seats while the ruling
federal
coalition
Barisan Nasional (BN), or National Front, clinched
51.5% of the popular vote.
The new state
governments now have their work cut out for them
to make good on their opposition campaign promises
of ending the New Economic Policy in favor of
their "Malaysian Economic Agenda". The NEP was
introduced in 1971 to uplift the economic position
of the majority ethnic Malays and remove the
stereotyping of race with specific occupations.
But along the road, economic planners
became obsessed with its 30% target for
bumiputra (Malays and other indigenous
groups) equity ownership while huge privatization
projects and neo-liberal policies benefited the
elite of all ethnic groups. This concentrated
wealth in their hands while fueling discontent
among the lower-income groups who have struggled
to cope with rising prices for essential goods and
services, as income inequalities grew.
One
of the first things the new state government in
Penang did was to announce a major policy shift in
running the government free from "the New Economic
Policy that breeds cronyism, corruption and
systemic inefficiency".
"We will implement
an open tender system for all government
procurement and contracts," said new chief
minister Lim Guan Eng from the DAP during his
swearing in on Tuesday. The new state government
would also practice transparency by uploading
information of such tender bids in an Internet
portal to be set up for public access, he added.
That did not go down well with leaders of
the United Malays National Organization (UMNO),
which along with coalition partner Gerakan, had
just lost power in Penang.
On Friday, some
1,000 protesters led by UMNO representatives
staged a demonstration outside the Penang chief
minister's office. They were worried that ethnic
Malays would be sidelined if the government
disregarded the NEP.
"I do not think Malay
contractors object to the open tender system as it
is more transparent. I just want to rectify some
of the mistakes committed during the previous
administration," Lim later clarified.
The
pro-NEP demonstration is the action of people
trying to come to terms with what is going on,
says Rustam Sani, one of the country's leading
public intellectuals and writer on Malay and
Malaysian nationalism. "The language of ethnic
politics is suddenly not working and they are
hanging on to it and trying to revive it."
"A few years ago, all talk about 'Malays
losing power' would have invoked street
demonstrations but it doesn't seem to work now,"
he added.
"For UMNO, the language and
political idiom they have used all these years
doesn't seem to be as effective as it used to be.
They have to re-tool the political idioms or
re-tool themselves! That's not easy - it's a
political and intellectual challenge; it's a tough
job."
As for the new opposition-led state
governments, Rustam said he detected a certain
impatience in its onslaught on the NEP from the
start: "We need to go slow. I hope there is more
wisdom. We must not let them use our impatience
with trying to get rid of such policies [to their
advantage]."
Prime Minister Abdullah
Badawi, for his part, said the question of
abolishing the 20-year NEP was a non-issue as the
policy expired in 1991. Since then, he pointed
out, the government has set up a National Economic
Consultative Council (Mapen) to take
responsibility for planning the country's economy.
"Through Mapen, many policies had been
agreed upon for implementation by the government
and among the policies were two policies taken
from the NEP, with one being the overall
eradication of poverty irrespective of race, and
the second dealt with distribution," he said.
But the term "NEP", with its reminder of
pro-Malay policies, carries huge historical and
psychological baggage, said Rustam. "And it will
take some time for the new state governments to
explain their agenda. There is a need for both
sides to handle change and the perception of
change."
Opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim led
the charge in calling for an end to the NEP in
favor of a new Malaysian Economic Agenda in the
run-up to the March 8 general election. Anwar
himself believes in a pro-growth free market
economy balanced by humane policies to ensure
"equity and distributive justice".
The NEP
has a certain flavor to it that UMNO can still
exploit, warned Rustam. "I think there is no need
to [actually] say that 'we are ending the NEP'. We
can achieve more by implementing something that is
different from what has been done all this while
such as transparency and open tenders."
UMNO must realize by now that the Malays
voted against the Barisan Nasional partly because
they are unhappy with the party's approach to the
NEP, said economist Charles Santiago, just elected
to Parliament under a DAP ticket.
"While
the original NEP aims were laudable, it later
turned into a policy to enrich the Barisan
putras [princes], largely from UMNO,"
Santiago said. "The average Malay was feeling the
increase in prices, their jobs were no longer
protected and inflation was eating into their
income. Real wages were coming down [but] you
didn't find UMNO providing support. In fact, it
was removing subsidies for the average citizen."
"You had a situation where you had
subsidies for the rich and a free market economy
for the poor. While you subsidize the rich on one
side, the debt of the country is being borne by
the middle-classes and the poor."
Santiago
said UMNO should come to terms with the fact that
the way the NEP was implemented had made some
Malays very rich while marginalizing a whole lot
of poorer and middle class Malays. As a result, he
added, UMNO's legitimacy as the "protector" of
Malays has been called into question.
He,
however, cautioned opposition politicians from
interpreting the opposition gains and their
mandate as a vote for free market policies. In
fact, many ordinary people were promised more
subsidies, including oil subsidies, if the
opposition came to power (at the federal level).
"Opposition parties must realize it was
free market policies, privatization and labor
market restructuring that resulted in many people
opposing the BN," said Santiago.
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