Good insights on NEP

Good insights on NEP

Copy paste from Azam Price ( in RPK nlog malaysia-today)

Article 153 is to protect the special previlege of the original people. The NEP is to decrease economical gap among races. But one thing about the NEP, if it is seriously targetting to eradicate poverty of the Malays, the government should start studying the behavior of the Malays more seriously. The Malays are not stupid people but they are peace-loving people who sometime doesn’t even mind their right taken away so long they can still with it. We can still hear many Malays would say “tak apa lah… tu rezeki dia”. They have been taught to live within their means to always syukur with whatever they have, and greediness is a sin. The NEP architects need to work around this, not changing it but around it. 

Another Malay behaviour that has not been looked into is their “gotong royong” culture. The Malays have been operating their daily lives on that gotong royong spirit which is more towards helping each other in anything that need to be done. This is something that also need to be looked into by the NEP architects. Business model that will suit best to the malays would then be a business model which doesn’t really targetting to enrich individuals but the whole members and the operation mode should be of the gotong royong style.

Azam Price
Agree to disagree is only good to delay the arguement that may eventually be argued anyway. It may seems to work in the beginning but not in a long run. To me, rather than embracing “agreee to disagree”, we should look into becoming one. Take PR for example, differences should have been addressed in the beginning before signing the pack. Resolution to meet with each party’s desire should be made, within proper context. For example DAP and PKR should agree for PAS to implement Hudud on condition the implementation to be done in areas where PAS has more than 80% representation and never in anyway affect the non-Muslim. Or they could even ask PAS to look at Hudud in more practical in modern context to make it relevant to all human instead of just Muslims. Apart from punishment stated clearly in Al Quran, the rest are still interpretation by human and can always be reinterpreted so long it still within the guidance in Al Quran. 

But what’s more important for all Malaysian is “Respecting the differences” rather than “agree to disagree”. But then again disagreement on core element should still be addressed and agreed upon. For the purpose of peaceful co-existence, a spirit of one-ness need to be there. Oneness can only be achieved if we have a set of tennets agreed and accepted by all. I’m afraid there’s no other way. 

Back to either it is right to compare Singapore to Malaysia or only to KL, to put it simply, Singapore was just a city state. Used to be a state within Malaysia. Had Brunei agreed to join the federation of Malaysia, Brunei too would only be a state within Malaysia. So to me if we want to compare, we should be comparing Singapore and Bruei, because both should only be states within Malaysia but became small countries for not agreeing to be in the federation. Now we can see whether it is true that the Malay who doesn’t know how to govern a country since Brunei is being govern by a Malay Kingdom government. It is save now to say, race hasn't got anything to do with it but rather the system and the people who have been running the system. 

Having said so, we should learn something from this. Terengganu, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak could have been at par economically with Brunei should they are allowed to manage their own resources and self-govern their state. Penang would’ve been a serious competitor towards Singapore and could’ve been a shipping hub if the federal let it to govern and prosper on its own. Selangore could’ve have been an advanced techological and manufacturing hub for Malaysia. Kedah could’ve been an advanced industrialised agricultural state… there’s so many “could have” we can think of. Maybe that is something the federal need to look into. Decentralise…! If we really want to learn anything from Singapore, that’s the lesson.