Ninth Malaysia Plan: not what it is made out to be

[MGG] Ninth Malaysia Plan: not what it is made out to be

The Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP), allegedly the prime minister's biggest claim to glory, does not mean what it says. It hoodwinks the people. I am critical of it because it benefits only a few, and not those in whose name it was announced.
The only beneficiaries are those who get the contracts, those close to the centres of power, and those close to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Pak Lah). So any discussion of it which ignores the facts misses the point.
I have not yet read the 9MP. It is too expensive. If the government wanted people to learn about what it plans to do, it would have made it affordable for the masses. But the aim is for its cronies to make money.
I was surprised when the National Economic Congress, a PAS-leaning outfit, discussed it at a weekend forum just as a Barisan Nasional (BN) body would. It was attended by PAS officials and those critical of the government.
I was a panelist at a session on Sunday. Almost every speaker criticised the contents of the Plan, more than it would have been at a BN-sponsored meeting. The criticism was valid, but could well have been thought up by BN speakers.
Most speakers live in cloistered surroundings where they speak to one another and to others of their ilk elsewhere. For that reason alone, the proceedings were par for the course. More criticism was heard, but the forum did not break new ground.
A participant asked why I was being so pessimistic, since it contains projects that would benefit the people. The Bakun dam and the national sewerage project were said to be such projects - both were given to cronies and are now back under government control.
Malaysia is fast becoming like Malta, where businesses, think-tanks and shops come in pairs, one supporting the government, the other the opposition - with this difference: it is part of life there but part of politics here.
Losing out
The 9MP is aimed at taking Malaysia into the wide world dominated by the US and the West. It will cause Malaysia to lose out eventually because we have signed so many contracts and treaties, bilaterally and multilaterally, that we will eventually be at the beck and call of the West.
This has been repeatedly stated in public and in print, but is not accepted by the government because it is stated by groups which have a view that is opposite that of the government.
But Malaysia will lose out in the end to the foreigners, because its policies ignore the non-Malays, are thought up by Malays but benefit the non-Malays close to it.
Pak Lah's administration and its satraps tell the world it benefits the people, but that is not believed. It believes politics should not be confrontational, and that the opposition and the naysayers should be kept out.
It has made no bones about the pro-Malay and Islamic policy, putting down the non-Malays so efficiently that they will now not come to the government's aid, unless they can benefit from that link. They threaten hell fire and damnation to non-Malays at the best of times.
The non-Malay has taking the hint, and moved to the private sector or migrated. The government and Malay-dominated civil service has put a spin to this absence: the non-Malays are not interested in the civil service because the pickings are better in private employment.
That is a lie because the non-Malay knows he is not welcome. Not so long ago, the best friend of the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) was his Indian batch-mate at police training school, who retired as an assistant superintend of police. So it was in the army.
The IGP, due to retire soon, is a good man. But he has joined the bandwagon to make the police more Islamic and Malay before he left. So the tudung is now part of the official dress. It was for all times but was amended because non-Malay women protested.
When there are no rules or laws, as there is not in the civil or uniformed services, these cannot function as they should. They are for individual benefit, not for the larger group, be it the civil service, police, army or any other body.
Flawed policies
When there is discrimination and policies are made in isolation, no policy will work. It is not possible for any policy or initiative like the 9MP to succeed.
Since the new economic policy was established in 1970, the non-Malay has been shortchanged, aided by party leaders in the BN who would rather be in the cabinet than look after the people who put them there.
Umno, the dominant party, took advantage, keeping the non-Malay out. In place of Tunku Abdul Rahman's belief that he was primus inter pares and would not act on a proposal if either the MCA or MIC objected, the BN today is one of partners following Umno slavishly.
But the Malay now protests and join hands with the non-Malay to oppose Umno. There is no unity of the races in Malaysia, the official belief notwithstanding. To make it worse, the government has given away more than it should to foreign governments who see Malaysia as a prime example of a cheap supplier.
If all this is not addressed, then any plan or policy it spews out becomes flawed. The US insists on automatically getting privileges Malaysia has given other countries in bilateral deals. If that conflicts with Malaysian government policy, hard luck.
The 9MP is praised sky high by spinmeisters but it does not mean what it proposes. It is to help the Western countries to rape and plunder from Malaysia. Instead of pursuing an independent course of action, it takes as its own, the American view of the world and Malaysia. If Malaysians suffer, so be it.
The 9MP will inevitably be a casualty. But the spin, increasingly laboured, is put out by the government's public relations arm: newspapers, Bernama, radio and television. But the Malaysian has other sources of news that is contrary to what the government churns out.
[This appeared in my column, Chiaroscuro, in malaysiakini on Tuesday, 11 April 2006.}
M.G.G. Pillai