To paraphrase the NST report, Dr. Mahathir said the following:
"These strategies needed to be based on global economic trends which indicated that the emerging economy would be knowledge or knowledge-based.
"The Multimedia Super Corridor and NITA were good beginnings but there was a need to develop a framework to guide Malaysia’s transition into the knowledge economy."
Less than two weeks later, at the Second Global Knowledge Conference, Dr. Mahathir elaborated on his opening speech to the NITC on the transition to a K (Knowledge)-economy.
Claiming that Vision 2020 was the "first strategic step into the
Information Age", he said Malaysia is now ready
for the second step - what he described
as "Strategic Initiative One" of the 21st century, which is
"a concerted, comprehensive and committed quantum
leap which will re-make Malaysian corporations and
re-invent Malaysian society".
I shall pause here to deal with several questions and issues.
Firstly, the role and functioning of the NITC. Although it was established as a think-thank and advisor to the Government on IT development, it seems to be a classic case of top-down operation with the Prime Minister giving directives to the NITC when the council should be advising the Government. This may be a root cause why the national IT plan is not as successful as it should be.
Dr. Mahathir has announced a quantum leap into the K-economy. Some might have forgotten that in 1996, the Prime Minister called for a quantum leap into the Information Age. Since the first quantum leap had not succeeded, what is there to ensure that Dr. Mahathir’s call for a second quantum leap would meet with a greater success?
Secondly, was Vision 2020 announced in 1991 Malaysia’s "first strategic step into the Information Age" or is this ex post facto justification after the event?
A week after the Prime Minister’s speech at the Second Global
Knowledge Conference, Malaysia’s ambassador to the United States, Datuk
Ghazzali Sheikh Abdul Khalid, spoke at the Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies Conference on Globalization of Cyberspace
in Washington, DC. on March 16, 2000 on the same theme and said:
This claim is most debatable as it is definitely open to dispute that the Vision 2020 proclaimed in 1991 was the country’s "first strategic step into the Information Age".
In fact, the basic theme of my speech in Parliament during the debate on the Seventh Malaysia Plan on 6th May 1996 was the need to proclaim the Knowledge Society as a national vision and the tenth strategic objective of Vision 2020 to harness Information Technology to provide the environment for lifelong learning in which all Malaysians will have access to the widest possible variety of learning opportunities and tools in order to succeed in the new global economy of the 21st century.
I had commended the Seventh Malaysia Plan for devoting a whole chapter to Information Technology - the first time IT was addressed in a serious manner in the six five-year plans and six mid-term reviews spanning three decades. It was also a vindication of the DAP’s repeated call for an Information Technology policy with a well-defined goal of its national information infrastructure to position Malaysia in the forefront of the information revolution to usher Malaysia into the 21st century. At the time, such a policy ( the National Information Technology Agenda - NITA) had yet to be formulated.
This is what I said in the debate in Parliament some four years ago:
"This is why we have only now formally acknowledged the importance of Information Technology in the Seventh Malaysia Plan when other countries had made a head-start in preparing their societies for the Information Revolution."
I referred to other countries which had gone ahead of Malaysia in preparing for the Information Age, such as Singapore, the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the European countries, where high-level studies and reports had been commissioned, made public and extensively debated on how the government, the private sector and the ordinary citizen should respond to the challenges posed by the new revolution of Information Technology - except Malaysia.
I had then said:
I referred to the fear and resistance in our society to the advances
of Information Technology and said:
"The Information Highway is not just about technology, nor are its considerations solely commercial. It is about how to improve the quality of life of Malaysians.
"The Internet, for instance, is a powerful tool, not a solution. The Internet is not a magic pill as the technology, alone, will not provide improvements.
"How Malaysians use the content on the Information Highway, and the value that content adds to their lives are what finally matters.
"In the old economy, natural resources and physical infrastructure determined a nation’s competitiveness. In the new global economy, knowledge is the key resource, and the quality of a nation’s workforce is critical to ensuring competitiveness. The key to this transition is for workers to make intelligent use of information.
"The greatest challenge of Information Technology is the creation of the learning culture - a society which places learning at its very heart and nourishes them in their personal and working lives.
"Malaysia should respond to the challenge of Information Technology by proclaiming the Knowledge Society as a national vision and strategic objective. It is significant that in the nine strategic objectives for the achievement of a Vision 2020, both the goal of a Knowledge Society and the strategic importance of Information Technology are conspicuously absent.
"This Vision of a Knowledge Society must harness Information Technology to provide the environment for lifelong learning in which all Malaysians will have access to the widest possible variety of learning opportunities and tools in order to succeed in the new global economy of the 21st century."
I had referred at some length to what I said in Parliament four years ago to put the issue in proper perspective, for if the Government had been fully conscious then that Vision 2020 was the "first strategic step into the Information Age", I would have been refuted and rapped for my ignorance and for talking nonsense.
There was however no riposte from any government Minister or official to my continued speeches criticising the "conspicuous absence" of both the goal of a Knowledge Society and the strategic importance of Information Technology in the nine strategic objectives for the achievement of Vision 2020 for Malaysia to become a fully developed nation.
It is therefore not really correct for anyone to now claim that Vision 2020 was the first strategic step towards a Knowledge Society, when it was absent in Dr. Mahathir’s definition of a fully developed nation when announcing Vision 2020 in 1991 as follows - "It must be a nation that is fully developed along all the dimensions: economically, politically, socially, spiritually, psychologically and culturally. We must be fully developed in terms of national unity and social cohesion, in terms of our economy, in terms of social justice, political stability, system of government, quality of life, social and spiritual values, national pride and confidence."
There is no reference whatsoever to an information and knowledge society in this definition or the nine strategic challenges to achieve a fully developed Malaysia.
Dr. Mahathir has taken four years to discover that he has a reply to me, that his Vision 2020 had in fact been the "first strategic step towards an Information Age"- which no Cabinet Minister or government leader had known before.
This reminds me of the earlier aborted 2000 budget announcement on Oct. 29 last year on the abolition of television licences - after it had been proposed by the Barisan Alternative 2000 Budget - allegedly since April 1, 1999 when nobody in government had known about it and everybody was paying or collecting television licence fees untit the budget day itself.
The third question is whether the NITA is a failure or so inadequate that it has now to be replaced by a K-economy Masterplan.
The NITA is a very elusive object and I do not think even Cabinet Ministers can agree what is the NITA and there had been considerable confusion from Ministers and Deputy Ministers when answering questions in Parliament as to when the NITA was launched.
I remember that during the debate in Parliament on the 1997 Budget on October 28, 1996, I had queried as to why there was still no word about the IT National Action Plan which the Seventh Malaysia Plan six months ago had said would be formulated by the NITC.
I again returned to this subject during the Parliamentary debate on
the Royal Address in March 25, 1997, where I said:
"It has been said that a human year is about five Internet years, and this would mean that we have lost about five Internet years and have not yet finalised the national IT plan.
"This delay in finalising the National IT plan should not continue. Singapore took nine months to finalise its IT2000 Plan in 1991 - its vision to be ‘among the first countries in the world with an advanced nationwide information infrastructure’ - which stood out from other information technology plans from its very beginning as it was conceived at a time when the Internet itself had yet to become a widespread tool for information retrieval."
It was only in the following month in April 1997 that the Prime Minister announced the National Information Technology Agenda (NITA) with the theme "Turning Ripples Into Tidal Waves" to take the quantum leap into the Information Age after it was approved by the Cabinet the same month.
Has the NITA failed to be the basis of the country’s transition to an
K-economy?
Early this month, the Prime Minister said that in the K-economy,
there would be the maximum application of knowledge to every
Malaysian economic and business endeavour in
every economic sector, that it is "not an elitist process
but one involving every Malaysian from the teacher in
the classroom to his pupil, to his fisherman father
and housewife mother, to the driver who drives the school
bus, to the mechanic who maintains it, to the engineer who
designs the vehicle, to the entrepreneur who owns the company,
to his secretary, the janitor and the chairman
of the Board".
How does this K-economy differ from the knowledge society Ministers claim is the objective of the NITA or as Dr. Mahathir explained the NITA when he launched a national IT awareness campaign (now remembered only by Mohamad Rahmat’s dreadful IT song) in October 1997 when he called on all Malaysians, young and old, rural and urban, alike to answer the ''call of arms'' to support the government's initiative to harness the power of information technology (IT) through the NITA as the national development strategy.
What the Prime Minister said in Oct. 1997 for the NITA sounded exactly what he said two weeks ago for the K-economy masterplan.
In Oct. 97, the Prime Minister said NITA provided the framework for
a national response to IT and to the information revolution and called
upon all Malaysians to do their part to ensure that Malaysia was
ready to enter the Information
Age.
He said the ultimate goal of NITA was "to evolve a civil society
in the Malaysian mould, a society that is empowered by knolwedge and infused
with our own distinctive value system".
The Prime Minister said the current global trend required the nation to switch from its economic base again, from one reliant on cheap labour to one that is driven by knowledge workers.
He said: ''Anyone can be a knowledge worker. We do not need to be a computer scientist to become one."
A taxi driver can become a knowledge worker if he can use information
and technology to do his job better.
The Prime Minister said only when both manufacturing and service sectors are manned by knowledge workers and powered by IT can the country sustain the required per capita GDP growth rates to attain Vision 2020.
''Current projection indicate that, through an information and knowledge-based economy, we can increase our GDP levels by fourfold within 20 to 25 years,'' he said.
This will mean that, on average, Malaysians can expect to earn four times their current incomes in the future and enjoy a quality of life comparable to that of developed countries.
The Prime Minister’s speeches early this month and in October 1997 are not very dissimilar from one another, which shows that neither the NITC nor he could have discovered anything new about either the Knowledge society or K-economy in the intervening 18 months.
The NITA has its failings, as for instance, the inability to date to come up with two indices it has proposed to measure improvements toward knowledge society - KIX (Knowledge Imperative Index) and MIX ( Multiculturality Index).
In view of the scarcity of relevant information, it would be difficult to decide whether the NITA concept of "Turning Ripples Into Tidal Waves" has become irrelevant or whether what is needed is a Rolling Action Plan to implement its various strategies, one of which is for a K-economy. In any event, it sounds incongruous that a K-economy masterplan is being drafted to displace the NITA, which deal with the larger objective of a K-society!
The national IT plan, NITA, provides a framework for a three-pronged strategy involving the balanced development of three strategic elements namely, human resources, infostructure and IT-based applications that are demand driven.
The NITC established three task forces to identify key programmes to operationalize these three strategic elements.
The task force on people development, for instance, recommended an action
plan with the following objectives:
This brings me to the K-economy Masterplan announced by the Prime Minister two weeks ago where he said Malaysia must reach out into the world to attract the best brains - "we must take them wherever they are from".
Speaking about a policy for a "brain-gain" infusion, he said the country must reduce the number of foreign workers by 100,000 a year, reducing the number of low-knowledge workers by 95,000 annually while accepting 5,000 "extraordinary world citizens".
A K-Government is an essential prerequisite for the success fo any K-economy masterplan to create a knowledge-driven economy.
No K-economy master plan in Malaysia can succeed unless there is also a K-Government commited to an open and transparent governance and implementing "smart" policies, like a "smart" immigration policy to promote brain-gain instead of brain-loss.
Such a "smart" immigration policy should have been in place already as Malaysia had for five years tried to transform itself into a knowledge-based economy by promoting the Multimedia Super Corridor under the Seventh Malaysia Plan as the lynchpin of its national IT agenda.
Unfortunately, there has not only been no change in the immigration policy to promote brain-gain, it continues to promote gain loss through its discrimination against Malaysians who have foreign spouses.
Unless there is the political will to ensure that there is also a K-government and a K-Parliament, it is unlikely that any K-economy masterplan, however well-conceived, could have much hope of success.
It is good to hear the Prime Minister talking about to need to do away with the "secrecy syndrome" in the public and private sectors in order to create a K-economy - but how can he expect his speech to be taken seriously when the government is promoting the cult of secrecy by having the world’s most draconian Official Secrets Act and the example of recent arrests and prosecutions under the Act.
If the Government is sincere and serious about wanting to transform Malaysia into a K-economy, it must have the political will to begin to create a K-Government first, starting with the repeal of the Official Secrets Act and the introduction instead a Freedom of Information Act.
The Prime Minister also said that the K-economy master plan would not be drafted by the best brains behind closed doors because it must be relevant to every Malaysian and become a personal master plan for all.
However, the government must show that it is capable of rising above politics to involve all sectors of the Malaysian society in order to formulate a K-economy master plan which belongs to all Malaysians and relevant to every Malaysian.
Just before the last NITC meeting, the Prime Minister, who is the Chairman of NITC directed the removal of Dr. Chandra Muzaffar as a member, patently on the ground that he is Deputy Chairman of Parti Keadilan Nasional.
If the National IT Agenda is seen in such a narrow perspective, how can anyone have the confidence that the K-economy master plan will involve all sectors of Malaysian society, regardless of political differences?
If the Prime Minister wants to involve all sectors of Malaysian society in the formulation of the K-economy master plan, Dr. Chandra Muzaffar should be reinstated as a member of the NITC and others representing other Barisan Alternative parties should also be appointed.
Another prerequisite for a K-economy in the information age is to have a governance which is not afraid of a free flow of information and fully committed to the values of justice, openness, transparency and accountability.
No "extraordinary world citizen" is going to prefer Malaysia compared to other countries unless we are prepared to build a New Malaysia distinguished by the principles and values of justice, freedom, democracy and good governance.
The Prime Minister said for the Information Age and the K-economy to succeed, Malaysia must have a first-rate National Media System. But this is another glaring contradiction, when mass media in the country is coming under increasing repressive and draconian control.
In February last year the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression issued a report stating that freedom of opinion is curtailed systematically in Malaysia. The Special Rapporteur said that the Internal Security Act, the Sedition Act, and the Printing Presses and Publications Act were used to suppress or repress expression and curb peaceful assembly. He further stated that defamation laws "appear to be having a very chilling effect" on free speech and a free press.
Last month, in its annual survey of human rights in Malaysia for 1999, the United States State Department had been equally trenchant about freedom of speech and of the press when it said that "the Government restricts freedom of expression and intimidates most of the print and electronic media into practicing self-censorship".
The situation described by the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion
and Expression and the United States State Department annual survey of
human rights with regard to freedom of speech and of the press has degenerated
further during and after the recent general election, as a result of a
political culture of vengeance and vindictiveness illustrated by the
undemocratic curtailment of Harakah from a biweekly into a bimonthly and
the refusal to renew permits for independent-minded publications
like Detik.
The media after the recent general election is practising the worst forms of self-censorship during the 19-year premiership of Mahathir - completely at odds with his commitment for an open and accountable government when he first assumed the highest office in the land.
In the final analysis, it is not the lack of technology but the lack of IT mind-set and culture which are the greatest stumbling block to Malaysia’s success in making the quantum leap to an Information Age.
A country which has the most draconian law in the world, where all government information are classified as "official secrets" and anyone who has unauthorised access would be guilty of an offence which entails a mandatory minimum jail sentence of one year cannot be serious in wanting to make the transition towards an Information Society and an K-economy.
While supporting the drafting of a K-economy masterplan, it should not
displace a K-Society masterplan to achieve the five goals of
I wish to end with an observation.
In his speech to the Washington conference last week, the Malaysian Ambassador to the United States gave some disturbing statistics about the slow Information Communications Development in Malaysia. We have 4.5 million telephone lines serving a population of 22 million people. 2.45 million people are cellular subscribers. The total number of internet users has reached 1.45 million with 600,000 internet subscribers. To put it in a different way, this means that only 11 per cent of Malaysians have computers and only six per cent surf the internet. Fifty-six per centof these internet users are concentrated in the Klang Valley where the capital city is, and to a lesser percentage in Penang, Johore Bahru, Kuantan, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu.
I have another recent set of statistics from Singapore. The latest IT Household Survey conducted by the Survey Research Unit Productivity and Quality Research Centre of NUS finds that household personal computer (PC) ownership stands at a high of 59%. This surpasses that in the US (54%), Finland (54%), Australia (47%) and Japan (42%). The Survey finds that 42% of homes in Singapore are connected to the World Wide Web, a figure that is also higher than those in the US, Australia, Japan and Finland.
These are disturbing comparative statistics between Malaysian with 11 per cent personal computer and six per cent Internet access penetration as compared to 59% PC and 42% Internet access penetration.
This should be a wake-up call to Malaysia that there must be an intensive and systematic "IT For All" campaign round-the-year to promote greater awareness and digital literacy to close the digital gap between the two countries.
(23/3/2000)