Speech
(2) by Lim Kit Siang at the opening of the 2008 DAP
Federal Territory State Convention at the Federal Hotel, Kuala Lumpur on
Sunday, 2nd
November 2008 at 10 am:
After March 8 "political tsunami", Malaysia
must move into the new politics of "Beyond NEP" to create an united,
just, competitive, progressive and prosperous Malaysia
I am still recovering from my shock in
Parliament on Thursday night when the Minister in the Prime Minister�s
Department, Datuk Amirsham Aziz former CEO of Maybank, pleaded ignorance
when I asked him whether he agreed that the New Economic Policy (NEP)
cannot be equated with Article 153 of the Constitution. Amirsham claimed
that he was no expert on constitutional law!
It is outrageous that after more than half-a-century of nationhood,
Barisan Nasional (BN) Ministers and leaders cannot or dare not answer a
simple question � whether they agree that the NEP cannot be equated with
Article 153 on special provision for Malays and the bumiputeras in Sabah
and Sarawak.
As I argued in Parliament when I posed the question to Amirsham, if NEP
is equated with Article 153, then Deputy Prime Minister-cum-Finance
Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak would be guilty of challenging Article
153 and Malay special rights when he told Bloomberg recently that �all
the elements of NEP� would be phased out in stages, adding �If we do not
change, the people will change us�.
The NEP had been a divisive instrument in nation-building, even more so
today, as it is being used to benefit rich and privileged Umnoputras
rather than the poor bumiputras.
Amirsham was unable to give any satisfactory response to my contention
that the methodology used by the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) to compute
bumiputera equity figures was obsolete and unreliable, as Amirsham
admitted that the EPU methodology used the par value of the shares some
40 years ago in 1970 and the calculations excluded equity data from GLCs.
Independent professional studies have shown that the target of 30%
bumiputra equity ownership had been fulfilled, for instance:
� the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute
(Asli) report by Prof. Dr. Lim Teck Ghee putting bumiputera equity
ownership at about 45 per cent; and
� the University of Malaya research study entitled �Bumiputeras in
the Corporate Sector � Three decades of performance 1970-2000�, by
Dr. M. Fazilah Abdul Samad that the 30 percent bumiputera equity
ownership as targeted under the government�s New Economic Policy had
already been achieved about a decade ago when it hit 33.7 percent in
1997.
The NEP has become not only a source of
national discord and disunity but an important factor causing
inefficiency, waste and corruption as well as inhibiting Malaysia�s
economic growth and development.
After the March 8 �political tsunami�,
Malaysia must move into the new politics of �Beyond NEP� to create an
united, just, competitive, progressive and prosperous Malaysia.
I fully agree with the article in the Star yesterday entitled �Remove
/equity target�, by P. Gunasegaram, giving three reasons why the BN
Government should do away with the equity target for bumiputra ownership
of companies under the NEP, viz:
1. The measurement itself is fatally flawed.
2. As it is structured now, it involves too
low a proportion of bumiputra population and leads to the well-known
Ali Baba syndrome where the bumiputra participation is in name only
while non-bumiputras run virtually the whole show.
3. It puts far too much emphasis on an
ephemeral, badly measured target at the expense of other, far more
encompassing and important aims of the noble NEP, which include the
eradication of poverty irrespective of race and the restructuring of
society to eliminate the identification of race with economic
function.
The message from the March 8 political
tsunami is clear � the time has come for all Malaysians to rise above
their differences to make a success of a Malaysian-centric
nation-building programme and national economic policy which goes
�Beyond NEP� to create a Bangsa Malaysia out of the diverses races and
religions in the country.
*
Lim
Kit Siang, DAP
Parliamentary leader & MP for Ipoh Timor
http://dapmalaysia.org