The travails of the Philippines and Sri Lanka should be followed closely by the people of Malaysia if we are to learn from the lessons of Philippines or Sri Lanka to become a world-class great nation by Malaysia’s Centennial

It has been reported that the police had begun an investigation for incitement over a tweet about public unrest in Sri Lanka over a blog posting on my website.

I have already explained that I had no intention to incite any unrest in Malaysia but to warn of the dangers of allowing the political and socio-economic conditions in Malaysia to deteriorate as happened in Sri Lanka for over half a century as to become a failed state.

I had asked the question whether the houses of the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Malaysia will be set on fire by angry protestors as happened in Sri Lanka last week and immediately answered the question:

“This is not going to happen today, this month or this year, but will it happen before Malaysia marks its Centennial in 2057 or 2063?

“Are we following in the footsteps of Sri Lanka, at one time a ‘jewel’ in terms of development prospects in South Asia?”

I had expected political desperados and opportunists, through their propagandists and cybertroopers, to twist and distort the meaning and purpose of my statement as one of incitement, but I had not expected a former Prime Minister to head the charge.

For the last half a century from 1970 to 2020, whether in terms of GDP growth or per capita GDP growth, Malaysia lost out to South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia and China, but Sri Lanka had done worse.

There is an attempt in the social media to describe the tenure of the sixth Prime Minister from 2009-2018 as “a golden era of development and progress”, but during these nine years, Sri Lanka grew faster than Malaysia, both in GDP and GDP per capita terms.

In fact, during these nine years, Malaysia was the slowest economy in ASEAN, whether in GDP and GDP per capita terms, losing out to Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

The travails of Philippines and Sri Lanka should be followed closely by the people of Malaysia if we are to learn from the lessons of Philippines or Sri Lanka to become a world-class great nation by Malaysia’s Centennial whether in 2057 or 2063.