“They will not vote for an alternative just because its POSSIBLE to be better but rather it must be clear that its will be better by a significant degree for them to risk them. Voters are not in the business of risk taking especially in our undemocratic and fractious society, the cost of risk taking by voters is high which is the real barrier for opposition to be an alternative.” Bigjoe

Bigjoe has provided an interesting window for us to debate. Whilst his attempt to analyze a political situation through the use of economic concepts associated with ‘risk taking’ is innovative we should be aware of its limitations. Notwithstanding those limitations ‘political science’ and ‘economics’ are both social sciences and their concepts are not too dissimilar that they could not be used to solve problems common to both.

Politics is akin to risk taking and with all risk taking, it has a rate of return to investment. Asking the Malays to vote for parties like the DAP is, according to Bigjoe, like asking them to invest in securities which carry a lower rate of return but an increased exposure to risks. It does not make commercial sense.

With due to respect to others who may share such views, I’d have to disagree. Here is where the use of economic concepts in politics fail in their application.

I feel there is a middle ground which has not been explored. There is no need to view politics of the NEP as a zero sum game i.e. your loss is my gain and my gain is your loss. NEP could move to the next stage i.e. reflective more of the kind of politics of accommodation and compromise that we see elsewhere – a sort of middle ground, a transitional stage where only the poor and needy among Malays are the beneficiaries of this policy. Right now in the field of education, for example, the Policy does not distinguish the poor and the rich among the Malays giving rise to resentment not only from the point of view of poor Malays but from the poor among the other races.

Rather than view it as akin to asking the Malays to invest in risky securities with a lower rate of return which does not make commercial sense, it is more akin to asking a group of investors to invest in long term securities with a stable rate of return.

“I doubt you are aware of the chronology of the events that transpired after the initial NEP.”

I will have to give that to you, Richard. I was away overseas during that critical period including the leadership crisis of 1987 and 1990 when you claim the NEP ‘went through a restructuring’. With due respect to you, one does not have to be an eye witness to the riots of 1969 to understand it, or to understand what the NEP is all about.

You seem to be Loh’s contemporary who is sure that the riots were planned, organized and politically orchestrated by vested interests from within UMNO. In the immediate aftermath of the 1969 general elections when UMNO was reeling from the record loss of seats both at state and federal levels, forces were at work from behind the scene (but exactly what their roles were have never been determined) manipulating incidents to cause more riots when nerves were already raw and deaths have occurred. That is as close as I could go to saying that the riots were organized.

The NEP was the result of the riots. One aspect of the policy was to provide credit to bumiputra and bumiputra owned businesses, to encourage bumiputra participation in business. It was a period when bodies like MARA and UDA and the Ministry of Trade and Industry took on aggressive roles; and to add that the Credit Guarantee Corporation (CGC) under the initiative of BNM.

When did such statutory bodies have anything to do with Chinese and Indians?

“undergrad2 , now that you knew all these, what are going to do about it ?”

Fight to re-take the government for the people from BN. The DAP/PKR electoral alliance would be one way to do that.