AY forwards an incisive critique of the NEP in the wake of the ruckus over EC Ambassador to Malaysia, Thierry Rommel’s public spat on NEP (reproduced below) ending with this very perceptive observation:

“I tell my clients that in Singapore, everything from education to jobs to business and government contracts, we have to compete with the rest of the world. In Malaysia, the Malay only needs to be better than other Malays.”

I refer to the malaysiakini report EU envoy summoned to explain NEP criticism. After reading the comments made by the European Commission’s top envoy to Malaysia, I cannot help but put my two cents worth into the fray.

I have worked and lived in Malaysia and am well accustomed to its social fabric and political system. As a foreigner, I have a better understanding than Westerners on this issue because I speak Bahasa Malaysia and have been exposed to Malay culture and traditions from young. Still, I am perplexed by the NEP and its predictable ills especially coming from an environment where meritocracy is, to a small extent, worshiped.

Essentially, all societies are unequal in some form or other but few in the developing world would attempt to make more equal by legislating a heavy-handed unequal-ness. This is what Malaysia has done. The extreme of this ideology has to be Mugabe’s confiscation of white-owned farm lands in Zimbabwe.

To me and others who swear by free competition, the NEP is flawed from its conception in 1970. What baffles me is that the Malay political elite remains adamant that a redistribution of wealth via such means is the one and only solution.

In my dealings with the Malaysian government, I have learnt that there is a feeling of ‘entitlement’ among Malays that makes for a curious insight. Read the rest of this entry »