Yes, it may have very little effect as records show. Only the few selected close families or selected to be billionaires will prosper a billion times over. Wll if the government wants to give Mr. ABC 1 billion ringgit worth of project. But he should give 40% back to this political individual, and then 10% back to the public.

Well, to Mr. ABC. He would think, WHY NOT! It’s still a definate WIN situation on a silver platter. I will have more than hundreds of millions left. Mr. ABC just have to stay loyal to this party so it does not change in the future. Else, business for Mr. ABC will not be handed over in a silver platter.

Where did this country’s money come from then? Tax payers money over the years of cause!

Again the untouchables will rule while the ignorant majority thinks these are called “progress”.

I beg to differ, and to me NEP must stop.

It is no point reminding ourselves what NEP was meant to do. Since its inception, NEP has been used to discriminate only against non-Malays.

The ills of NEP are not just the unequal opportunities accorded to people of different races. It provides civil servants with the cover that so long as their actions are in the name of benefiting people of the right religion and race, they will get away scot-free even if they acted against the law. Conversely, when their actions are against non-Malays, by the rule of zero-sum game, they have accorded to the benefits of Malay race and religion, and hence can do no wrong. Consequently, civil servants can become overzealous; and some would take the opportunity to build their reputation as the warrior of their race. Thus, the institutions of the government have become the extended arms of UMNO. The weak UMNO leader, PM AAB cannot even control civil servants. We see the tearing down of Indian temples, and UMNO leaders making seditious statement as they please.

It is the duty of any modern government to provide assistance to the poor and downtrodden without having to resort to any specific NEP. NEP provides a convenient excuse for the government servants to choose their beneficiaries. Whereas, without a policy linked to race, the persons who implement government regulations will have to make objective assessments, not influenced by race and religion.

It is because of NEP that appointment of leaders to the institutions such as in the judiciary need not be transparent, and consequently, the selection could be based on the wishes of the powers-that-be, so long as the candidate belong to the correct race and religion. The same is true about the appointment of academic staff in universities. When meritocracy is not used between people of different races, it need not be used among people of the same race too. Hence, it is not what you know rather than who you know in getting promotion. There is then no wonder that government institutions do not perform as expected. So NEP is not just a curse to the non-Malays, some deserving Malays suffer at NEP too.

It is not my intention here to gloat, but merely to accentuate the contrasting treatments certain groups of people in Malaysia and perhaps in Australia are receiving, as have been brought up by madmix, ngahc, AhPek and several others above.

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, trying to compare my situation with many other noted Malaysians or rather ex-Malaysians living here in Australia. My family and I have lived a modest and almost anonymous life here. But that is not saying I have not participated in the debate of issues prevalent before the recent federal election. In fact, I can say that I feel satisfied in having done my part in helping put aside a government of 11 years that has been out of touch in recent years.

It was against the backdrop of Ops Lalang in the late 80’s that, as a young family, we felt there will not be much left around for our children and theirs in Malaysia. We agonised for months over deciding between keeping our relatively cushy jobs in Malaysia and the sacrifice we ‘ought’ to make for the sake of our children. Top in our minds then were concerns which are best described by Jeffrey eloquently in his post in the other thread ‘Crime – increase by leaps…’ . viz

“…that is a structural problem and increasing day by day due to misgovernment and political and economic mismanagement. There is direct relationship between crime rise and ill performing economy in which more and more are unemployed, not equipped with English or employable skills or whose income is insufficient for keeping up, exacerbated by the drift from rural to urban centres. Compounding this problem is inundation by “legal “semi skilled foreign labour and illegal immigrants, a problem that cannot be ameliorated when many in enforcement agencies are on the take and view these vulnerable group of people without rights ……”

My children, who are now young adults, often wonder what their daddy is doing on the Internet, day in day out staring at this white screen with endless text in it. But when they read what bloggers have written here they stare with open mouths shocked that such ‘unspeakables’ can still occur. I don’t blame them as their upbringing and nurturing here in Australia have always emphasised on giving everyone a ‘fair go’.

My daughter earned a place for tertiary education in University of Melbourne (a humble number 27 on the QS-THES university ranking) on the merits of her academic achievements alone. No questions were asked of her race, ethnic origin, religion or political affiliation. Compare this to my struggle to get a place in Universiti Malaya in the 1970’s after the quota system was introduced. Despite doing far far far (intentional three times) better than any other student in the privileged group I eventually managed, after desperate appealing and pleading, to get a place on the 2nd round entrance. Unlike other privileged students who received scholarship from the government, I only managed to get an FAM scholarship (father and mother, that is).
But here in Australia, my daughter need not pay for tertiary studies at least until she has started work and earning beyond a certain level; even then in small instalments through the tax and interest free too.

Some bloggers here have mentioned, perhaps ill-informed due to gagged MSM, of racism. Well even if it is true, it is my choice to be in this environment. Unlike in Malaysia, the law can punish those guilty of it.

Please note I am no Haji!
As a Eurasian I guess I should be more sidelined than an Indian but luckily I managed to get a private scholarship in 1966 and that has made a lot of difference.

But even so, I should be a millionaire now if I had drunk from all the NEP money streams. So I owe the government nothing but for free schooling up to HSC.

Do you think it matters to these gooks??

Let’s call them uncle Tun and uncle Lee. In the early days, Uncle Lee combined his plantation with Uncle’s Tun much much larger rubber plantation, as they hope to improve and capture more business. Uncle Lee is the ‘kapala’ of the southern plantation.

The merged plantation prospered and there were discussions on what could be done to make it even more succesful. Unfortunately there were serious disagreements and they went split the plantation back into it’s orginal boundaries.

Interestingly some of Uncle Tun’s workers decided to work in Uncle’s Lee plantation and vice versa.

Uncle Tun is a very gentle person and he has a few favourite workers. These he protected and gave them some special incentives.

Uncle Lee is a very pragmatic person. As his plantation is small and he had much less workers, he worked them real hard but in most cases, he is fair in rewarding them. Fair as fair can be in the real world.

40+ years past.

Uncle Tun’s plantation is still surviving but it has now change to producing palm oil and some rubber. A few of his favourites workers are quite successful now but the thousands of many others are still very much remain the same.

Uncle Lee meanwhile had got out the rubber business and he had started building machines that are used to refine palm oil. A lot of his workers are now VERY rich, even those who initially came from Uncle Tun. Everyone of his workers owns a house, a car and reasonable amount of savings.

By this time, Uncle Lee’s business had surpassed Uncle Tun’s business in the palm oil market.

Also in between the 40+ years, attracted by the success of Uncle Lee’s plantation, many of Uncle Tun’s non-favourite workers changed jobs to work with Uncle Lee and today they share in Uncle Lee’s success.

Now tell me which would be the model going forward? Uncle Tun or Uncle Lee.

In fact, almost 40 years after NEP’s inception, this slide is now more evident than ever!

The time will come when it will be Zimalaysia.

Not me. I don’t frame or see issues in stark black and white terms….though I stated that I sensed many others were beginning to do so for which I was accused of ‘talkcock’ in evaluating the grey areas. :)

You sound like President Bush who has been strongly criticized for it, when you say “Everyone else is either with this Cause – or against. All issues are framed in stark black and white terms.”

“You are either for us or against us” – this type of exclusive approach to an issue would shut out many who are sympathetic and are not suffering from the effects of marginalization, like the middle class of any race and that includes the Indian professionals who are non-Hindus many of whom are not among the “marginalized” lot by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t think we need to ask where was Ananda Krishnan and where was V.K. Lingam to name but a few.

Nobody could support even tacitly the marginalization of ethnic minorities anywhere in the world and still be seen to be fair and just (except perhaps polticians with vested interests to protect) but when you hold up signs like “Indians are on the March. Ignore at your own Peril” the mood changes to one of confrontation rather than non-confrontational, from one of passive resistance to one of aggressive opposition.

I thought demonstrators were heard shouting “Daulat Tuanku” in reference to the Agong. Public speakers among the demonstrators should be speaking more in the national language to dispel doubts of their loyalty to King and Country. The appeal to the constitutional monarch of a former colonial power is embarassing enough for Malaysians and not just their government. On this issue of embarassment to Malaysians, Mahathir (of Indian ancestry himself) has done a good job and we don’t need others to follow in his footsteps. But that is an issue for another day.

As for the NEP – notwithstanding what it meant originally, how it was conceived and what it sought to eradicate etc – has been couched in racial terms from day one. I think it was a policy to help the economically disadvantaged among the Malays then, with state benefits – accessibility given to both the poor as well as the less poor or the non-poor. Period.

If it started as a policy primarily to address the causes of the race riots in 1969 (and here the issues get blurred as there are some among us who are convinced what happened was a coup against the then Prime Minister, staged to look like a call by the Malays to stop their own ‘marginalization’ by their own Tunku-led government) it is time to move rather than have anything replaced, into a second phase which is to treat poor Malaysians of all races fairly and given equal access to its benefits.

Remember how TDM and former Selangor MB created the May13 riots and forced the then PM TAR to create the current NEP.

On the comments in today’s paper that Malaysia wanted an ‘Honest Broker’ for peace in the Middle East, I wish he sees the marginalized Indians in the same light as he sees the Palestinians. I hope he makes as much effort to speak for the rights of the marginalized Indians as for the Palestinians.

I think he has lost all his morality for what he is doing for the Indians. Also by making sure no MCA and MIC Ministers will have the balls to speak out. They will always be warned of the Whip that I view it as the Rottweiler or anjing jaga for UMNO.

If UMNO had supported the marginalized Indians in this very country as they have supported the cause of Palestinians, Hindraf is an non-issue so is NEP.

Don’t hope for it, take your own initiative to remove these UMNO Zionist of the East from the map of Malaysia.

1.counter-productive

2.not conducive to carry on business in Malaysia

3.generates dissatisfaction among the rakyats

4.If you are become ‘artificially successful’ by riding on NEP, shame on you!!! …..and you’ll be damned by God!!

5.NEP s a time-bomb….defuse it before it is too late…