Good try IMF but who listens to you here? If the word “Malaysian Govt” is a reference to the cabinet strongly united behind leadership of Najib, then NEM would have been implemented sooner than IMF’s advice – because NEM is afterall PM’s brainchild and cornerstone of his policies of reform. Even recently his banker brother Nazir had to come out to counter NEM’s detractors by saying in the Chinese economic Congress that NEP had been ‘bastardized’.

However in Malaysian politics what was said in the Chinese Economic Congress cannot be as important and influential as what was said in the last Bumiputra Economic Congress in which PM had to publicly back down to tweak NEM nearer to NEP.

It is the perversity of Malaysian politics that the Cause of NEM is more prejudiced than served by IMF being seen backing it.

It could provide a platform for the principal detractor of NEM and advocate of NEP to obliquely isolate our incumbent further by launching another tirade against the IMF and aggrandizing his role in saving the country in 1997!

The following argument though imaginary is predictable:

“IMF is interested only in dismantling protectionism of Malay equity interest
developed by NEP so as to serve foreign/western capitalist interests. (IMF must have advisers of Jewish lineage conferring with their APCO’s counterparts). If Malaysia had followed IMF’s prescriptions in 1997 currency crisis – and Anwar had his way – bumiputra’s corporates would have gone for fire sale unwinding all the good work of the NEP that he had achieved. Of course today the IMF is interested in working for dismantling the NEP by aggressively pushing for NEM. Who is proven right in the end to save the country? It was not orthodoxy of IMF’s prescriptions but the unorthodoxy of TDM’s prescriptions: currency controls on the capital (as distinct from current account), ring fencing by demonetization of the Ringgit and pegging it against the Greenback, 1 year freeze on the repatriation of portfolio funds and other capital control measures. These have helped to avert political and social instability as witnessed in neighbouring countries – Indonesia’s Suharto fell from Reformasi street protests and Thailand’s Chavalit and Chuan Leekpai fell in quick succession – but my govt, we survived throughout thanks to protectionist NEP being in place to avert mass dissatisfaction! Even my detractors MIT’s Paul Krugman and billionaire hedge fund speculator George Soros conceded subsequently that I was right! Now even Hungary is inspired not to follow blindly IMF. True although foreign investment returned at a faster rate in South Korea and Thailand, much of the foreign capital inflow in those two nations was acquisition by foreign companies of assets or equity of domestic companies. We not and even today ought not to promote acquisitions or take-overs by foreign companies of bumiputra companies nurtured by NEP no matter how inefficient because dignity of race and economic sovereignty is paramount overarching imperative. We not have to listen to IMF because we don’t need its money for bail out. We have our Petronas oil and a large reservoir of domestic savings in EPF, Amanah Saham and our banks..”

As a Chinese businessman no one will fault him and those like him for knowing how to work within or around and take advantage of an inequitable NEP system….

But thats different from apologising and defending the very system as if it has merits when its failure is acknowledged even by a prominent investment banker who happens to be the PM’s brother.

Its thumping at the very nose of the minorities marginalised by such a system. The way he said it was insensitive.

Surely Liew Kee Sin doesn’t expect others to be in vantage position like him to take advantage, exploit and prosper under such a system.

Besides it is not just about an individual finding a niche within such a system and selfishly say its OK. It is about whether it is good for the country as a whole.

I am sure some of us here who criticise the system have personally benefitted or prospered by or in spite of the NEP system but that does not mean that we defend it as a good or acceptable system for all just because we ourselves know how to work around it or make it work to our favour or need the present system and our contacts within it to make us further prosperous.