Malaysia's 2020 vision - can she achieve it?

This was the question a student asked me:

While conducting research on Malaysia, I have read former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad’s “Vision 2020”. During his speech to the Malaysian Assembly in 1991, PM Mohamad issued his version of John F. Kennedy’s” Moon Shot Moment” to the Malaysian people. In short, PM Mohamad’s challenge to Malaysia is to become a fully industrialized country by 2020. In essence, the country has 30 years (from 1991 to 2020) to transition from a Developing Country to Developed Country.

Question: From your perspective and experience while living in Malaysia, is Malaysia on track to achieve Develop Country status as outline by PM Mohamad by the year 2020? If “no”, what are the current obstacles/ challenges that the country must overcome to regain its momentum.?

Respectfully,

Xxxxxx

And my response:

Dear Xxxxx,

I have two responses to your question.

The first pertains to the "Developed Country" status as a desirable and achievable goal. While smaller nations such as Singapore are judged to have reached that status, I doubt it is possible for most of the other nations. There just aren't enough resources in the world if all the billions in the planet aspired to live like those in the developed nations. You could just look at all the implications - car ownership, use of energy, land etc - to see why the planet would not be able to bear the impact if everyone aspired to live the American dream or the French dream etc. Basically, what I am saying is that the idea of developing nation and developed nation statuses is out of touch with what scientists, economists, enviromentalists etc are saying about the planet. Both developed and developing nations are going to have to change to deal with the resource, environmental crises that is going on. Things can't go on as they have been for all these years.

With that out of the way, I'll go to my next response. Is Malaysia on track to achieving this (futile) goal? Apart from the major obstacle I referred to earlier, there are other obstacles standing in the way for Malaysia.

1. Communal politics. Malaysia has got itself into a difficult situation with politicians playing one race off against another (using measures such as privileges and quotas for selected races referred to as bumiputras) in order to hold onto power. A similiar strategy is used with the various religious groups as well. As a result, there is a massive brain drain among the non-bumiputras (mainly Chinese and Indians) while the work ethics among the bumiputras who see themselves as a privileged class has deteriorated due to lack of competition. The country as a whole has suffered from this brain drain. Besides this, the nation is fragmented without any sense of unity and genuine patriotism among the masses.

2. Corruption. There are various aspects to this. The major one is that the judicial system has been compromised and is no longer independent of the executive branch of government. As a result, corruption among the elite is hard to eradicate - indeed, the elite who run the government talk about eradicating corruption but cannot do it as they themselves would be the first to face the punishment if the justice system were to be fair. One example - the anti corruption agency is answerable only to the Prime Minister, not the Parliament. As a result, it is used by the ruling party to go after corrupt and innocent people in the opposition, while major cases of corruption involving ruling party figures go uninvestigated.

3. Use of cheap immigrant labour. Surrounded by countries such as Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Bangladesh etc where unemployment is high and living standards extremely low, Malaysia has latched on to the easy way of making money - import cheap labour for its factories etc and export them back when they are no longer needed. So the work force expands but the costs of looking after them when they are aged or sick and of bringing them up when they are children is borne by other (home) countries. The result is that wages for Malaysians and others are depressed; there is no incentive to invest in labour saving systems and machinery and the nation remains a relatively low-tech society.

I don't know if I have identified the roots or the symptoms of the problems in the above but there are a lot of related issues to all of this. One political group has dominated the nation since independence, changing the laws to make sure it can hold on to power and stymie the opposition. The media is also controlled by this group. It has tried to use religion to control people as well with the result that religion in Malaysia has become a divisive force and one that keeps people's minds closed.

Oil and natural resources have given the nation wealth with which to have a better standard of living compared to neighbouring countries but these are fast depleting and the day will come (possibly within a decade) when the government will have to rely more on taxes rather than the oil income from govt-backed bodies to keep operating - that will be a turning point in the way it operates.

regards,

Dharma