By Kazi
Dr Mahathir Mohamad, former PM of Malaysia made some controversial comments in an interview carried by the business portal Business Today this week.
In an article of the three-part series, Dr Mahathir said, “Malay culture was not competitive and sufficient time must be given to the Malays,” although he did not state the time frame.
“The Chinese have about 6000 years of culture, and they can survive anywhere. Wherever they go, they create China Towns, but the Malays cannot survive as their culture is not competitive,” Tun Mahathir says.
While the business portal asked Dr Mahathir if the race-based policy should be replaced with a need-based policy, the latter simply answers that privileges accorded to Bumiputeras were indeed based on a “need.”
Malaysia’s New Economic Policy (NEP) came into fruition in 1970 as part of a package of measures introduced after the political crisis of May 1969.
It sought to ‘eradicate poverty’ and ‘restructure society’ to eliminate the identification of race with economic function and to create the conditions for national unity.
But over the decades, there has been a spate of calls to review the NEP says the magazine.
Vintage Mahathir made no apologies as to why the privileges accorded to Bumiputeras remained in force, writes the magazine.
Dr Mahathir also says Malaysia should continue to have the NEP because the Malays were not as competitive as their Chinese counterparts.
Drawing an example in a “football team”, Mahathir says that one cannot have a football team with those who are 12 years of age competing with those who are 18 years.
The handicap would be too great as the competition between the Malays and the Chinese were not on the level playing field, Mahathir hinted.
On the other hand, Mahathir believes that the Chinese community in Malaysia benefited from Malay rule in the country.
He was certainly referring to his 22-years rule as PM from 1981 to 2003 when he resigned ‘gracefully’ – he used to say – like no other Muslim leaders have done in the Muslim world.
Dr Mahathir says that while Malays were the majority in the country, they provided stability in the government through UMNO, and the “Chinese prospered with Malay rule”.
“The Chinese cannot rule the country because they do not have the numbers but with Malays providing good governance, the-non Malays too prospered”, he stresses.
A Malay majority government does not mean that it would be the party with the exclusion of the Non-Malays, it would be with the consideration of the Chinese and Indians as “we care for others,” he says. /TISG