Political patronage and the culture of rent-seeking was caused by the poor implementation of the New Economic Policy, which strayed from the policy's noble intentions.
This is the view espoused byformer finance minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah in a speech in Kuala Lumpur last night, at a book launch discussing the current state of affairs.
According to Tengku Razaleigh, political patronage meant that those with connections gained easy profits, but not through competition.
“Much as this sounds like a blame game and much as this is distasteful to swallow, the answer lies in the New Economic Policy, or rather the NEP, that had gone wrong in its implementation.
“Please make no mistake about the NEP: the philosophy and thought underpinning of this piece of social engineering programme is just and noble.
“However, its implementation went haywire and wrong because of the practice of patronage that had led, in the first place, to cronyism and rent-seeking that we had just spoken about.
“As a result, goals set out by the policy were not met in the specified timeframe,” Tengku Razaleigh said.
Wealth was to 'trickle down'
He was speaking at the launch of 'Malaysia Kaya Rakyat Miskin', a Bahasa Malaysia translation of Anas Alam Faizli's book 'Rich Malaysia, Poor Malaysian', a collection of essays on the energy industry, economy and eduction in Malaysia.
Tengku Razaleigh, who is better known as Ku Li, added that the original intention was to empower a small group as entreprenuers and equity holders, and for wealth to “trickle down”.
“The plan was supposed to have created a multiplier effect that would trickle down to benefit the community financially. The plan failed.
“In the words of Anas , 'the trickle-down effect did not and does not work … In fact, it has perpetuated high inequality among Malaysians'.
“To my mind, the plan helped to create a fertile breeding ground for patronage, which had led to
cronyism and rent-seeking practice stated earlier,” he said.
Worse still, Tengku Razaleigh added, it had created “ethnic rivalry” and “parallel economic and social systems” based on ethnicity, as well caused large income disparities in Malaysia.
This is the view espoused byformer finance minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah in a speech in Kuala Lumpur last night, at a book launch discussing the current state of affairs.
According to Tengku Razaleigh, political patronage meant that those with connections gained easy profits, but not through competition.“Much as this sounds like a blame game and much as this is distasteful to swallow, the answer lies in the New Economic Policy, or rather the NEP, that had gone wrong in its implementation.
“Please make no mistake about the NEP: the philosophy and thought underpinning of this piece of social engineering programme is just and noble.
“However, its implementation went haywire and wrong because of the practice of patronage that had led, in the first place, to cronyism and rent-seeking that we had just spoken about.
“As a result, goals set out by the policy were not met in the specified timeframe,” Tengku Razaleigh said.
Wealth was to 'trickle down'
He was speaking at the launch of 'Malaysia Kaya Rakyat Miskin', a Bahasa Malaysia translation of Anas Alam Faizli's book 'Rich Malaysia, Poor Malaysian', a collection of essays on the energy industry, economy and eduction in Malaysia.
Tengku Razaleigh, who is better known as Ku Li, added that the original intention was to empower a small group as entreprenuers and equity holders, and for wealth to “trickle down”.“The plan was supposed to have created a multiplier effect that would trickle down to benefit the community financially. The plan failed.
“In the words of Anas , 'the trickle-down effect did not and does not work … In fact, it has perpetuated high inequality among Malaysians'.
“To my mind, the plan helped to create a fertile breeding ground for patronage, which had led to
cronyism and rent-seeking practice stated earlier,” he said.
Worse still, Tengku Razaleigh added, it had created “ethnic rivalry” and “parallel economic and social systems” based on ethnicity, as well caused large income disparities in Malaysia.
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