Anwar's anti-NEP stance flawed, says Dr M

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim's position on the new economic policy (NEP) will not work in his favour.

He said that the public would see that “opposing” the NEP was a Western agenda, as Western powers want to claim that the NEP only benefit Umno cronies.

“Thus Anwar immediately embraced this and pointed fingers at a few Malays who are successful to prove that NEP only benefits a few government cronies,” he said.

Mahathir said that Anwar's favourite target was tycoon Syed Mokhtar Albukhary, one of the few Malays on Malaysia's billionaire list.

“Everyday, he is attacking Syed Mokhtar. But the non-Malay billionaires who also get government support are not called cronies,” wrote Mahathir in an opinion piece which appeared in Minguan Malaysia today.

He said that many Malay youths now hate the so-called Umno cronies.

“What Anwar has never mentioned is that hundreds of thousands of Malay youths receive education because of scholarships given by the Umno-led government.

“Are these hundreds of thousands cronies as well?” asked Mahathir.

Since being sacked from Umno in 1998, Anwar has criticised the government handling of the NEP, which was originally conceived as a limited term plan to re-balance economic disparities between the Malays and the Chinese.

Anwar believes that the system has been abused by Umno to primarily benefit its cronies and has suggested that it be replaced by a needs-based system accessible to all Malaysians.

He argues that such a system would naturally benefit the Malays most.