Anwar: Adopt nationalistic approach to eradicate poverty

Prime minister-in-waiting Anwar Ibrahim today said that he would not be using the Malay agenda to address poverty in the country.

Instead, the PKR president said efforts should be in the nationalistic narrative which he believes is more attractive and indisputable.

"My approach is different. Sometimes my Malay comrades are not comfortable when I say that I am not using the Malay agenda but the agenda of eradicating poverty.

"Because I have seen for myself the Malay villages where the majority are poor. I have also seen poor (households) in the Chinese villages, Indian estates and the rural areas of Sabah and Sarawak which are also in dire condition.

"Thus, our narrative is different. Our narrative is more nationalistic, more attractive and cannot be disputed by anyone except those who are bebal (stupid) and do not care about the rakyat's suffering," he told a packed hall in Universiti Malaya during a special lecture programme today.

The Port Dickson MP also related to the audience his experience when he was campaigning for his parliamentary seat recently. In Port Dickson, he said he had visited Malay and Chinese fishermen villages, Indian estates and an Orang Asli village.

He said he had observed some of them had very impoverished living situations and added that it was unreasonable for any developing or modern country to allow its people to live under such conditions.

In the earlier part of his lecture, Anwar spoke about the "Sarong Index", a method formulated by prominent Malay academician Ungku Abdul Aziz Ungku Abdul Hamid to measure poverty in the 1960s.

Ungku Aziz, who is a Royal Professor, had devised the method by counting how many pieces of sarong a villager owned as a measure of his poverty.

Anwar said that with his simple Sarong Index, Ungku Aziz had delivered a highly accurate picture of how poor the people were.

"When we speak about economic growth, attracting investors, the digits of growth, poverty figures, that is all data and numbers that generally look good and convincing to indicate if there is progress.

"But the reality on the ground (is different) [...] it is impossible, unreasonable for any developing or modern country to allow such extreme poverty to persist, like what is going on in certain segments of our society," he said.

Anwar was at Universiti Malaya, his alma mater, to deliver a special lecture entitled "The Malays and Islam in Malaysia Baru".

The special lecture was part of an annual programme organised by the university’s Academy of Malay Studies and called 'Syarahan Za'ba Pengajian Melayu 2018'. - Mkini