When You Are Not The Best

I like to tell my children that, when you are not the best, it is not really that difficult to move forward. How so? Just copy and follow what the best does. Then when you are close enough, and confident enough, you can try to overtake the best. Even if you eventually do not become the best, by staying close to the best, you do become one of the better ones, at least.

This technique is best illustrated in a racing or speed sport. If you are not the fastest yet, to win the race you must first keep pace with the fastest, and be ready to seize the chance when presented.

And so it should be the same for countries aspiring to be in the ranks of the best. The developing countries could move forward really easily, by first copying and following those countries that are already developed. Japan and South Korea did that, and now China is doing the same.

Malaysia aspires to be a developed country by 2020, in ten short years. Apparently the only yardstick the Malaysian government uses to measure the development status of the country is economic, how much income the nation produces per capita. Everything else does not seem to matter much for the country to consider itself developed.

If economic prosperity alone is the measurement for advanced nation status, then rich oil producing countries would be considered developed during times of high oil prices, and undeveloped otherwise.

The Malaysian governance is a puzzle to the outsiders. The country's leadership sets a goal for the nation to become developed by 2020, and that is good. Everything else the country does, however, betrays this objective. Its education system is sliding backwards. It is losing hordes of human resources through emigration. In fact it frequently tells its best and brightest citizens to go back to wherever their ancestors came from. It has laws that apply to ordinary citizens but not to the powerful and the privileged. The wealth gap between the rich and the poor is the widest in Asia. Despite not being a rich country yet, tellingly the richest men in Malaysia are each worth up to twice more than the richest equivalent in Australia, a country with two and half times more GDP per capita, and therefore higher consumption power. Malaysia also practices perpetual and discriminatory policies, often conveniently referred to as affirmative policies, in favour of the majority race. Corruption among the powerful are at an anemic level, with government procurements completely shrouded in secrecy. Anyone who dares to question the authorities can be harassed with the country's notorious Internal Security Act, an archaic act with unlimited detention power designed to contain terrorism but now used conveniently to silence civil oppositions. There are no real civil liberties and citizens' rights under the constitutions are frequently violated by the same people sworn to uphold them.

In every key aspect, Malaysia is a country spiraling uncontrollably towards the likes of Zimbabwe, but thinks it is steaming dizzily towards the likes of South Korea.

There are few signs to show that Malaysia copies, or intends to copy, from other successfully developed countries. If it is even trying, it wants to become a developed country on its own blue print. What sort of developed country would Malaysia be in ten years?

The problem is, even when Malaysia finally achieves that economic status which should rank it in the rich country list, it will not be regarded as a developed country by the rest of the world. But why does that matter? The Malaysian leaders are well known for self aggrandisement. If the rest of the world won't agree with Malaysia's developed country status then, they can always go back to whichever planets their ancestors came from.