"If there was no NEP I wouldn't be driving this taxi". A chatty Chinese Malaysian taxi driver full of resentment once told me. He is not alone in expressing hate towards the Malaysian social program to transform the well being of the politically powerful majority Malay race.
The taxi driver might well be right about his own life without NEP. Nobody knows. In the larger context, can the NEP be responsible for the existence of all Chinese taxi drivers, or for that matter, all the Chinese underclass? The answer must be emphatically no. Look, there are still Chinese taxi drivers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, all successful and predominantly Chinese states.
The NEP has severely handicapped the Chinese Malaysians community as a whole, that itself shouldn't be in doubt. However, it is when faced with life's biggest challenges that humans thrive in survival. In this regard, the Chinese Malaysians work harder than the politically favoured race to compensate for the deliberate constriction of their achievement by their government. The end result is that the Chinese Malaysians continue to perform well against all odds.
As long as the politically protected and favoured group can gain wealth through government decree with ease, perhaps the stated NEP goal of handing over 30% of the nation's wealth to this group on a plate will never realise, as the disadvantaged group will always work harder to ensure their own economic survival, and in the process raise their overall wealth share ever higher. But no worries, the Malays will get their 30% or more eventually, when their population ratio increases to a level that the Chinese ratio becomes insignificant.
No comments:
Post a Comment