Tag: New Economic Policy

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Economics Education Society

[2931] If affirmative action is to end in Malaysia, spending on public service has to increase

Discussions on affirmative action in Malaysia have never gone away but interest in it has increased in recent weeks. The first exciting interest in the topic was Hwok-Aun Lee’s book Affirmative Action in Malaysia and South Africa: Preference for Parity. I have not got my hands on the book (I hope to buy it soon), but I listened in to one of Lee’s webinar on the book and the subject earlier this year. Most recently, is Nazir Razak stating the New Economic Policy—Malaysia’s affirmative action—no longer works.

My thinking of affirmative action has softened over the year. Softened in the sense that while in the past I think I could be labeled as anti-NEP, I have adopted a show-me-the-result position. In fact, I have concluded there has to be a balance between economic and social imperatives. As a relevant side note, I am writing a book (a never-ending project) and in a segment of it, I outlined why I thought NEP might have a role in created a shared identity in Malaysia (perhaps Bangsa Malaysia as a shorthand for this) for a short while in the 1990s. It was a decade or two-long process coupled with rapid industrialization and globalization, that was unraveled during the late-1990s Asian Financial Crisis and later, China’s entrance into the global marketplace. My current thinking is that, though NEP-styled affirmative action worked in the 1970s and the 1980s (dare I say the 1990s despite its official expiry?) situation in the 2020s have changed dramatically that the way Malaysia does it affirmative action need to be rethought. It requires a rethinking because NEP did not work in isolation during the years and the factors (high growth and absence of China) that made NEP work are no longer present today.

Last week, I somehow got pulled into a Clubhouse discussion about NEP where Nazir Razak stood on a soapbox. Near the end, riding on an acquittance’s train of thought, if I remember correctly, Malaysia needs to invest in its public services more. I would like to clarify and expand that idea further.

If affirmative action is to end, then I think it is imperative that public service be expanded further. This is not to say the public service expansion and affirmative action are mutually exclusive. But it is probably good to understand that most beneficiaries of affirmative action probably rely on public service more than others. Removing affirmative action would likely require expansion in other parts of government in order to maintain the beneficiaries’ general welfare.

Here, the maintenance of general welfare is importance for social stability, which in turn is crucial to creating the environment for long-term economic growth, which itself is important to the maintenance of welfare. It is a loop.

By public service, I refer specifically to public education and public health system. By expansion, I mean by making it more accessible cheaply at a higher quality and while this may sound fluffy, I think the best proxy to this is government spending in these areas.

And Malaysia lags in terms of public spending in these two areas when compared to other countries. I have written a short advocacy paper on this matter under REFSA earlier and you can access it here.

A brief look at the World Bank database containing data from most countries will show that Malaysia is a middling when it comes to government spending in education relative to its GDP, while under-spends in public health services.

Malaysia’s government spending on education and health relative to nominal GDP

Malaysia’s 2018 government spending on health was 1.9% of GDP and this compares badly with upper-middle income countries’ average of 3.2%.[1] Malaysia does better in public education, spending 4.7% of GDP in 2017, versus upper-middle income average of 4.1% in the same year (year 2017 and 2018 are chosen because those are the latest year available for year-to-year comparison between Malaysia and upper-middle income average).[2]

So, if ever affirmative action, or NEP in whatever form it persists now, is to be dismantled, I feel is it crucial to boost public spending in government services. Boost spending alone, of course, is not enough. How you spend it matters too.

Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — Domestic general government health expenditure (% of GDP). Open Data. World Bank. Accessed April 7 2021.
[2] — Government expenditure on education, total (% of GDP). Open Data. World Bank. Accessed April 7 2021.

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Economics Society

[2836] Ethnic identification by economic function in Malaysia

Has Malaysia eliminated identification of race by economic function?

I have been thinking about this casually over the past several years, ever since that one afternoon when I wanted a cold drink and began to take notice the ethnicity or nationality of the men and women working as waiters at various restaurants and cafes. I have always taken that reality for granted, but on that day I began to think about the association of certain professions with certain nationality, race or more accurately, ethnicity.

Going back to the question, I think the short answer is no.

Has Malaysia made progress towards elimination? It is complicated.

When a politically-conscious Malaysian thinks about the racial identification via economic role, it is usually within the context of the New Economic Policy. The policy had two objectives. One, the eradication of poverty. Two, the elimination of racial identification by economic function.

If you are a supporter of the NEP, it is likely you think both goals have been achieved, directly by the policy.

At risk of digression, I have reservations about the first claim because of the simultaneous roles industrialization played with respect to reducing poverty. To excite export-led industrialization, the NEP requirements were suspended and that at the very least suggests in some parts of the economy, the NEP was an obstacle. Further technical issues involve inconsistent poverty definition used throughout the years as well as the question why similar poverty reduction happened in in neighboring countries that had no NEP. Crediting the NEP alone ignores the competing factors that achieved the same goal through opposite means. But I will not go too deeply about it here as I am more interested in the second claim.

I think the second claim can be accepted without much protest. At least, as much as the following statistics can say (if we accept over-representation of one particular group in a sector is equivalent to identifying that group with a particular economic function):[1]

Ethnic composition by economic functions

The chart shows the ethnic distribution for various economic roles has come closer to actual population demographics by 2000 and 20100 than it was in 1970 (with the exception of agriculture; I left the sales and services sector out because official definitions changed between those years. I could make them comparable but I really do not want to invest the necessary time researching for it).  There is a better representation of the population demographics within those sectors in 2000 than 40 years earlier, which suggests any one Malaysian ethnicity has become less associated with a particular role, notwithstanding agriculture.

This does not mean such association has been eliminated altogether. One instance where identification has become stronger is in the civil service (apart from agriculture as seen above):[2]

Ethnic composition within the civil service

This should be compared with the composition of Malaysian citizen population:[3][4]

Composition of Malaysian population

But that is not the reason why I feel Malaysia has not eliminated identification of race by economic function, even when some reversal seems to be happening within some fields among Malaysia. Among Malaysians, you can see progress towards that direction.

A new source of ethnic identification by economic function began in the 1990s when Malaysia welcomed a new wave of migrant workers into the country during the boom years.

The NEP focused on Malaysians citizens only and it may have achieved success within its defined limits. Yet, the Malaysian society is bigger than the population size of its citizens. Out of the 31 million population, at least 10 per cent are foreigners, possibly double that if the unofficial numbers are to be believed.

And these foreigners — the one taking the low-paying jobs — are identified by their economic functions. Nepalese for security guards. Bangladeshis for manual labor. Indian for mamak-like restaurants. Indonesians as maid, until recently. For the more expensive restaurants, the English speaking servers are Filipinos. It is a generalization, but more often than not, it will hit the mark quite frequently.

Malaysia’s migrant worker policy contributes to the strengthening of the identification problem. The government has a policy of allowing certain nationalities are allowed to work in specific sectors. And the tendency for migrant and networking effect adds up to the concentration of workers with the same racial, ethnicity or national background.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — Jomo Kwame Sundaram. The New Economic Policy and Interethnic Relations in Malaysia. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. September 2004.

[2] — Lim Kit Siang. Lowest Chinese and Indian representation in the civil service in the 53-year history of Malaysia — 5.8% Chinese and 4% Indians as at end of 2009. April 6 2010.

[3] — Khoo Boo Teik. Ethnic Structure, Inequality and Governance in the Public Sector. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. December 2005.

[4] — Department of Statistics Malaysia. Population Distribution and Basic Demographic Characteristic 2010. July 2013

Categories
Books & printed materials Economics

[2757] Reviewing The Colour of Inequality

With only about 200 pages , finishing The Colour of Inequality was easy. Written by Muhammad Abdul Khalid, the book is priced at MYR40, which is much more affordable and easier to read than the thick Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty. Just for the fun of it, I calculated that the Gini coefficient between the two is 30.7. For books discussing inequality, they are off to a good start. Capital, by the way, cost MYR167.

But more seriously, The Colour of Inequality has attracted the eyes of both sides of the political divide in Malaysia quite positively. Both Anwar Ibrahim in the Parliament and perhaps more ominously by Muhyiddin Yasin during the recent UMNO general assembly as a slow poke against Najib, gave the book a mention. I think in some ways this book will provide the ammunition to force Najib to make a u-turn from his more open policy in the past. Pemandu, which I take as the symbol of that openness drive despite whatever its flaws are, is already taking a backseat in local politics. I do hear less and less of Pemandu these days and furthermore, it is already branching outside of Malaysia to Tanzania, South Africa and India, in what appears to me a search for relevance and independence.

Coming back to the book, the extremely good part is the data shared especially those pertaining income and wealth ownership during colonial and early post-independence period in Malaya and Malaysia. The stress on the difference between income and wealth inequality is gold because whenever there is public discussion on inequality, not too many understand the difference and then mix the two up. As the book goes the mass market, hopefully it will help address the confusion that exists.

I would guess from the relatively heavy footnotes, these data are those you can find only by reading local academic papers, which can be tedious. The first chapters are full of these and the first half acts an overview or a summary of early labor, income and wealth studies in pre-1970s Malaya/Malaysia. There is a heavy focus on Malay ownership and so, I should really put it Malaya/Peninsular Malaysia instead. Sabah and Sarawak are largely, if ever, on the periphery of the author’s concerns.

Khalid puts a lot of blames on the British colonialists for creating inequality in Malaya. He zeroes in on the importation of foreign labors from China and India who worked on the most productive sectors in the economy while the Malays was left focused on the least productive ones, mostly agriculture.

He also blames the colonial government for focusing on developing urban areas populated mostly by non-Malays while ignoring the rural areas where the Malays (and Bumiputras) were. With all the facilities built in the cities, the infrastructure facilitated income and wealth growth, rocketing the well being of urban populations above their rural counterparts.

While the two factors (productive sectors and urban development) did contribute to the Malay/non-Malay gap, I am unprepared to blame the British for focusing on urban development. Even today, agglomeration remains a powerful drive for development. It is far more economical to build an MRT line in a city of more than 5 million than in a town of 100,000, for instance. The logic should hold 100 or 200 years ago while the British were developing Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Penang or Singapore instead of Pekan or Rantau Panjang, as it holds now.

From time to time, the thesis of The Myth of the Lazy Natives by Syed Hussein Al-Alatas appears, just to give you how strongly the author thinks of colonialism as the cause of inequality then. The thesis was the Malays refused to be manipulated by the colonial capitalist machines and thus remained rural, and largely outside the development of the modern Malayan economy. Regardless of the truth of Syed Hussein’s thesis, with the Malays remaining a rural society with a still agrarian economy that is less productive compared to other sectors (mining and cash crop like rubber) as Khalid mentioned, it contributed to the gap. Khalid also showed that the British prevented the Malays from participating in cash crop sector to protect the colonialists’ monopoly. There is a hint of Syed Hussein’s argument that the colonialists came and destroyed the Malay capitalist class by force and thus contributing to the Malays’ inability to compete in highly productive sectors.

For those who have never heard of The Myth of the Lazy Natives by Syed Hussein Alatas, it is one of those books you have to read if you want to understand Malaysian politics, Malay politics especially, better. I would think that particular Syed Hussein’s book is the Malaysian version of Edward Said’s Orientalism. I even think you should read Orientalism and The Myth side by side. That would make Syed Hussein’s criticism much sharper than you would realize rather than reading it alone. One particular idea I gathered reading The Myth and Orientalism together was that UMNO under Mahathir times (The Malay Dilemma and Revolusi Mental come to mind) imported various Orientalist caricature of the Orientals and specifically the Malays — laziness is one — and then used that generalization as the basis of UMNO’s policy to ”modernize” the Malays. I do not necessarily agree with all written in The Myth and sometimes, it does appear Syed Hussein was just making capitalism a scapegoat for far too many things beyond reasons, but he did make powerful criticism against colonialism and bringing in context into modern Malaysian politics.

Now, back to The Colour, the chapter on pre-independent Malaya-early Malaysia sets the stage for the New Economic Policy era. After a largely uncontroversial overview of history, the next chapters have a few to offer.

The author clearly sees the NEP as a success. He criticizes several works critical of the NEP along the way. Some criticisms make sense. By the end of it, the author laments what essentially the end of the NEP and advocates for a new one, in some fashion.

In supporting the NEP, Khalid makes a few points which I find hard to swallow.

One is how NEP has no negative impact on growth. This is a big assertion because he refuses to admit there is a trade-off between redistribution policy and economic growth. He argues despite the redistributive NEP, Malaysia continued to registered high growth together with its neighbors among others right up to the 1990s (if you have the book by your side, this happens on page 107). But the fact that Malaysia grew as fast as its neighbors says nothing about the efficacy of the NEP. In fact, it raises the question on the commonality between Southeast Asian countries and you can bet that not too many countries have their own NEP.

The no negative impact on growth story is also problematic because it does not consider the counter-factual. The counter-factual is that without the NEP, Malaysia could have grown faster and that the NEP caused Malaysia to grow only as fast as experienced. This counter-factual is as valid as his conclusion without further investigation. What Khalid did here is merely arguing by assertion. So, I do not think Khalid can write when he wrote with too much confidence. It requires more investigation at the very least.

His point about NEP has no negative impact on growth is complicated by his criticism against Tony Pua’s belief that the NEP discouraged foreign direct investment into Malaysia. Khalid replies on page 105 by highlighting that in the manufacturing sector, the government does not impose any Bumiputra equity requirement and allows 100% foreign ownership. This does blunts Tony’s point and the FDI did come in but it complicates Khalid’s own point on how the NEP does not impact growth. If he believes that the redistributive policy does not have any impact on growth, I would think it is unnecessary to raise this point. If there is no trade-off, there would have been no need for the exemption. The exemption did encourage manufacturing investment in Malaysia. It contributed immensely to Malaysian industrialization, which, was quite successful.

Perhaps I misunderstood his point, with his point being that the NEP is not as expansive as a lot of people thought it was and there were exemptions that avoided the NEP from becoming too much a barrier. If this is the case, then, yes, that would be a fair point. But he does not spend enough time and space in exploring these issues.

The point on manufacturing is relevant in other part of the book, which I think works against one of Khalid. And that point is about NEP’s success in cutting poverty down. I do believe the NEP did cut poverty down but my issue is that the author attributes the entire drop in Malaysia’s poverty rate to the NEP (page 92 and others) while ignoring other factors that might be as big as the NEP: the industrialization of Malaysia (remember the exemption of Bumiputra equity ownership in manufacturing) and Southeast Asia (this returns to my point that cross-sectional comparison of Southeast Asian national growth says nothing about the efficacy of NEP by itself).

Since manufacturing was exempted from the NEP, I am interested to know how much of the drop was due to the NEP and how much from industrialization that has little to do with the NEP since it was exempted. The industrialization aspect is particularly important because there were at least two events in Asia that contributed to Malaysian growth. One was China’s disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution that pushed capital and people out of China to Southeast Asia (and elsewhere), along with the appreciation of the Japanese yen in the 1980s that encouraged Japanese corporations to go out and establish bases in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia and Thailand, to cut cost and become more competitive. As a side point, Singapore gained tremendously from the events in China and that contributed to the rise of Singapore; it is not all about Lee Kuan Yew (or Mahathir). There was great transformation in Asia at that time yet, I think the book is giving the NEP all the credit for poverty reduction and essentially implicitly leading lay readers to believe that the Malaysian economy worked in vacuum when clearly, Malaysia has been a beneficiary of globalization.

Talking about poverty, there is also room for counter-factual which the author does not address. On page 111 and 112 among others, Khalid showed that the economic growth for the Bumiputras, Chinese and Indian communities were high and used that as an argument that the NEP does not hurt growth for other communities. But like how the NEP affected GDP growth, how did he know that the NEP did not lower non-Bumiputra growth to its recorded level? If there was no NEP then, what the growth would be? He cannot make his conclusion without answering those questions.

As you can see, I am quite skeptical of his argument that redistributive policy has no impact on growth. I think Malaysia can afford to commit to some redistributive policy but there is always some cost. The Colour is written in a way redistributive policy — the NEP — was cost-free and will be cost-free.

Because of these points, I feel the middle part of the book is an apologist work for the NEP rather than a critical evaluation. This of course does not negate the value of the first and the last parts of the book. The first part raises the value of history to provide context to the current situation and the latter about wealth gap and Khalid’s proposals to address it.

What I think the book does more convincingly is explaining the current wealth gap in Malaysia. The roles of inheritance, labor market discrimination, failure in the education system and the tax structure are pretty much uncontroversial and deserve the attention of the government. There is an econometric model at the end which results are in line with my expectations and other models that I have seen before. The model gives a sense of each factor contribution to income and wealth of a person and becomes the concrete basis of various proposals that the book has.

I have my own thoughts about the proposals but I figure I will write about that later.

Categories
Economics

[2184] Of initial reaction to the New Economic Model

With over 200 pages, it will take some time to digest the so-called New Economic Model fully. I began by reading the speech delivered by the Prime Minister earlier today and I am only beginning to read the document proper just now. Given time constraint, I doubt I will able to able to go through the points presented comprehensively. At first past though, the NEM seems to suggest something favorable to me.

It appears to suggest the retreat of the state from the marketplace. The stress on frictions in the market due to subsidies and trade restrictions, the need of liberalization and reduction of government holding in some government linked enterprises are proofs for this. The term market is prominently used throughout the document.

There is more nuance than a simple retreat however. The speech itself suggests that entities like Khazanah and EPF will be allowed to invest abroad as part of effort to not crowd out the private sector.

That is good but it does not erase the fact that these entities still exist.

Affirmative action itself is still in force although the PM suggests that it will be reformed from race-based to need-based. Somewhere in the speech, the term market-friendly affirmative action appeared. I am not quite bought by that term. I rather hear the abolition of affirmative action but I am willing to give ground that need-based is far better than race based affirmative action.

The existence of national key performance indicators itself suggests a huge bureaucracy. It has been taunted as part of government transformation but I am not at all impressed with the idea of enlarged bureaucracy. Nevertheless, I am willing to give the administration a benefit of a doubt on this front.

Never mind the administration seeks to strengthen the public sector. How that strengthening will affect the size of the bureaucracy is something I hope to find out while reading the report.

Categories
Economics Politics & government

[2101] Of the economic story, so far

The Najib administration faces challenges from multiple directions. On economic front, two major factors drive changes in the federal government’s economic policy. One is the global economic turmoil. The other is electoral pressure applied against affirmative action policy favoring the Bumiputra, or mostly, the Muslim Malays.

Both challenges began before the new administration came to power. Najib Razak had the opportunity to address a challenge before he assumed the office on the fifth floor of Perdana Putra in Putrajaya. He assumed the responsibility of Finance Minister early and was credited for launching both stimulus packages announced in November 2008 and later in March 2009.

The stimulus packages have been ineffective so far. Government admitted that spending was slow and further shared that the effect of the stimulus would only be felt in the third quarter of 2009, approximately seven months after the first stimulus was tabled in the Dewan Rakyat.

Nobody is quite sure when the economy would turnaround but signs of improvement are already visible. For instance, demands for electronics are already up, with factories reportedly having trouble fulfilling their orders. There is a good chance that the economy may improve earlier than the estimated period the stimulus packages are estimated to become effective. If that happens, the stimulus may prove to be irrelevant in smoothening fluctuation in economic growth and may really only contribute in creating structural fiscal deficit.

Malaysian federal government has been running on deficit since the Asian Financial Crisis hit the country in the late 1990s. The Najib administration began its era by enlarging the hole in an unprecedented manner: a stimulus totaling RM67 billion comprising of RM21 billion worth of government spending spread over 2009 and 2010.

If the Najib administration is concerned with the size of fiscal deficit and the level of national debt, the government will suffer from severe constraint in its finance and inevitably, its plans.

The deficit will definitely affect the implementation of the so-called new economic model — or more appropriately, a new industrial policy — currently being drafted by the Najib administration. Any respectable industrial policy will require manipulation of tax and tariff structure. This in turn affects government revenue, at least in the short term if the industrial policy is successful. Not all industrial policies have been successful implemented: the clearest failure is the industrial policy on biotechnology.

The impetus for the new industrial policy, from the point of view of the government, is definitely the drawbacks of export-driven model. The export-driven model advocates for reliance on exports as the engine of economic growth. For countries, like Malaysia, which have chosen that path, their economic health is susceptible to economic fluctuations of their trading partners. In the case of Malaysia, mostly, it is the United States of America, the source of recessions in many other economies. It is from this approach in economic development that gives the cliché ”when America sneezes, the world catches cold” its truth.

Impetus asides, the exact details of the new industrial policy are not available publicly currently. The government indicates that actual plan will only be ready later in the year.

The administration has given out some hints however. Key ideas leaked so far are the strengthening of domestic demand vis-à-vis external demand, creating high-skilled based economy, improving the quality of wages of local jobs and reversing — or at least reducing — the rate of brain drain that Malaysia suffers from.

Along with the main ideas, on the sidelines seem to be the rejection of export-driven model and the lessening of reliance on cheap low-skilled foreign labor.

This may implicitly suggest a quest for some kind of independence from the fluctuation of world economic system that one cannot hope of achieving without jeopardizing Malaysia’s future. In a sense, the idea of economic independence is a continuation of the Abdullah administration. The previous immediate administration emphasized on achieving self-sufficiency in food production, signaling the government’s failure in understanding the basic economic concept of comparative advantage. It is a fact that it is cheaper to trade for food — and achieves security of food supply while at it — than to achieve self-sufficiency in food production.

Yet, really, there is nothing wrong in trying to create a local economy with stronger domestic demand manned by high-skilled workers. Those goals can be achieved and indeed, it is desirable to achieve it, without rejecting export-driven model and being excessively hostile to the role that cheap low-skilled labor plays in Malaysia economy.

Full ejection of export-driven model is unwise despite popular current advocating its abandonment. Malaysia has only a small population while there are much larger markets abroad. There is no way on earth domestic demand can absorb the size of external demand, if total demand is to be at least maintained at its current level, unless the real wealth of Malaysians goes up in a very dramatic manner.

It will be all the more impossible to improve domestic demand if Malaysia adopts unwelcoming stance toward foreign workers. These foreign workers do help sustain domestic demand, apart from providing their services. The administration has not shown that it understand that.

Under the stimulus package, the government did plan to impose restriction on hire of foreign workers, which increased the cost of doing business in Malaysia, in times when demands were falling precipitously. That action was postponed indefinitely only after manufacturers lobbied against restriction. If the restricted saw implementation, it would have been a disaster for the manufacturing industry. Malaysian economy could have gone into steeper recession than it would have without the restriction.

Whether the new industrial policy will take cognizance of that is something Malaysians will only know after the government shared the full plan.

Despite that, it is already clear that policy will work hand in hand with liberalization of the economy from instruments relating to affirmative action closely identified with the New Economic Policy, a policy that officially ended in 1990. The frequently debated quota requirement of 30% for Bumiputra in all public listed companies has seen a dismantling along with the very pro-affirmative action Foreign Investment Committee.

The liberalization is partly caused by the realization that affirmative action as practiced in Malaysia is adversely affecting Malaysia’s potential in times when there are other comparable if not better investment destinations, partly by the current economic recession and partly political since Pakatan Rakyat successfully campaigned against the policy.

Of all that Najib has done as either Prime Minister or Finance Minister, the liberalization of the 30% quota reserved for Bumiputra is the boldest of all. The conservative Malay base is likely rattled by the liberalization effort. The courage for that may have come from realization that Barisan Nasional — UMNO in particular — has more to gain by moving to the center rather than appealing to the Malay far right clusters in UMNO. After all, these far right groups have nowhere to go but UMNO. They have no choice.

In this sense, the liberalization of affirmative action is Barisan Nasional under Najib Razak is flanking Pakatan Rakyat. During the election campaign, Pakatan Rakyat more or less advocated the same kind of liberalization. Barisan Nasional is now adopting it. Continuous liberalization of the policy by Barisan Nasional may bring it more votes from the non-Malay groups in the future, at the expense of Pakatan Rakyat.

Regardless of political implication, the good effects of liberalization are unlikely to be felt so soon. As much as the economic downturn seen in Malaysia is caused by drop in external demand, recovery will be driven by external demand too. The sheer size of external demand makes improvement in domestic demand incapable of driving recovery in the local economy. This probably limits what the Najib administration can do in the short run. Such is the curse of a small open economy such as Malaysia.

When the economy does finally rebound however, Malaysia has good chance to capitalize on its new liberalized market environment.

All in all, perhaps there is one term that can describe the economic policy of the Najib administration: pragmatist. When governments all around the world spend, so does the administration. When everybody talks about the end of export-led model, here comes a new industrial policy. And when the voters expressed hostility against affirmative action as called for by the NEP, the government liberalizes the affirmative action. The government bends to whichever direction the wind blows.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in Oon Yeoh’s Najib’s First 100 Days: No Honeymoon.