KUALA LUMPUR, May 30 — Pakatan Rakyat leaders have castigated Datuk Seri Najib Razak for not defending the New Economic Model (NEM) against its Malay critics, who claim it erodes their rights.
The prime minister had described the NEM as a “trial balloon”, saying the policy had yet to be finalised in his speech at the closing ceremony of the first Malay Consultative Council (MPM) congress held yesterday at the PWTC. The NEM will be tabled within the 10th Malaysia Plan this June 10.
Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, Pakatan Rakyat (PR) secretariat co-ordinator for PKR, said he did not know why people continued to expect so much of Najib.
“What has he done different from before? He hasn’t done anything,” he told The Malaysian Insider.
Zaid said he was not surprised at this development, citing the prime minister’s alleged failure at tackling subsidy reform and plugging leakages in government spending.
“Every time there is a pressure from (Perkasa leader Datuk) Ibrahim Ali’s faction, he succumbs,” he said.
Zaid also said MPM had an interest in maintaining the status quo as it was a body made up of the Malay elite who controlled the mechanisms of state infrastructure.
“They’re the ones who are going to lose everything if the country undertakes proper reform.”
He felt that MPM did not speak for common Malay folk, but cautioned that the umbrella body had the tools to rouse popular sentiment.
“They have the means to frighten the Malays and confuse the Malays, he said.
The former Kota Baru MP also said that any leader who could not take on former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, would not be able to reform the country.
Zaid gave the example of Najib’s immediate predecessor, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who was not able to bring about reforms despite making all the right statements.
“He (Najib) is falling into the same mould,” he said. “It’s going to be business as usual.”
PAS vice president, Salahuddin Ayub, said Najib might have been trying to make the situation more “comfortable” as the prime minister was there in an official capacity.
However, he asked why Najib was even giving special attention to the Perkasa-led MPM.
“The question is why Najib has to entertain such a demand from Perkasa,” he said, adding that there was nothing good that could come of such a meeting.
“I think Perkasa and MPM [were] planted by Umno. Pemuda Umno (Umno Youth) nowadays doesn’t contribute much to Umno. That’s why Perkasa and MPM have to replace Pemuda Umno.
“But they’re all Umno — that’s my opinion,” the Kubang Kerian MP said.
“Najib’s statement that the NEM is not the government’s ‘final stand’ but merely the ‘trial balloons’ of a group of experts... is a greater commentary on Najib’s leadership qualities than on the NEM proposals,” he said in a press statement released today.
He said the NEAC had “courageously” admitted, from the start, that Vision 2020 was not possible without economic, social and governmental transformation.
It had also warned that Malaysia ran the imminent risk of a downward spiral into stagnation at a time when East Asian economies look poised to achieve high economic growth.
“[The NEAC] admitted that the implementation of the NEP, which ‘has reduced poverty and substantially addressed inter-ethnic economic imbalances’, has engendered rent-seeking, patronage, opaque government procurement and ‘pervasive corruption’,” Lim said. He pointed out what the architects of the NEM had considered the biggest challenge to the successful implementation of such reforms to be lack of political will and leadership to break resistance by vested interest groups.
He cautioned that the NEM, which was launched with great fanfare two months ago, may end up as a defining moment in the “grave failings” of Najib’s premiership.
“Will Najib fail in the first NEM test of political will and leadership as predicted by the NEM itself?” Lim asked.
