The Myanmar Effect

10 years from now, Malaysia will go the way of Myanmar economically and socially. We will become a poor nation. This will be the worst case scenario. At best, we will be prodding along aimlessly amidst a region of up and coming super-powers and secondary-powers. We will survive and that will be just about it. If we are that lucky.

In this age and time, it will not take a generation for a nation to be reduced to economic and political insignificance. Even with the best intentioned government of the day, it only needs less than 10 years for a country to go the way of Myanmar or Brazil in the 1980s. I fear that this nation of ours is also on this perilous path.

Not such a nice thing to say especially in this season of festivities and merry making but it needs to be said. We are in deep trouble and the government and us the people need to sit up and take stock of what we are up against. Forget whatever you have been fed with in terms of how advanced we are in this or that. Forget about what the official media tells you about how attractive we are for the investors. We are no longer the shining star we used to be. Of course we are still surrounded by the relics of our golden age, just as the Italians are probably constantly reminded of their glorious past; but that doesn't mean a thing. So, forget too that our relics are a sign of our greatness. It was past greatness (if at all it was one). By next year, China will be the 2nd largest economy in the world. By 2050, India will rival China. Between these two powers, there will emerge a form of modern day tribute states whose sole function will be to manufacture goods and provide energy and resources to these two countries. By 2050, today’s developed countries will be at an economic plane that is higher and more advanced and they would have, by then, entirely divorced themselves from the 3D jobs (dirty, dangerous and difficult). I think it is not science fiction to say that the day will soon come where the western countries (and Japan, Korea) will be managing the ‘knowledge of the world’ while countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Nigeria and Indonesia will be so well positioned that they will do everything else.

Where will we be in this scenario? A tribute state or a leading knowledge driven economy given due respect and recognition by the ‘knowledge super powers’?

As alarmists as my statement may sound, it is nevertheless not something that has missed the more discerning Malaysians. Take Datuk Seri Mohd Effendi Norwawi. On Dec 20, he wrote a piece of enlightening and bold piece of opinion that I hope will be translated into the Malay, Tamil and Mandarin languages and published in the respective papers. For one, this may kick them into sobriety and realization that while they are busy condemning each other, this motherland of ours is going deeper into oblivion. Next, it may jolt the man on the street to demand more than just temples, suraus and churches from their elected representatives and ask what on earth they are doing to prepare us for the next 10 years.

The respected Datuk Seri says that The New Economy Model (something I will touch on later here) will not succeed unless it is supported by a new implementation model.

Then on 24th December, the shining star of Malaysian intellectual and principled discussion, Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam (one of the original drafters of the NEP in 1970, the year of my birth) wrote in the same paper that not only do we need an implementation model for the New Economic Model, we also need to ensure that the model is not flawed to begin with.

The statistics that are being churned out are not pretty. Vietnam for example had overtaken us in many areas especially in terms of attracting FDI. We are also loosing out in the knowledge economy as we didn’t continue the initial push and investments in this area. Our biotechnology and our multimedia are doing a great job despite the odds stacked against them. It's a wonder how they are doing as well as they do considering that they have to answer to a bunch of bickering and obnoxious politicians who for some strange and peculiar reason inevitably become the masters of these areas of utmost importance to our survival as a nation.

Come February, we will know what our New Economic Model is all about. The fact that we need a new economic model and the fact that the current administration had seen it prudent to develop one is a testimony to the fact that our Vision 2020 is not achievable under the current circumstances. Of course we can always point our fingers at the sudden and unexpected economic downturn for this but if we look carefully, we could see that right from the beginning, Vision 2020 was doomed to fail as it so entirely depended on external factors i.e. the global economy staying bullish AND it was based upon the fact that the failures of the NEP could be whitewashed by the sheer prosperity of the economy (read the size of the economic pie). Very little of Vision 2020 was dedicated to develop a framework for organic growth and innovation to sustain us regardless of how the global economy was performing. Although it’s true that, as Bill Clinton says, this is an interdependent age where there is no way we can on our own ensure our growth and prosperity. We will have to and must depend on the wider global scheme of things. Yet, we must also surely have some gumption to do things that gives us some form of insurance against being totally dependent on the ebb and flow of world economy.

Hence, it seems to me that finally our policy makers have come upon the one thing that we have been paying only lip service all these while: Innovation. So, the new economic model will apparently drive us towards an innovative economy. It also seems that we are going to become an innovative economy and we will be capable of emulating the innovativeness of the Americans and the Europeans.

So far, from the little snippets that are being leaked out on the new economic model, I must say that all the right things are being said. However, whatever the final look and feel of the new economic paradigm is going to be, I anticipate the following 7 factors will play a critical role in determining its eventual success or failure:

1. All stakeholders in nation building MUST accept that this will be a long term drive. All political parties, racial champions, NGOs and the intelligentsia must acknowledge the fact that a new economic model is not a quick fix but rather a slow and potentially painful recovery process. It's a total re-alignment of what we need to do to our economic engine.
2. Everybody….absolutely everybody needs to realize that American innovation in the past was a direct result of her willingness to allow for differences of opinion and respect for differences. She welcomed all. She embraced all. Malaysia needs to do that. Let’s begin by tapping into the creativity and innovation latent in the hearts and minds of our minority groups whose talents are being wasted due to the stifling social infrastructure which has long lost its usefulness. The time is now to revolutionize our thinking and this revolution should begin with the idea that “Malaysian innovation lies in its people…all her people”. We can’t say that we will have an innovation driven new economic model by merely inviting global companies to set up shop in Iskandar. Even if Steve Jobs takes up our ‘Malaysia, my second home’ offer, we will still not become an innovative economy. The reason for this…my next point…
3. Go for the jugular of our education system. Kill it. Allow for a rebirth. Anything less will not work. The killer of innovation today is our education system. As it is now, not only does it block true and meaningful integration, it also stifles innovation at the most fertile ground: our children. As long as our education does not produce a generation of people who can ask the right questions, we will not become an innovative nation in any meaningful way.
4. The BEST minds should get the job and do the job. Regardless in what skin colour that mind may be wrapped in.
5. All new economic initiatives must be designed to take us out of the middle –income trap which means that by merely attracting manufacturing related FDI will not be sufficient.
6. The Iskandar region must be de-politicized and made into a model for the implementation of the New Economic Model.
7. Our institutions of higher education must be governed by a fully empowered board of governors who must have the power to hire and fire. This board must be comprised by people of the highest social standing and achievements; regardless of their racial and cultural background.


The future of our country lies in what exactly the New Economic Model is. Will it be a true and honest policy with equally honest and robust implementation focus? Or, will it be another ‘flavor of the administration’ and as vague as the 1Malaysia concept?

I have hopes that our current Prime Minister (if he can keep the humbugs of our political landscape at bay), will do things right and do the right things. He has that pedigree. But maybe, he needs more than just his political power. He may end up needing a referendum of our collective support to ensure that we don't go the way of Myanmar.