NEP now ‘BN tool to blackmail’ voters

The NEP which was originally aimed at alleviating poverty has made people 'politically indebted' to BN, says Parti Sosialis Malaysia.

SUNGAI SIPUT: Umno has been accused of using the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was launched by former prime minister Tun Abdul Razak in 1971 to alleviate poverty, to keep the vast majority of the rural community in debt and needing Barisan Nasional’s (BN) assistance.

Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) said the NEP had made people “politically indebted to BN” while denying them the right to a good quality of life.

According to PSM secretary-general R Rani, for Umno to stay in power it needs a secure vote bank through its affirmative action programmes whereby folk are made to see Umno as alms-giver and become captive people beholden to the party.

“Razak’s noble NEP objectives have been diverted from its original path to that of Umno’s political economic tool to blackmail the poor rural folk into being BN vote deposit.

“There are cases of hardcore poor housing areas where the house grants are withheld as a clear warning that should they switch allegiance, they will lose their homes,” said Rani, who is a social worker.

She said the NEP’s objectives, an embodiment of the government’s affirmative action, were irreproachable and anchored in a fundamental thrust – which is the eradication of poverty irrespective of race and the elimination of the identification of race with economic function.

“Our understanding is that the affirmative action is carried out to raise the socio-economic standard of backward communities so as to have a more equal and harmonious society.”

She reasoned that if the affirmative action programmes are tweaked to strengthen the empowerment aspect, then the vote bank will turn shaky for Umno.

“As such, empowerment of the Malay marhein (race) is not an objective of the affirmative action of Umno,” she said, adding that the recipients of the government’s affirmative action were often subjected to unflattering epithets by those who are guilty of weakening the Malay community to preserve themselves.

Criticised on many fronts

Rani pointed out that instead of building capacity and self-reliance among the recipient community, the implementation of affirmative action projects undermined whatever initiative, independence and self-worth the Malay community possessed.

She said that in reality, shortcomings in the conception and implementation of affirmative action have resulted in a pervasive sub-culture (not limited to the Malay poor) whose features include rent- seeking behaviour, an endless expectation of goodies and the feeling that subsidies are a birth right.

“An affirmative action plan must be implemented as a package comprising both the economic and human development elements.

“The community being aided is to be put back on its feet and assisted along with a view to weaning it on self-reliance to break this chain of political indebtedness,” said Rani.

Over the years the NEP has been criticised on many fronts, including the ethnocentric bias of its implementation and the worsening intra-ethnic income gap between the rich and poor Malays.

Rani claimed that the Umno elite also goes to great lengths to distance the Malay masses from their non-Malay counterparts by raving about Malay supremacy, the unfinished work of the NEP and the need to unite against “enemies”.

All this takes away attention from the superfluous wealth and status acquired by the ruling Malays through the NEP whilst creating and perpetuating hostility towards the “enemies”.

“Umno must go back to the original prong of the NEP – ‘eradication of poverty irrespective of race’ and exclude the middle and upper classes,” she said. - FMT