Malaysia's nation building under mahathir mohamad

Dyah Nova C.

12/336546/SP/25471

Mahathir Mohamad’s Vision 2020 and Malaysia’s Nation Building

Malaysia is a federal constituonal monarchy state with multi-ethnicity, which plays

large role in politics. The three most significant and biggest ethnicities are the Malay,

Chinese, and Indian. There was a significant immigration from China in the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries, where the Chinese immigrants contributed to the trading sector and the

opening and development of tin mining. But their control was later diluted by British

colonialists with access to superior technologies and greater capital. Under the British, a large

number of workers were imported from India as well, laying the foundations for the

multiethnic society.1

A resurgent Malay Nationalism was born during the post-war period2 and with it, born

the social contract – social compact or bargain reached by the three communities under the

watchful eye of the British imperial power as a condition to Merdeka was that in exchange

for full citizenship, a right to use their language and observe their religion, the non-Malays

had to concede special privileges to the Malays to assist the latter to ascend the economic

ladder.3 This social contract then formed the basis of nationhood in which the non-Malays

were asked to have an undivided loyalty toward the new nation, with no allegiance to their

mother country: India or China.

Under this social contract, the Malay has a right to control the political system and

thus will be the most influental ethnic in the course of political economy of development in

Malaysia. One of the most intriguing cases happened during the time of Mahathir Mohamad,

the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia. During his time of power, Mahathir presented Vision

2020 to the Malaysian Business Council in 1991. Originally titled, “The Way Forward”, the

vision document articulated Malaysia’s goals to become a fully developed nation by the year

2020; a nation developed not only in the economic sense, but also in terms of social justice,

political stability, system of government, quality of life, social and spiritual values, national

1 I. M. Saleh & S. D. Meyanathan, The Lessons of East Asia – Malaysia : Growth, Equity, and Structural

Transformation, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank, Washington,

D.C., 1993, p.p 2-3 2 B.K. Cheah, Malaysia: The Making of a Nation, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002, p.2

3 T. Thomas, ’56 Years Later – A Fractured, Polarised Nation by Tommy Thomas’, Towards a New Malaysia:

Ideas and Thought for Nation Building (daring), 2 September 2013,

<https://thomasfann.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/56-years-later-a-fractured-polarised-nation-by-tommy-

thomas/>, accessed 15 October 2013

pride and confidence. It envisions Malaysia to achieve an industrialized and fully developed

nation status by sustaining growth at 7% per annum and initiating structural changes in the

economy as well as within the manufacturing sectors.4

In order to achieve the goals of a fully developed Malaysia, there are nine central

strategic challenges that the government and society have to overcome. Those challenges are

written below:

1. Establishing a united Malaysian nation with a sense of common and shared destiny.

2. Creating a psychologically liberated, secure, and developed Malaysian Society with

faith and confidence in itself, justifiably proud of what it is, of what it has

accomplished, robust enough to face all manner of adversity.

3. Fostering and developing a mature democratic society, practising a form of mature

consensual, community-oriented Malaysian democracy that can be a model for many

developing countries.

4. Establishing a fully moral and ethical society, whose citizens are strong in religious

and spiritual values and imbued with the highest of ethical standards.

5. Establishing a matured,liberal and tolerant society in which Malaysians of all colours

and creeds are free to practise and profess their customs,cultures and religious beliefs

and yet feeling that they belong to one nation.

6. Establishing a scientific and progressive society, a society that is innovative and

forward-looking, one that is not only a consumer of technology but also a contributor

to the scientific and technological civilisation of the future.

7. Establishing a fully caring society and a caring culture, a social system in which

society will come before self, in which the welfare of the people will revolve not

around the state or the individual but around a strong and resilient family system.

8. Ensuring an economically just society.

9. Establishing a prosperous society, with an economy that is fully competitive,

dynamic, robust and resilient.5

Vision 2020 was accompanied by the NEP's replacement, the National Development

Policy (NDP), which eased the remaining strictures of the NEP, with a view to putting the

4 Perdana, Malaysia Needs New Growth Startegy to Achieve Vision 2020 Goals: Tun Dr. Mahathir (daring),

<http://www.perdana.org.my/emagazine/2010/10/malaysia-needs-new-growth-strategy-to-achieve-vision-2020-

goals-tun-dr-mahathir/>, accessed 15 October 2013 5 Wawasan 2020, Malaysia as a Fully Developed Nation – One Definition (daring),

<http://www.wawasan2020.com/vision/p2.html>, accessed 16 October 2013

creation of wealth ahead of redistributing it. The policy thrust of the NDP was to redress

racial imbalance in a more overt fashion through various initiatives geared to

entrepreneurship, managerial expertise and skills development within the Malay community.6

The NDP achieved success in one of its main aims, poverty reduction. By 1995, less than

nine per cent of Malaysians lived in poverty and income inequality had narrowed.7

6 J. Menon, Macroeconomic Management Amid Ethnic Diversity: Fifty Years of Malaysian Experience, ADB

Institute Discussion Paper No.102, Kuala Lumpur, 2008, p.10 7 R.S. Milne & Diane K. Mauzy, Malaysian Politics under Mahathir, Routledge, London, 1999, p.74