Race in Malaysia - Affirmative action failing?

The Economist ^ | 8/25/05 | The Economist

[voletti]

The world's most notorious system of positive discrimination has had only limited success, and hardly any recently. What, if anything, should replace it?

SHOULD Malays, Malaysia's largest ethnic group, receive more special privileges, or fewer? That, in a nutshell, was the focus of debate during the country's recently concluded round of political party conferences. The youth wing of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the ruling, Malay-based party, called for a revival of the spirit of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which first ushered in affirmative action for Malays in 1970. The prime minister and leader of the party, Abdullah Badawi, agreed that the NEP needed fixing, as it had imbued Malays not with the intended spirit of entrepreneurialism, but with an unfortunate proclivity for rent-seeking. But many Malaysians, both Malay and non-Malay, wonder whether the NEP is needed at all.

In Malaysia, as in many South-East Asian countries, the Chinese minority traditionally controlled the lion's share of the economy, while Malays worked as farmers or fishermen. In 1969, resentment at this situation helped to fuel a convulsive bout of race riots. The government of the day (also led by UMNO) settled on affirmative action as a means to defuse racial tensions. Most jobs in the bureaucracy were reserved for Malays, as were the majority of government contracts. Quotas were set for university admissions, allowing Malays to win places ahead of better qualified Chinese and Indians. Companies were supposed to place at least 30% of their shares in Malay hands. Developers were required to sell a certain proportion of housing and commercial property to Malays, often at a discount—and so on and on.

[voletti]

Interesting read.

The notorious bhumiputra system has led to predictable corruption, nepotism, rent-seeking and incompetence. There are other examples of affirmative discrimination based redistribution policies breeding social sins more than helping redistribute anything - India for starters where minority religious and caste groups have been given official preference in many fields of endeavour.

[EagleUSA]

What would you expect, other than the above, for a MUSLIM country ???

[Huber]

The Global Debate Over Affirmative Action
by Thomas Sowell (March 9, 2004)

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,16849-1752866,00.html

Summary: Most people who are for or against affirmative action are for or against the theory of it -- and pay little attention to the hard facts.

[www.CapMag.com] A recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education had the front-page headline: "The Global Debate Over Affirmative Action." Inside, there were five full pages on group quotas in Brazil, India, and Malaysia.

While it is unusual for American journalists to recognize that group preferences and quotas exist in other countries, what was all too usual were the slippery semantics with which affirmative action has been discussed in countries around the world.

The Chronicle of Higher Education's discussion of affirmative action in Malaysia, for example, says that it began because "ethnic Malays held relatively little economic power" and because of a "colonial legacy under which the country's more urbanized Chinese inhabitants tended to prosper."

In reality, under colonial rule the British provided free education to Malays but the Chinese minority had to provide their own -- and the Chinese still completely outperformed the Malays, both in educational institutions and in the economy. Performance differences are what slippery semantics try to evade, whether in Malaysia or elsewhere, when affirmative action is discussed.

One of the architects of the quota system in Malaysia is quoted as saying that before affirmative action "there was a wall in Malaysia and outside of it were the Malays."

A wall against Malays in Malaysia? With Malays in charge of the universities and Malays also in charge of the government that controlled the universities?... (snip)