Not many know of this episode, but after our 1957 independence, the British still assisted in scripting an economic policy known as the Draft Development Plan (DDP) that would eventually issued as the Malaya Plans (1955-60); also implemented was the economic programs in the Second Malaya Plan 1961-65.
We also need to know within context of the colonial DDP, that RIDA (Rural Industrial Development Authority, precursor to the Federal Land Development Authority [FELDA]) was launched in 1950, by Sir Henry Gurney. This was an official recognition by the colonial government of the Malay nationalists’ economic agenda. It was also clear to the British that the “affirmative action policy” was a better alternative than having their commercial interests being nationalized.
After gaining independence, though, the Malay aristocracy and its ruling class of ethnocapital inadvertently executed the Guthrie Raid to initiate one part of the New Economic Policy (NEP) with all the negative politico-economic ramfications subsequently - whence unearned privilege goes to the part of ethnic Malays. In a sense, the ruling elitism was increasingly perceived as an existential necessity and even a way to ensure the internal political stronghold, and politico-economic control, in the administration of the state.
Even during that period of time, just as presently in the 21st century, there seems to be a greater deference to foreign economic advisers who not only represent the interests of international economic agencies but also help in enhancing the foreign monopoly-capitalism business interests that inevitably success in penetrating wholesomely and widely into the national economy.
The staff of the Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister Department, for example, where economists, political scientists and social anthropologists are seconded from the Development Advisory Service Harvard (DASH). These personnel have access to so-called “confidential information” which are being denied to Malaysian professionals.
Consultancy retaining of DASH, as well as those from IBRD (the InternationalBank for Reconstruction and Development joining with International Development Agency (IDA) to fund for the poorest countries, to emerge later as the World Bank) is the result of the initial 1954 IBRD Mission to Malaya. The underlining theme is that since they have access to data and had been writing all these reports, the consultancy role should continue. For example, IBRD and IDA had written a 4-volume Reports on Malaysia’s Development Prospects and Plans, surpassing the government Economic Planning Unit’s effort. Few local professionals have access to these “confidential reports”; the Official Secrets Act, modeled after the United Kingdom legislation, has plumbered all discrete leaks, and prevented any constructive opinion whatever our local professionals might like to articulate.
Even the first three Malaysia Plans that followed were said to be crafty masterminded by foreigners from the United States of America. In fact, the earliest Malaysia Plan was drafted with the advice of Warren Hansbuger from USA; the second plan was completed by Prof. V.M. Bernett, Dr. D. Snodgrass and Prof. H.J. Bruton, all from the USA; though Snodgrass had pointedly admitted that these programmes were to gain “support from the rural Malays, if not indeed for the leadership of UMNO itself” rather than as benefitting the rakyat-rakyat. The third plan had the advice of Prof. B. Higgins, also from the USA.
In fact, during the 1997 currency crisis, and the eventual financial meltdown in 1998, the Malaysian government initial response was to rely on the International Monetary Fund consultancy report whose response was a set of expenditure reduction policies, that is, tighter fiscal and monetary controls, which most unfortunately exacerbated the recessionary situation within the country concurrent with sharp portfolio capital outflow (see Athukorala 2000, “Capital Accounts Regime, Crisis, and Adjustments in Malaysia”, Asian Development Review 18, No:1 ,pp:17-48 and Bird & Rajan 2000, besides Kaplan and Rodrik 2001, “Did the Malaysian Capital Controls Work?”, NBER Working Paper No:8142).
The Najib regime’s think-tank – Performance Management on Delivery Units (Pemandu) - while replacing the Economic Planning Unit primary role in steering the national economic developmental effort – even had allocated RM66 on “external consultants”, including American consultancy firm McKinsey and Co, which took the lion’s share of an estimated RM$36 million of the professional fees; other foreign consultants included the Hay Group (which was paid RM$11 million), Ethos & Co (RM$1.5 million) and Alpha Platform (M) Sdn Bhd (RM$1.5 million); an undisclosed “external consultant” named “Tarmidzi” had also received RM3 million for work done in setting up Pemandu as part of a neo-imperial collaboration.
Pemandu was set up on Sept 16, 2009 to oversee the implementation of the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) and the Government Transformation Programme (GTP), the two primary pillars of the government’s New Economic Model (NEM). A critique of Pemandu’s ETP can be found in Research for Social Advancement (REFSA).
Other documents also show that the ETP unit of the think-tank has gobbled up RM$ 7.2 billion million of government funds between 2012 and 2014; this amount could easily allocated for government-led Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M) handouts to benefit a whopping and sizeable beneficially 13.1 million people.
The key contradictions of the neoliberal political project to privatize functions of the state, which is not so much anticipated to “shrink” the size of government but to actually increase the scope of the public service sector as a new terrain for accumulation of capital “in which services are standardized and capable of being delivered by a compliant and interchangeable workforce, embedded in a global division of labor, and subjected to the discipline of that global labor market”, (see U.Huws, Labor in the Global Digital Economy).
More as a truism when that accumulation of capital is executed with transnationals labour exploitation, in collaboration and collusion with ethnocapital, with wholesome expropriation of surplus value on our national resources.
The reasons for this ethnicity striving are rooted in the ruling class consciousness plagued, on one side, with belief of a community economic deficiency complex, and on the other plane, in the need to maintain a political dominant status at any cost. The aristocracy, the kleptocrates and ethnocapital - and most of their followers - were and are still convinced that the high price without equality is justified, because the alternative to the NEP, as perceived, is non-bumi compradore capital control and financial monopoly-capital economic ownership that would further weaken political stronghold, UMNO national supremacy and a malayness ketua-leadership. It is encouraged with this narrow-scoped execution, historically produced in an feudalistic era and continuance under an neo-colonial epoch, that underlies the fundamental conflict with a vibrant vision of a better nation-state that can, and should be, re-imagined towards an ideal society.