Malaysia

1. 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-tommythomas/>, accessed 15 October 2013

2. 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-2020goals-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

3. 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