The ascend to the throne of our new King, 42 years after he was last installed, is a time to reflect on our achievements.
I
WAS at the installation of our new King the other day. Twice as King,
he has seen
Malaysia change from what it was then and now. He also
mentioned in his speech that he witnessed the efforts of
the Prime
Minister at that time,
Tun Abdul Razak, the father of our current Prime
Minister.
I sat in the audience, reflecting on some of the
positives that have taken place in our country and took some notes on my
Blackberry.
The key thought that ran through my mind was how much things have changed over the last 42 years. Here’s how much:
·We
moved from a low-income, high-poverty country to a high-middle-income
economy. Our next transformation is to become a high-income, developed
country with quality of life for everyone.
·Our infrastructure
has increased by leaps and bounds. Roads and highways have been built
and traverse all parts of the country. We are putting in a mass rapid
transit system in
Kuala Lumpur to take us to the next level.
·We
have modern retail outlets – supermarkets, hypermarkets, shopping
complexes, malls and entertainment outlets and we are helping
mom-and-pop stores to modernise too.
·We are moving towards
greater freedom in all spheres with the repeal of the Internal Security
Act, establishing clear rights for peaceful assembly and affirming the
rights of online expression and social media liberties, amongst others.
The Government has also made amendments to
Printing Presses and
Publications Act, while the Prime Minister is also talking about changes
to the Sedition Act.
·Religious freedom has actually taken
strides forward. There is now explicit statement of freedom to import
(instead of implicitly before) and publish the Alkitab (the Bible).
Indeed, since the 10 points resolution, many Alkitab have been imported
and printed locally, without any difficulties with the authorities.
·We
have moved to an extensive “social welfare” system e.g free primary and
secondary schools, virtually free public health system, and one of the
lowest consumer prices for fuel,
LPG cooking gas, sugar, electricity,
flour, gas, and so on with high subsidies from the Government.
·We
have moved to greater focus on rural poor. Under the transformation
initiatives, for
low-income groups, three million lives were positively
impacted in 2010 and 2011.
·We have put up an explicit and
substantive roadmap to transform Malaysia further. We will build upon
the great achievements we have made between the times of the rules of
our current King and work towards our vision 2020 - to make our country a
developed one with its people earning high incomes.
Considerable achievement
Just
to show the extent our achievements over the last 42 years, I have
constructed a table of some key indicators. You can see for yourself how
much things have changed, even if you accounted for the fact that a
ringgit went a much longer way then.
Our income as a nation –
gross national income at the prevailing prices then - increased 64 times
over the last 42 years, which is fantastic considering that the
population growth over the same period was just 1.6 times.
It’s
not surprising therefore that per capita income went up 25 times over
the period, a considerable achievement even after taking into account
inflation and the drop in value of money.
‘We are putting in a mass rapid transit system in Kuala Lumpur to take us to the next level.’
One
of the most telling effects of this is that the incidence of poverty
has been brought down from nearly half of the population to less than
four for every 100 people in the country. That’s tremendous.
The
number of schools increased but the impact here would have been
understated because while additional schools were built, existing
schools would have increased their enrolment considerably.
There
was a massive explosion in universities. In 1970, the universities were
all public and there were only three. The latest figures indicate that
private universities now outnumber government ones almost two to one
with 20 public universities and 39 private ones.
A similar
situation was seen for hospitals with private hospitals increasing from
46 to 239 while government hospitals rose more moderately from less than
80 to 137.
Average life expectancy, assuming equal numbers of
males and female, increased by 17% to 74.1 years, reflecting vast
improvement in health levels, which is reinforced by the sharp over 80%
drop in the infant mortality rate to seven per 1,000 live births.
World
confidence in the
Malaysian economy too increased over the 42-year
period and this is well-supported by foreign direct investment flows in
2011 of an excellent RM33bil which was 150 times more than that in 1970.
Who
would have believed 42 years ago, that Malaysia would make such major
achievements in an extremely challenging environment of uncertainty
posed by the 1969 racial riots and the drastic and controversial steps
that the Government took then to redress racial imbalances and eliminate
poverty?
But despite the scepticism and the lack of confidence
then, we succeeded and succeeded well. Yes, we could have done better,
but then we can always do better and anyone could have done better. What
counted was that we met our major targets.
We find similar
scepticism now to our efforts to make yet another great transformation, a
giant stride to become a
developed nation with its citizens earning
high incomes and enjoying a better quality of life than ever before.
Promising figures
We
aim to do this in a bit more than eight years in a rather challenging
and competitive environment. And I dare say we know how to do it. We
have it pretty much mapped out in quite some detail.
The initial
figures are promising, despite all the nay-saying which continues to
give me the transformation blues. But yes, we will rise above the blues
as we did before and make this a better nation for each and everyone of
us.
The results for 2010 and 2011 are great with most of our
targets not just met but exceeded, often by a lot. See the comprehensive
annual report on economic and government transformation in the
Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) website for details.
Rome
wasn’t built overnight, likewise Malaysia too. We are blessed as a
country. Whilst we know there are shortcomings, we also need to count
our blessings even as we overcome the shortcomings and other obstacles.
And we shall overcome – of that I am very sure.
Transformation Blues - By Idris Jala