Stand up for Malaysia?
I read a recent NST opinion piece , “There are more positives than negatives about Malaysia”.
Like the young author, I think Malaysia indeed has more positives than negatives. We were blessed to inherit a British legal system and the rule of law at Merdeka, have an English Westminster style parliamentary democracy, a unique constitutional monarchy, English is still widely spoken and we are a (or used to be) friendly people, welcoming foreigners. But these days a lot of foreigners holding the MM2H visa think Putrajaya wants most of them out.
The trouble with many "feel good, tepuk tangan sendiri" articles like the above is they tend to encourage a kind of hubristic thinking, eg "Malaysians are so fortunate already, so please don't complain about this xxxx or that xxx"
Social media etiquette rules advise bloggers not to " rain on somebody's parade." Sorry. But old habits are hard to shed. You see as a former investment analyst in another life, yours truly relished the opportunity to point out the Negatives rather than the Positives.
Take for example the following facts about Malaysia:
Believe it or not, Malaysia's GDP per capita was once higher than Korea's in the 1960s,
In the 1980s, Malaysians went to Shanghai to buy cheap properties in China. Now Chinese citizens come here to buy cheap Malaysian properties
In the mid 1980s when yours truly started work in Investment Banking /Investment Research, the KLSE was still an "investible" stock market for foreign financial institutions. I think Malaysia retained a sizeable weighting in the Morgan Stanley BRIC index ex Japan up to around 1993. Nowadays, the Malaysian stock market is largely ignored by institutional investors who prefer Indonesia or Vietnam
The point I am trying to make is of course nothing ever stands still. For now Malaysia still has more positives than negatives.
But for too long, Malaysia's natural comparative advantages have been eroded by poor political decisions, e.g. ditching English as the medium of instruction in schools to teach Science and Mathematics, expansionist monetary policies that contributed to a weaker Ringgit, and housing policies that largely left the building of affordable houses to the private sector.
You reap what you sow, folks. 🤠
