Singapore - Malaysia`s prime minister defended his multiethnic country`s record on racial equity Tuesday and invited foreign businesses to invest in a new industrial zone aimed at modernizing the nation`s south.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Malaysia did not discriminate against its minorities, citing a power-sharing arrangement that has kept a coalition of Malay, Chinese, Indian and other parties in power since 1957.
About 60 percent of Malaysia`s 26 million people are Malays. Ethnic Chinese comprise a quarter, while Indians make up 10 percent. The three communities have lived in relative harmony since 1969 when hundreds were killed in riots between Malays and Chinese.
"Everyone has a future in Malaysia, you do not worry about that. We are managing race relations very well," Abdullah said in response to questions at the Forbes Global CEO conference in Singapore which was attended by more than 400 business leaders. "The very important formula is power-sharing in the government."
Race relations are an extremely sensitive subject in Malaysia, where the government promotes a decades-old affirmative action program favoring Malays that critics say encourages ethnic divides and is a roadblock to full democracy. But Abdullah defended the system.
"All these policies that you say favor the Malays, the indigenous people, are government policies — these are products of decisions taken by the Cabinet, a multiracial Cabinet, that practices power-sharing that everybody must agree on," Abdullah said.
The affirmative action policy for ethnic Malays, known as Bumiputeras or "sons of the soil," is supposed to boost them economically and ensure they control at least 30 percent of corporate equity. Many say policies favoring Malays in business contracts, housing, bank loans, education and government jobs are at the root of growing racial divisions.
Abdullah said that foreign investors in a new economic hub in southern Johor state bordering Singapore will be exempt from a government policy requiring businesses to have Malay partners holding at least 30 percent equity.
"The specific condition that we have applied before with regard to the need to provide opportunities for the indigenous, the Bumiputera, has now been completely relaxed" in the special zone, he said. "We are not imposing any more such condition and this certainly has been welcomed." Abdullah said the policy had become a disincentive to foreign investment.
The Iskandar Development Region, or IDR, was launched in November as a new regional growth center to woo foreign investors amid stiff competition from China and India. Once completed, the zone would be almost three times the size of Singapore. Malaysia plans an investment of US$14 billion (€10.1 billion) over the next five years, and US$105 billion (€75.9 billion) over 20 years.
Source: www.iht.com (12 September 2007)
