Comparing the economy and the fiscal policies, aside from other aspects of the government, under former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and with that of Najib, the article stated that the difference in the way the people were treated at both ends of the social strata was what mattered.

“At the end of the day, as a society we will be judged not by how we treat the richest and most fortunate among us, but by how we treat the poorest and least fortunate among us.

“And the exemplary manifestation of this belief is going to be the most important legacy of Prime Minister Najib Razak,” said Isham Jalil, who is special officer to the prime minister.

He added that like in the advanced economies and developed nations, BR1M is part of the big picture in the social security net that we are currently developing.

Isham went on to explain how under the Mahathir administration, despite the poverty rate being as high as 30%, there was no income support for anyone, especially for those who had lost their jobs.

“In the 80s and 90s, we were so busy building skyscrapers and mega projects we forgot to develop our social security system adequately.

“Only a handful of people received direct income support from the government and none received income support when they were involuntarily out of work or faced with personal financial crisis,” he said.

Taking it further, Isham also suggested that the 1997-1999 economic crisis led to higher unemployment and that served as the primary reason for the street protests led by then sacked finance minister Anwar Ibrahim.

“The hundreds of thousands of people marched on the streets perhaps not because of Anwar, but because they had just lost their jobs and they were angry. And there was no social security net to help them.

“Anwar just took the opportunity to gain mass support, and he rode the wave of mass dissent that was already there,” Isham said, adding that the “crime rate and incidence of violence shot up tremendously.”

Isham also said that praise for Mahathir for supposedly steering the nation out of the worst economic crisis (1997-99) is misplaced considering that it was the former PM and Anwar who were actually responsible for causing the crisis in the first place.

“George Soros just took the opportunity on the weaknesses and cracks in the management of the Malaysian economy that had already been building up for months prior to the crisis,” said Isham, who is also president of Sukarelawan Malaysia.

Writing on the current increase in the cost of living, Isham said it had been affected by the “policy of yesteryears”.

“During the 1990s, much of infrastructure development, such as highways and power plants, were built through the privatisation policy and financed by committing the people to pay the private concessionaire companies for the use of the infrastructure decades into the future.

“In the early 90s, the economy was booming. Overestimates of income growth by the administration then had in turn committed the public to pay high payments to highway toll concessionaires and the independent power producers (IPPs),” Isham said, calling it a legacy problem from the previous administration.