There ought to be a target date no matter how long the timeline would stretch, said Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) chief Wan Saiful Wan Jan.
“It must be done in stages because it is a sensitive issue,” he said. “The nation must be mature enough to debate and discuss this issue in a healthy manner.”
He was responding to an editorial published in The Economist, titled “Race-based affirmative action is failing poor Malaysians”.
According to the article, Malaysia’s affirmative action policy has caused much damage, creating ethnic tensions and a culture of entitlement and dependency among the Malays.
Although it acknowledged that the policy has had some benefits, such as reducing the gap in income between Malays and other races, the editorial said it was a mistake to define needs according to race.
Wan Saiful said decades of race-based policies had conditioned the Malays to be reliant on the government.
“For the last 40 years, they have lived under a government that made them dependent on it. It will take time to re-educate them to believe that they are just as good as everybody else.”
Klang MP Charles Santiago also commented on The Economist’s article. He said the government would have to create a competitive environment in which the Malays could grow.
“For example, the government needs to create a business-savvy community among the Malays and give incentives to the good performers in the community who are doing well,” he said.
He acknowledged that many Malays had “opened their eyes” but added that the government was still making it difficult for them to break out of the “Malay community bubble”.
“In most cases, businesses that want to bid for government contracts need Bumiputera involvement in their projects,” he said.
The Economist: Why dropping race-based policies good for Malaysia