Taking a leaf from Malaysia on ethnic peace-building and development

by Uditha Kumarasinghe

Finance and Planning Minister Dr.Sarath Amunugama says former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr.Mahathir Mohamed's recent visit to Sri Lanka can be described as a landmark visit from which the country could draw many lessons, particularly the initiatives taken by him to end Malaysia's ethnic conflict and attract investments within an open economic structure turning Malaysia into a developed country.

Dr. Amunugama in an interview with the Daily News said: "If Sri Lanka wants to tackle its burning problems such as unemployment, poverty and the gap between the haves and have nots, the country should reach at least an 8 per cent growth rate."

He said: "Except Sri Lanka, all other Asian countries have been able to reach this economic growth. Today Sri Lanka is behind even Bangladesh. The entire world is laughing at Sri Lanka due to its inability to achieve economic progress despite our boasts. As the Finance Minister I will not allow this trend to continue. All possible steps are being taken by the Government to bring Sri Lanka into the economic level of other South Asian countries."

The Minister said unless they took immediate measures to rectify key shortcomings like inefficiency, bribery and corruption in the state sector, what happened to the Veddah community will befall the nation. "Because Veddah community also refused to change in keeping with the modern world trends."

According to the Minister Former Malaysian Premier in his recent visit to Sri Lanka laid key emphasis and conducted a dialogue particularly on the economic sphere. Because he is fully qualified to conduct such a dialogue. Sri Lanka can take many examples from Malaysia to develop our socio-economic sector.

The socio-economic conditions in Sri Lanka and Malaysia are very similar. Sri Lanka's population is 20 million while the population in Malaysia is 27 million. Before Mahathir Mohamed came to power, Malaysia also produced and exported several primary goods such as tea, rubber, aluminium and geological resources and recorded a normal development growth. As in the case of Sri Lanka, Malaysia too came under the subjugation of the Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rulers. Administration, judiciary and other services in Malaysia are very similar to Sri Lanka.

Dr. Amunugama noted that Malaysia had to face more critical ethnic problems than Sri Lanka. At the time when Mahathir took over the leadership, 50 per cent of country's population was Malay while the balance was Chinese. In this situation, it was too difficult for him to reach an agreement between the two nationalities. "When Mahathir became the Premier of Malaysia, the country's per capita income was 480 US dollars.

After 23 years, when he stepped down, the country's per capita income was 9000 US dollars. This indicates that Malaysia's per capita income has increased nearly 20 fold during these 23 years. In addition, when the former Premier assumed office, the country's poverty level was 29 per cent, but this had been reduced to 6 per cent when he retired from politics. At present Malaysia has completely overcome its unemployment problem. Even some Sri Lankan workers have gone to Malaysia seeking various jobs.

Therefore Sri Lanka developed a strong fascination for Malaysia's economic policies.

But certain communal parties in Sri Lanka who do not have a proper understanding of Mahathir Mohamed's policies described him as a leader who favoured the `Bhoomiputhras' of his country." Even our Sinhala word Bhoomiputhra was also copied from Mahathir. Although these communal parties copied such words, they are not willing to copy his economic policy."

He said during the former Malaysian Premier's recent visit to Sri Lanka, certain communal parties were able to grasp Dr. Mahathir Mohammed's miracle recipe for his country's economy.

According to the Finance Minister, Mahathir Mohamed's economic policy is very important to Sri Lanka. The most important fact which Mahathir highlights is that an ethnic problem faced by a country should be sorted out first before that country can be developed. Similar to Black July in Sri Lanka, an ethnic conflict erupted between Malay and Chinese nationals in Malaysia on May 10, 1969.

However, the Malaysian Government was able to successfully end this ethnic conflict. It helped it to launch its economic revolution.

"It is more vital for us to study how Mahathir ended the ethnic conflict in Malaysia in a successful manner. He agreed to share power among all minority communities. Before Mahathir became the Premier, he had also some links with Malay nationalism. But his political party, the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) could successfully form an alliance with the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and Malaysian Indian Association (MIA). But this alliance was more successful than all coalitions formed in Sri Lanka. In Malaysia, each nationality rallys round these three political parties without splitting into various other groups unlike in Sri Lanka," he said.

The Minister noted that we have political parties under every bush. In Sri Lanka, there are so many leaders, but less followers. "Sri Lankan political parties have so many generals, but no soldiers." The media highlights and publishes the pictures of these generals to build their image, but nothing is mentioned of the ordinary partymen.

This is not the situation that obtains in Malaysia. Due to the political parties rallying round UMNO, Malaysia was able to sort out its ethnic conflict in a more successful manner. As a special feature, steps were taken to provide socio-economic benefits to minority communities too. This helped promote equitable wealth and power sharing among all the Malaysian communities.

Dr. Amunugama said Mahathir's argument was when the Government tries to keep everything under its control, it helps only the majority community to enjoy all the country's benefits. In such a situation, minor communities may disagree with such a move eventually leading them to opt for separation. Since we gained independence, politicians have filled the existing vacancies in the Government sector from their supporters.

When employment was given to youth, no attention was focused on the country's population ratio. For example, the Tamil community in the plantation sector was not given employment based on their population ratio while the representation of minor communities in country's armed forces and Police was also at a very low percentage. All recruitment procedures in State sector jobs have been mainly focused on the majority community.

But in Mahathir's effort to unite the different parties, a more fair distribution was made among all communities.

As a result, minority communities in Malaysia are satisfied with the ongoing system operated in their country. When minority communities conduct their religious activities, the Malaysian Government never obstructed such activities.

Equal opportunities have been provided to the people in Malaysia to follow the Chinese language, Tamil language and to follow Buddhism and the Hindu religion. Being a Muslim country, Malaysia never tries to promote extremism. Therefore Sri Lanka can take a leaf from Malaysia on how to solve our ethnic problem.

Commenting on Malaysia's economic policy, Dr.Amunugama outlined that earlier Malaysia too followed a rigid state sector policy based on the imperialist concept introduced by the colonial rulers." We should bear in mind that priority to the state sector is an imperialistic idea. During the time of the imperialist rulers, they brought every sector such as electricity, irrigation, power and energy and education under their control, because they did not like to give up the economic epicentres. Even today Sri Lanka follows this same administrative structure introduced by the imperialists."

"Mahathir firmly believes that a developing country should be humble. Because the countries worldwide are not always ready to feed the people of poor countries. The former Malaysian Premier openly expressed the view that a developing country should not hesitate to obtain foreign investment and use modern technology. In an era where science and technology sectors have reached their peak, we cannot stick to archaic methods which we have been following for so many decades.

A new concept that blends with indigenousness has to be introduced to suit the modern era. This does not mean we should abandon all indigenous concepts.

We should lay emphasis even on the country's ethnic problem utilising modern technology. At present Sri Lanka is fully equipped with modern technology needed for it." The Minister further said that Sri Lanka can take many examples from Malaysia's investment sector. They have given priority for foreign investment while opportunity has also been given to their local investors.

All Malaysian industries even those based on their local resources are joint ventures. Therefore Malaysia did not act foolishly like Sri Lanka.

"Here in Sri Lanka not a single mineral deposit is allowed to be exploited for commercial purposes. Sri Lanka has so many natural resources such as phosphate, ilmanite,plumbago while a large number of mineral resources are in the coastal belt. If we want to develop the country,these resources cannot be kept as archives or historical things mentioned in the `Mahawansa.'

These resources which are key income generating avenues of the country should be utilised for development. Without using these key resources, can we speak on economic growth? What China and Malaysia did first was to utilise their mines to develop their countries. But here the idea among certain leftist parties is that these natural resources should be kept underground, untouched.

According to Dr. Amunugama,the Malaysian Government and the private sector have rapidly developed their infrastructure facilities. It is difficult to find a country in South Asia which has such a developed port, road networks, communication and other infrastructure. In this modern world, connectivity is the most essential economic ingredient.

For example, Dialog GSM, a Malaysian business venture which launched its business in Sri Lanka 10 years ago has already given Dialog phone connections to over 1.5 million Sri Lankan people. In a situation where the posts and telecommunication sectors have recorded massive development, still post offices are being built in Sri Lanka.

We can't face the future following these outdated theories.

The Minister said modernity is in fully agreement with the basic ideas of socialism. According to modernity all are equals. Modern technology facilitates equality among all communities.