By Christopher Fernandez
While the move to create wealth in Malaysia is laudable, the real beneficiaries appear to have been side-stepped out of their fair share, creating a society ill at ease especially with those who are savoring the wealth of the economic booms of the past.
Ever since the inception of Merdeka, independence wrought and wrestled from the British colonialists in 1957, the nation has moved forward in pushing for industrialization and development and is expectedly hoping to come on-stream as a fully developed country by 2020.
In the push towards this direction, especially since the advent of the Mahathir administration, much wealth has invariably been created in the process. Malaysia has witnessed dramatic growth in the standard of living and it is easily evident much development has brought much wealth and prosperity to the people.
But there has to be certain words of caution to those bent on getting richer and richer – be sensible about wealth creation – as the push and thrust to become wealthier has also attracted an unhealthy influx of economic migrants into the country who hope to compete and reap the spoils that are seemingly spilling over in their direction as well.
This specious belief that creating wealth and prosperity is the way forward to a better life does make sense. But what, unfortunately, that has transpired in this country and a significant number of other countries in the Asian belt are that wealth has mostly been created for the higher end of society, by gross indulgences in acts of cheating and corruption.
Thus, while wealth creation is always a good idea and there is nothing wrong with it, the path to creating wealth is more often than not littered with the acts of cheating and corruption. This creation of wealth in Malaysia seems to have created a sizeable number of wealthy, titled persons but whose success, when under scrutiny, appear to be very hollow and oftentimes even of a suspicious and dubious nature.
While everyone will achieve an end result in whatever they undertake to do, it is really not the end result that counts and matters, it is the ways and means that are used and employed to achieve the end result that really counts and matters.
In the case of a significant number of highly successful and glorified Malaysian personalities, while there are persons who really have a solid track record in having achieved fame and having created wealth for themselves, there appear to be far more who are guilty of having climbed up the ladder of success by way of cheating and by subscribing to corrupt practices.
This is the reason why the average Malaysian usually views with a pinch of salt the claim of persons to have achieved success and created their wealth by way of industry, hard work and the use of acceptable ways and means to achieve the end result.
It is usually in the arena of politics, business and the professions, that we find a noble lot of individuals who have been side-stepped from the glory of fame and fortune by persons who have an uncanny learning of the tricks of their trade to place themselves in a better position by the use of cunning, cheating and corruption.
Therefore, in the eyes of ordinary Malaysians, a certain number of the persons in this country who lay claim to having been bestowed with titles, positions and having amassed their wealth in the process, actually fail to impress and convince Malaysians as a whole that their success have been achieved by fair and square means.
It is especially unbecoming and even embarrassing to witness persons who are titled, in positions of authority and supposedly to be leaders of the nation, being subject to much ridicule and contempt as their ostentatious and lavish display of wealth is more often than not accredited to cheating and corruption.
With more Malaysians being better educated, they are now able to know that high society individuals should not be judged by the externals by which men judge their fellow men. For more and more Malaysians, they have learnt not to “judge a book by its cover.”
Owing to the largess of wealth created since the days of the Mahathir regime, most of the high end of Malaysian society has further prospered. But there has been a price to pay. The effects of the wealth that has been created have been largely negated by a growing disparity between the haves and the have not’s, a spiral in the prices of goods and services favoring the wealthy, and the spawning of arrogant, ill behavior by the rich and powerful oppressing the rest of Malaysia especially the working class.
While it is true much wealth has been created, the outcome of wealth creation in Malaysian society is that it has been unfairly distributed with the vast majority of Malaysians being displaced from being the real beneficiaries of wealth and instead being put to labor and toil to keep the upper class, who through their corrupt and crony network, tick away with an opulent lifestyle for themselves and their families.
While Mahathir’s vision of creating wealth was a bright idea to begin with, like all short-sighted individuals, the erstwhile former prime minister failed to put in place mechanisms to distribute the wealth that was created in accordance to fair-play and justice.
This subscription by the government to partisan politics has caused much disillusionment and disappointment among the large majority of Malaysians causing them to vote their displeasure in the 12th GE in the form of a political tsunami to awaken the BN-UMNO fraternity to the possibility that their stronghold, Malaysia, was drawing to an end.
Wealth creation is a thorny subject for any society especially for a country aspiring to become a developed nation in the years to come. But in Malaysia, the economic booms of the past has engendered feelings of ill will, racial discord and the general sentiment that the powers-that-be who have been ruling especially over the last three decades have failed to practice meritocracy and favored more often than not the wrong individuals and organizations to benefit from the efforts of wealth creation.
The disproportionate distribution of wealth that has so far been undertaken should prove to play a pivotal role in the casting of votes by voters in the 13th GE. Unimpressive attempts by the Najib Administration of late to spend millions of ringgit in trying to curry favor with voters have so far been viewed with growing skepticism as Malaysians are beginning to realize that for the last 30-odd years or so most of them have been deprived of much of the wealth that has been created.
Besides being sensible about wealth creation, Malaysians should also collectively push for their rightful dues from the BN government and not be shortchanged anymore. This should be payback time now. If the BN-UMNO collaboration fail to practice fair-play and justice and ensure the equitable distribution of wealth, it is high time for Malaysians with their power to vote to boot the cheats and the corrupt for a better Malaysia. -The Rocket
* Christopher Fernandez has been writing and teaching throughout Asia since 1984.
