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PETALING JAYA: Nazir Razak, son of the second Prime Minister Abdul Razak Hussein, today suggested the formulation of a new social contract to ensure a better future – economically, politically and socially.
In a webinar on the future of Malaysia’s social cohesion model, the former chairman of the CIMB Group said there was a need to review the “implicit social contract”, adding that it seemed to apply to almost everything in the country.
He then reiterated his call for the creation of a National Advisory Council (NCC) to bring together the leaders of the respective fields to forge a new way forward for the nation.
“In fact, we have to go back to the table and negotiate between communities. Have leaders around the table and agree to a new social contract.
“You know, what was said at the NCC in the 1970s was not recorded. They were told that they could say what they wanted and there was a heated discussion.
“Tun Razak and Tun Dr. Ismail Abdul Rahman just sat and listened. Then they came up with the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was innovative at that time, ”he said in the talk organized by the Asia-Europe Institute of Universiti Malaya.
Nazir said it would be difficult to tackle social cohesion alone as it was intertwined with politics and the economy, adding that the most harmless reform could be quickly racialized and toppled.
He cited how his brother, former Prime Minister Najib Razak, had tried to eliminate affirmative action and implement a New Economic Model based on needs, which flew out of the water.
“Try withdrawing affirmative action today and PAS, Umno and others will rally the troops and say that you are taking away the rights of the Malays. If you push for electoral reforms, they will say that you are taking power away from the Malays. So it can’t be done in isolation. “
He acknowledged that the current government might lack the political will to establish the NCC, but said the council could even be created by the Governing Council.
Failure to reset the system would mean the same old problems, he said, noting that Pakatan Harapan was also plagued by the same problems despite its initially more moderate stance.
“Basically, PPBM was trying to compete with Umno and PAS (for Malaysian votes), creating uncertainty with ICERD (International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination) and others. That is why we need to fix the system.
“Malaysia is like a poorly written play. No matter how good the actors are, they still have to recite their lines. So we have to change the script, ”he added.
Meanwhile, Edmund Terence Gómez, professor of political economy at the Universiti Malaya, saying that the sponsorship system defined by race had conditioned the thinking of the electorate, agreed with Nazir that it should be dismantled.
As the nation faced a recession in 1986, he said then-Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad lifted NEP’s restrictions on the manufacturing sector, prompting an influx of investment and a booming economy.
He said this was a lesson that Putrajaya should have learned from, and argued that affirmative action under the NEP should have remained in its initial 20-year period rather than extended.
However, he disagreed with Nazir’s suggestion that an NCC be tasked with charting the future of the nation, expressing concern over who would make the council and how effective it would be in light of the failures of similar organisms in the past.
“We need to get away from the ideas of the 1970s. A new generation has emerged that wants new ideas.”
He proposed a model of a German social market economy, developed just after World War II, which eventually led to Germany being one of the largest industrial nations.
