I believe personal health is great wealth. My father lived to be almost 97; just short one month. He lived well and died well. Therefore, I have taken the view that good health is more valuable than great wealth; so that I, too, get to try and finish well like him.

Nonetheless, now that we are all observing and concurrently living within a three generational reality and environment, we have become aware of real material differences amongst ourselves (whether by health or wealth); especially as they become more visible through status artefacts to others.

Therefore recently, when a friend we met in Vietnam commented and enquired of me where such obvious and visible inter-generational wealth of ‘many Cina or Melayu Baru’ came from; I really had no good answers.

This column is therefore my attempt to think through these issues as I am still trying to contemplate the why, what, and how, after 53 years, of the Baram Community of Dayaks that I visited are still so poor after two generations of Malaysia. I shared those concerns in an earlier column. They do not even have a basic quality of life promised by PM Abdul Razak Hussein in the 1970s vide the New Economic Policy (NEP).

Did we abuse wealth distribution opportunities?

In a previous article entitled ‘Greed not need’, I identified and described my utter disgust with the public services of Malaysia about how we failed to deliver development as originally intended by the NEP.

I was part and parcel of the same delivery apparatus for 32 years, and it is obvious now, after 57 years of leadership of the present federal government of Malaysia, that it has failed miserably to deliver basic needs-based development to the people of the Baram Valley. I spent about 10 days there recently.

My current hypothesis therefore is – it is a strategic failure of political/cultural leadership of the government of Malaysia and their allies; and especially with reference to the critical and important responsibilities and higher accountabilities of three specific agencies, namely: the Finance Ministry, Economic Planning Unit (EPU), and the Prime Minister’s Department (JPM). The Implementation Coordination Unit (ICU) was designed to report on all these ‘failures of development’.

Let me articulate my postulation about such absolute failure of delivery:

1. I used to sit on the Budget Review Committees for the Finance Ministry between 1973-75, and especially in the review of Defence Ministry budgets. It is usually chaired by the Treasury representative, with members from EPU, ministries, and the then-Implementation Coordination Development Administrative Unit or ICDAU (especially to ensure the Bumiputra Agenda) of JPM.

Our small but measureable agenda was to ensure 30 percent of Class F contracts were given to new and emerging bumiputra contractors. That policy appears to have become the only agenda under a different but convoluted system devised by the Finance Ministry-cum-EPU today.

I hear that every company bidding for public contracts must now be registered as a government contractor with at least 30 percent share-holding partnership of bumiputras. This bumi quota figure may even have become 50 percent by now. These are new policy positions, but conducted by administrative fiat, I fear.

2. The direct result of such a policy is the growth of ‘many sleeping partners’ who collect their revenues or benefits for ‘almost doing nothing other than selling their names and status of bumiputras’. My question is, how many of these are bumiputras of Sabah and Sarawak? All these-types get pink share forms from ‘public-listing for these companies’, but much of which were then sold or disposed for share price gains.

Such a massive but positive wealth distribution agenda appears to have become our public service corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda. But, is it really?

3. The negative results of such an interpretation and translation of the original Bumiputra Agenda is the emergence and growth of a small group of crony capitalists with embedded corruption as follows:

a. Families of bumiputra elites of Umno (and their allies) become beneficiaries of such largesse which is then distributed to their supporters. For example, many of the children of Umno members went to Mara Junior Colleges for their education, but they were definitely not the neediest. Mara was designed to address Malay poverty issues.

b. Others are friends and family of senior public servants who also amassed such privileges and benefits, once the name of this game is known and becomes familiar. I once complained to a senior Diplomatic and Administrative Service (PTD) officer that, “should such shares not be declared as ‘property’ under our assets declaration”; but, my question was only dismissed as irrelevant. Are shares not assets? Really, Public Services Department (JPA)?

c. Therefore there was an immense growth and proliferation of a new breed of ‘enabling crony agents and agencies’ to support and feed this corruptible abuse of the NEP. Therefore, we see today, for example, ‘security companies and their agents growing’.

Local security lapses appear, as police ‘delegate this responsibility to crony-related security surveillance by Nepali guards who are equally conducting illegal security of such localised new jurisdictions’. This is happening all over local administration in Malaysia. These are not planned and approved as ‘guarded communities’.

d. Consequently therefore, the recent evidence of 1.5 million Bangladeshi contract workers involving the new home affairs minister or his cronies, immediately after he came into office. It is one obvious but clear evidence of such crony relationships.

Wealth of children

I am in contact with many of my classmates from Sungai Petani, Kedah. Therefore, it is not too difficult to figure out if or why some are more wealthy than others. Some are far more wealthy than their fathers and grandfathers but in rather unexplainable ways. I did not know that so many have won ‘lottery tickets’.

Premised upon this logic of my argument above, the question of the new friend we met in Vietnam is valid. For example, in Hanoi, I saw an array of Ferraris parked at the boulevard called Nguyen Hue near the Royal City Hotel. His question too was – how can the children of our Umno politicians (whether assemblypersons or MPs) afford such vehicles simply on the basis of their ‘salaries and allowances’?

I had a similar question for the children who drove these Ferraris in Socialist Vietnam.

My friend actually went on to list some of his good friends and classmates who were Umno members and held formal positions, but he could not account for the sudden growth of the wealth of their children.

Lim Goh Tong’s wealth, YTL’s wealth, or other such early generation businessmen’s wealth is understandable. Or for example, the Chettiars who owned half of Perlis and Kedah as rubber plantations; they laid the business foundations for the current Malaysian development of agricultural and manufacturing industries from the original wealth through hereditary wealth or business acumen.

So, if their children and grandchildren are wealthy; it is understandable. But most others are not.

Therefore, my friend’s question really is – how did the children and grandchildren of first-generation Umno politicians ‘suddenly become billionaires’? Are these only from the parent’s original wealth or is there some other clearer explanation?

I have proffered one explanation; others are free to counter or present any alternative explanation to identify the source and cause of the current abuse of wealth generation and distribution opportunities in Malaysia under the name of public policy.