E Contrario

Shahrir Samad was the last speaker. In the end he attracted the most questions from the audience. Shahrir has often been perceived as a ‘rebel’ in Umno. He might be ‘liberal’ in certain issues, however Shahrir is a traditionalist when come to Umno basic tenets.

Throughout the night, Shahris played the role of chief apologist for NEP. He strongly defended the NEP achievements. He said we cannot simplistically blame all corruption and abuses on the NEP.

He argued that the NEP was discontinued in 1990, when he was out of the government. He said the absence of the NEP might even be the cause of the problems today. To prove his case that the NEP was no longer implemented in ’90s (during the time S46 was outside the government), he cunningly quoted Anwar who told in an interview that “during my (Anwar) time as finance minister, I had never emphasized the NEP”.

Shahrir claimed that cronyism and nepotism were the widely spoken of after 1990. Prior to that there were no such problems. Thus one cannot attribute corruption and cronyism to the NEP.

Shahrir’s controversial statement attracted a lot of questions. He repeatedly argued that the NEP was ended in 1990, and it did not adversely affect the economic performance.

“Do we really want those investments that have ran away to Vietnam, Indonesia, etc.? They may not be suitable for us anymore.”

He asserted that the objective of NEP is about poverty eradication and fair distribution regardless of race.

At this point I interjected and objected to such shrewd rhetoric. The common understanding of the NEP is race-based affirmative action. Our discussion should be based on the actual operation of the policy. Our criticism against the NEP and whatever names the program was subsequently called is on this nature of race-based policy.

At the end of our discussion, Shahrir jokingly said to me, “the listeners must have been totally confused, and the whole point this (exercise) was to confuse the people”. A master political operator indeed!