Pie.
For all this talk about getting Malaysia to becoming a developed nation status in less than 10 years from now; in wanting to double our incomes when that day arrives, our leaders still display neither the discipline nor the confidence in making that economic leap. The Government still behaves like a lazy parent who tells one child to take a step back so that another can catch up. Instead of instilling confidence and telling all Malaysians that we have a great opportunity to collectively enlarge our economic pie, the ruling party allowed interest groups to pollute our minds that one group is after another group's slice of pie.
Those who believes that expansion of the pie is more important than deciding who gets which slice, advocates meritocracy and free competition within the economy. Rightfully, if the pie gets much larger, in the end, everyone wins. This group does not want to waste time arguing who deserves which piece. Like parents who believes in extracting their children's maximum potential, they understand that the weaker child must be accorded extra help, of course, but not at the expense of his other siblings and certainly on the premise that the child has to work even harder, since eventually he has to stand on his own two feet alongside his siblings when they enter adulthood. That by allowing all Malaysians to participate freely in all its economic activities, and in fair competition with each other, it unleashes a force that pushes this blessed nation to achieve its fullest potential. Conversely, by limiting competition, or erecting artificial barriers to protect certain privileged individuals, this will at worse, doomed Malaysia to stagnation and at best growth way below its true potential.
On the other hand, there is another group who purportedly supports positive economic discrimination, when in reality they are actually protecting their own piece of the pie. Noble national goals such as the NEP which aims to eradicates poverty amongst all the poor, are manipulated and twisted till it veers far away from its original objective and ended up being used as a shield to enrich a small coterie of politically-connected "masters of the universe". This latter group has little confidence in nor do they work towards growing this pie. It is easier just to demand their slice of the pie come what may, and if the pie shrinks, then they are entitled to a larger slice. They get the choicest cut, while leaving crumbs for those whom they are supposed to fight for. They rather put all their efforts into preserving their portion of the economic pie at all costs - even when the policies they stubbornly perpetuate cause this economic pie to grow much slower, as other nation's pie gets larger and larger.
In the end, the government's economic transformation programme will not take off, if we fail to transform the minds of those who still insist that one group's gain necessarily mean the loss of another's - that our economy is a zero-sum game. It did not have to be this way. Instead of fighting over who gets which slice of the pie, we should be working together to expand it. For too many years these narrow-minded politicians caused us to stand still holding our "prized" piece of pie, casting suspicious eyes over other fellow Malaysians, afraid that they will snatch ours away, while other nations has whizzed us by. They divert our attention away from the global arena where the real economic battles are being waged, to concocted local strives which we are led to believe it exists. No more Malaysians, let us not be duped any longer that my gain is necessarily your loss. It is time for Malaysians to drive out those that seeks to divide us in order to protect their slice - and choose leaders who work towards building a larger pie for all of us.
We all deserve a much bigger pie.
