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Acronym soup swamps Malaysia reform drive

Reuters
Global News Journal
Aug 25, 2010

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak says he has embarked on a series of radical economic reforms. In reality it feels as if he has unleashed a barrage of incomprehensible acronyms on the unsuspecting public of this Southeast Asian nation.

The charge for economic reform is being led by the snappily named PEMANDU. As well as being the Malay word for “driver” it stands for the government’s Performance Management and Delivery Unit.

PEMANDU is in charge of formulating and implementing NKRAs (National Key Result Areas), MKRAs (Ministerial Key Result Areas) and getting “Big Results Fast”, according to its website, although it singularly failed to win political backing for a radical revamp of Malaysia’s costly subsidy regime. Continue reading “Acronym soup swamps Malaysia reform drive”

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Has Mahathir crossed the Rubicon to declare war on Najib, 1Malaysia and NEM?

Shock, outrage and consternation are understatements of the reactions to the latest outbursts by former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad when he denounced the proponents of meritocracy as “racists too” and warned the Malay community that they risk losing political control of the country if they remain disunited.
 
It is not just the spectacle of the former longest-serving Prime Minister of Malaysia adding oil to the cauldron of the politics of race and religion  but the repudiation of the Vision 2020 and Bangsa Malaysia which he had proclaimed two decades ago.
 
In 1990, beginning his second decade as Prime Minister, Mahathir spelt out Vision 2020 to achieve in 30 years a fully developed Malaysian nation made up of one “Bangsa Malaysia” with a sense of common and shared destiny,  distinguished by the pursuit of excellence, fully aware of all its potentials, psychologically subservient to none, and respected by the peoples of other nations.
Continue reading “Has Mahathir crossed the Rubicon to declare war on Najib, 1Malaysia and NEM?”