Mohan,
I am not sure you understood Bernie's post. I think what he is saying is that IMF involvement would force Malaysia to do away with their inequitable "bumiputera" laws which favor the Malay people in many many economic ways. These were enacted after the last race riots here in (approx) 1969.
Here is an interesting overview:
Malaysia
Introduction
More than 60 ethnic or culturally differentiated groups can be
found in Malaysia's population of just under 20 million, but the
most crucial population division is that between Bumiputera
and non-Bumiputera people. The Bumiputeras are those with
cultural affinities indigenous to Peninsular and Bornean
Malaysia and the immediate region. Malays constitute the
principal Bumiputera group and account for around 55 per
cent of Malaysia's population. Non-Bumiputeras are people
whose cultural affinities lie outside Malaysia and its region -
principally people of Chinese and Indian descent. Chinese
constitute about 32 per cent of Malaysia's population and
Indians about 8 per cent.
The Malays have a long history and, since the 15th century, an
Islamic culture in which they take pride. In the colonial era,
however, their cultural world - extending across the Malay
Peninsula and Indonesian Archipelago - was divided by
Western colonial powers. In British Malaya and northern
Borneo Malays were relegated to minor social roles and
virtually excluded from the foreign-financed modernising
economy, which utilised immigrant labour. Malaysia's history
since World War II has been primarily the story of the
reassertion of Malay primacy without precipitating serious
racial discord.
Malaysia's stability has enabled vast economic growth,
particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. The stability has been at
the expense, however, of some elements of the democratic
system with which Malaysia began as an independent nation.
Malay advancement has also had an ironic political
consequence - nowadays rifts and rivalries within the Malay
community need as much adroit political management as the differences between Malaysia's ethnic groups.
Best,
Stitch |
