DELAYED by five years, Vision 2020 (Wawasan 2020) has become Vision 2025 (Wawasan 2025), said Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

He blamed his predecessor Najib Razak for failing to put Malaysia on track towards achieving developed and high income status by 2020.

Dr Mahathir introduced Vision 2020 in1991, during the tabling of the 6th Malaysia. 

The plan lists nine central challenges the country must meet in order to become a developed nation by the year 2020.

Malaysia’s nine tasks are to:

* Establish a united Malaysian nation with a sense of common and shared destiny. This must be a nation at peace with itself, territorially and ethnically integrated, living in harmony and full and fair partnership, made up of one ‘Bangsa Malaysia’ with political loyalty and dedication to the nation.

* Create a psychologically liberated, secure, and developed Malaysian society with faith and confidence in itself, justifiably proud of what it is, of what it has accomplished, robust enough to face all manner of adversity.

* Foster and develop a mature democratic society practising a form of mature consensual, community-oriented Malaysian democracy that can be a model for many developing countries.

* Establish a fully moral and ethical society, whose citizens are strong in religious and spiritual values and imbued with the highest of ethical standards.

* Establish a mature, liberal and tolerant society in which Malaysians of all colour and creed are free to practise and profess their customs, cultures and religious beliefs and yet feeling that they belong to one nation.

* Establish a scientific and progressive society, a society that is innovative and forward-looking, one that is not only a consumer of technology but also a contributor to the scientific and technological civilisation of the future.

* Establish a fully caring society and a caring culture, a social system in which society will come before self, in which the welfare of the people will revolve not around the state or the individual but around a strong and resilient family system.

* Ensure an economically just society. This is a society in which there is a fair and equitable distribution of the wealth of the nation, in which there is full partnership in economic progress.

* Establish a prosperous society, with an economy that is fully competitive, dynamic, robust and resilient.

Dr Mahathir, who was known as the father of modernisation, served as prime minister for 22 years, from 1981 to 2003, during his previous stint in office. 

He returned to power after being elected as the seventh prime minister of Malaysia in May 2018.

His predecessor Najib had his own vision for Malaysia known as the National Transformation 2050 (TN50).

Najib said the TN50 was not intended to nullify Vision 2020 but to set and fulfil a new aspiration beyond 2020.

The TN50, he said, reflected the people’s aspiration via a bottom-up approach unlike Vision 2020, which approach was top-down. – May 8, 2019.