THE Shared Prosperity Vision (SPV) 2030 abandons race-based policies to reduce income gaps between social classes, regions and genders, said supporters of the development agenda within Pakatan Harapan.

They said it is unfair to call the national development plan a “rehash of the New Economic Policy (NEP)” as described by a top economist recently, as the NEP used a race-based approach.

In comparison, said PKR leader Khalid Jaafar, the SPV employs a more needs-based approach that is focused on classes of households and regions.

However, Khalid and other PH leaders admit that certain Malays and Bumiputeras will be the biggest beneficiaries of the SPV as they make up the majority of households in the bottom 40 (B40) income group.

Bumiputeras also happen to make up the majority who live in states with the poorest households, such as Kelantan, Kedah, Sabah and Sarawak.

“The SPV is a shift from a purely race-based discourse to one that is more inclusive and which looks at social class, region and gender,” said Tian Chua, another PKR leader who supports the concept.

“But we can’t deny that certain ethnicities have more disadvantaged people, such as the Orang Asli, the Bumiputeras of Sabah and Sarawak, and Indians and Malays living in rural areas,” said Chua, who is a special officer to the works minister.

Unlike the previous Barisan Nasional administration and its affirmative action policies, PH is putting as much thought into the delivery system as it is into specific programmes, the leaders said.

This is so that the infrastructure and methods to disburse aid are kept transparent to prevent it from going to those who do not need it.

“Which is why institutional reform, especially in the civil service, has to go hand in hand with the development agenda,” said Khalid, who heads the think-tank, Institut Kajian Dasar (IKD).

Such reforms would address another criticism of the SPV, which is that it lacks a mechanism to prevent it from being hijacked by the elite who would then abuse its policies for personal gain.

Better delivery

SPV 2030 is PH’s 10-year national development plan which aims to reduce income disparities between classes, genders and regions.

Its authors admit that previous affirmative action policies under BN have led to patronage where opportunities and aid would often flow to the politically connected.

Think-tank Institut Massa, which co-authored the SPV, said instead of giving out permits and licences to aid Bumiputera entrepreneurs, policies will be focused on skills and capability-building.

“This is affirmative action without deprivation. We are not taking away business from non-Bumiputeras and giving it to Bumiputeras,” Institut Massa CEO M. Nizam Mashar told The Malaysian Insight.

“At the same time, Ali Baba businesses won’t be tolerated,” Nizam said, referring to how Bumiputeras in the past would sell the contracts and permits they received from the BN government to non-Bumiputeras for a quick profit.

On January 20, Universiti Malaya economist Prof Edmund Terence Gomez voiced concerns that the SPV resembled the now-defunct NEP, a 1980s development agenda to wipe out poverty and bridge income gaps between the country’s ethnic groups.

In calling the SPV a “rehash of the NEP”, Gomez said the national agenda’s approach appeared similar to the NEP’s race-based strategy.

Gomez, who has written extensively on the failures of BN’s affirmative action policies, also questioned PH’s ability to prevent the SPV from being hijacked by vested interests within the administration.

“We are not going to apologise for what happened in the past (under BN),” said PKR’s Khalid.

“Policies meant to help low-income Bumiputeras were hijacked and that is a betrayal. We are going to rectify the mistakes of the past, which is why institutional reforms are important.”

Chua said more meticulous tools than those employed in the NEP era are being developed to identify those who truly qualify for aid.

“For instance, in the past, just because your IC states you are Malay and Muslim, you will get a micro-loan. But we’re not doing that because we don’t look at race but also household income and where the person lives.

“So, when we distribute aid, it’s not just the poor Malays who will get it, but Orang Asli, Sabahans and Sarawakians and poor Indians and Chinese.” – January 23, 2020.