Oleh/By : DATO' SERI DR. MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : PUTRA WORLD TRADE CENTER (PWTC),
KUALA LUMPUR (K.L)
Tarikh/Date : 09/10/91
Tajuk/Title : THE OPENING OF THE COMMONWEALTH
FINANCE MINISTERS
Firstly I would like to welcome the Finance Ministers
of the Commonwealth to Malaysia. We in Malaysia are still
basking in the glow of the privilege and honour to host the
meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments two years
ago. We believe that the meeting had been very beneficial
to us and hopefully to the Commonwealth.
2. Your meeting, following soon after the Commonwealth
Heads of Governments' meeting in Malaysia will, we hope,
contribute further to the meaning and value of the Common-
wealth as the Heads of Governments meeting in 1989 did.
Very soon the Heads of Governments of the Commonwealth will
be meeting again in Harare, a meeting that will be historic
not only because of the things that are happening in South
Africa, a former Dominion and member of the Commonwealth, a
meeting that will be attended for the first time by Namibia,
only recently freed from white supremacist South Africa, but
also because the Commonwealth will be deciding on the new
role it will play in the future. That meeting will discuss
the findings and recommendations of the High Level Appraisal
Group, commissioned by the Commonwealth Heads of Governments
Meeting (CHOGM) of 1989 in Malaysia.
3. It is the common practice now for the Ministers of
Finance of the Commonwealth to meet before going on to meet
the Ministers of Finance of all the countries of the world,
along with the Central Bankers and others at the Annual
Meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund. This year you will meet in Bangkok, only 1 1/2 hours
flight from Kuala Lumpur.
4. I hope that your meeting here is not because of logis-
tical convenience alone. I hope that you will hold substan-
tive discussions which will help you to appreciate the
financial and other problems of the countries of the Common-
wealth, to understand each other, to formulate certain
common stands which will be beneficial to the members as a
whole.
5. Meetings of world bodies should be attended by all the
countries of the world. But there is such a great disparity
between the powers wielded by the members of world fora that
a small little country is often completely lost, its voice
completely ignored and its interests relegated to the
back-ground.
6. However if the Commonwealth countries work in concert,
decide on common stands after the meetings of their Finance
Ministers, meetings during which the weak members had made
their voices heard, then it may be possible for the Common-
wealth as a group or for the stronger members of the Common-
wealth to lend weight to the arguments and pleas of the
weak.
7. The need for the weak to be heard is much more urgent
now for we hear talks of linking aid and trade to democracy,
to human rights, to workers rights and to the environment.
8. Let me make it clear that Malaysia is all for democ-
racy, for the protection of human rights and the rights of
workers, for press freedom and for keeping the environment
unpolluted. Malaysia practises democracy, upholds human and
workers rights and strives with all its limited capacity to
protect the environment. But acceptance of all these noble
principles cannot always guarantee the well-being and pros-
perity of peoples and nations.
9. We are seeing today a most glorious counter-revolution.
We see the death of Communism and the birth of Democracy and
the adoption of the free market system all over the world.
But it would be naive of us to fail to see that the initial
fruits of the espousal of democracy and the free market are
not the expected wealth and prosperity or even of stability
and freedom from fear. In many of the countries of the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe we are seeing increasing
poverty and economic chaos, political instability and civil
wars, death and destruction.
10. We must not be disheartened by these things, of course,
but we should acknowledge them and be more cautious and cir-
cumspect before we link aid and trade, we twist arms in or-
der to force democracy and all the other noble ideas and
concepts down everyone's throats.
11. Democracy is great. It is the least imperfect of the
systems of government devised by man. But please note that
it is not absolutely perfect. To work, democracy cannot be
just adopted as a system. To work, the people as a whole
must understand how it works, how to make it work, how to be
wary of its imperfections and how to handle them. It is not
just governments which must practise democracy. The people
as a whole, the political parties, the oppositions, the NGOs
and the pressure groups -- they must all understand the
workings and the limitations of democracy. And the same ap-
plies to human rights, to workers rights, to press freedom
and to environmental protection.
12. Let us not concentrate only on how successful the oper-
ation is and care not whether the patient dies or not. Mr
Gorbachev almost died because he thought that the mere es-
pousal of democracy and the free market would solve all the
problems of the Soviet Union. Clearly for the Soviet Union,
there is yet no tangible dividends from glasnost and
perestroika. The end of the Cold War has so far benefitted
only the other party to that war.
13. We should use whatever leverage we have to spread the
gospel of democracy, human rights, etc. But we must be very
careful, lest in our missionary zeal we destroy the very
people we wish to help. On the other hand, we cannot stand
by and watch as dictatorships violate the rights of their
people to free choice, to freedom from oppression, and to
sustaining human dignity.
14. The Minister of Finance in any country has an enormous
responsibility. Whether the people or the country prospers
or not depends very much on the skills of the Minister of
Finance, on the power and influence he wields. It is not
just having money that counts. It is how that money is
spent and invested that will determine whether the country
will develop and grow or regress and wither away. Of course,
if the Minister of Finance has no money at all, there is
precious little that he can do.
15. Aid and trade are two things that concern all the
Ministers of Finance. But even the rich countries which
need no aid has to manage their finances well if they are
going to remain prosperous. So let us not be too ready to
condemn failure and to apply sanctions, but instead let us
help each other first.
16. Some of us are successful and some of us fail in the
management of our finances. Malaysia believes in learning
from others. We devised the Look East Policy not because we
want to be a colony of Japan, but because we feel we can
learn from how Japan managed to emerge from a most
devastating war, including the destruction by atom bombs,
to become the greatest economic power.
17. Perhaps the Ministers of Finance of the Commonwealth
and other economic ministers can help their colleagues
upgrade their skills and learn of the approaches towards
a more sound management of financial performance.
18. Next to attitude, we in Malaysia think skills are very
important. Wealth can be dissipated in no time. But skills
can sustain wealth and make it grow more.
19. We have a problem in Malaysia. We have a multiracial
population separated not just by the fact of race but by
economic roles and performance. Even in a homogeneous soci-
ety, extreme differences in wealth among its members tend to
arouse envy, antagonism and conflict. The basis of the Com-
munist and Socialist ideologies is the unequal distribution
of wealth and the wide gaps between the rich and the poor.
If in addition the rich and the poor are also separated by
ethnic origins, then the potential for conflict is even
greater.
20. Malaysia has that potential. The peoples of Malaysia
are separated not just by race but also by their wealth. We
have all the ingredients for social conflicts and violence.
21. The simplistic approach is to give everyone equal
opportunities and let them achieve their own levels. This is
very democratic. But we know and you know that equal oppor-
tunities do not give equal results. Indeed they are likely
to enhance the differences. Asking a lame man to sprint
with an athlete from the same starting point will not result
in their reaching the winning post together. The likelihood
is that they will be much further apart. Similarly even the
most egalitarian democrats subscribe to taxing the rich to
provide for the poor. A handicap is not undemocratic. It
is very egalitarian. Again, to draw the same analogy, a
successful operation is not good enough. The patient must
survive and get well.
22. And so in a world so enamoured with democracy and
equality, let us remember that handicaps i.e. positive
discrimination or affirmative action are still necessary
in order to be equal.
23. The Commonwealth Ministers of Finance will be going
from here to Bangkok for the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund conference. As a group they should understand
the problems faced by their weakest members and help fend
off the more extreme demands that will be made upon them.
24. The World Bank is about to insist on new
conditionalities for aid and loans. The Commonwealth should
not just go along with the World Bank. The Ministers of
Finance of the Commonwealth should appreciate the
difficulties of the weak, the recipients of aid and the
debtors.
25. We should not protect the profligate and the
irresponsible. But punishment by deprivation is not the only
means of correcting aberration. Indeed it may not correct
anything at all. Understanding and the upgrading of skills
in financial management are also methods of corrections.
26. The debtors and the recipients of aid must also ac-
knowledge their need to accept reasonable actions. No one
will help if that help is going to be frittered away or to
be used to oppress or to sustain authoritarian rule.
27. The restructuring of debts cannot be resolved by merely
asking the debtors to practise thrift and cut back on devel-
opment. The lenders and the agencies must actively provide
guidance and help. The debtors for their part must accept
guidance and direct help.
28. It is acknowledged that there may be political reasons
for recalcitrance on the part of debtors. This should not
be simply condemned. They should be studied and solutions
found.
29. The same applies to aid. Do not just hold back aid be-
cause of alleged breaches of human rights or whatever. The
donor and the recipient and possibly a third party should
study how best to continue to give aid but control the
breaches of human rights.
30. The Ministers of Finance of the Commonwealth must be
committed to free trade. Where there are no breaches of
freedom, democracy, human rights, workers rights, free
speech, environmental pollution, etc. , there should not be
protectionism and regulated trade. GSP status should not be
reviewed merely to slow down the growth of developing coun-
tries which conform to all the conditions.
31. There should not be a continuous effort to erect new
conditionalities for trade. We have now the intellectual
properties and the Watch List. Already some vulnerable
countries are feeling that they are being put under surveil-
lance like criminals. But there is now a new twist to the
environmental conditions. Goods must be recyclable.
32. This will affect the manufactured products exported by
the poorer countries which use borrowed technology and have
limited capacities to innovate and adjust to new conditions.
At the same time since the poor countries are also the pro-
ducers of the raw material for manufactured goods, recycling
will reduce the demand for the raw materials involved, thus
making the poor countries even poorer.
33. The linkages between trade and aid with the democratic
practices of a country should not be selective. Friends or
foes should not count. It would be a mockery and a farce if
friends can get away with dictatorships and oppressions
while those who are not friendly and given to plain speaking
are subjected to the proposed pressures.
34. I would like to think that whatever we expect a country
to do within its boundaries, we should also be able to do
outside our boundaries i.e. between peoples and nations.
If we say that there should be freedom of speech within a
country then we should also allow a country to speak its
mind without punitive action being taken against it if it
does.
35. It would be difficult for international conferences to
be held if we fear punitive actions for what we say. We
would then be less than frank and we would not be able to
contribute positively towards the solution of problems.
36. I should hope that this Commonwealth Ministers of Fi-
nance meeting in Kuala Lumpur will be characterised by frank
and constructive discussions. I would hope that the same
frankness should also characterise the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund meeting in Bangkok. Then and
only then can we hear the truth and find solutions.
37. With this hope I now have much pleasure in declaring
open the Commonwealth Ministers of Finance meeting.
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