Oleh/By : DATO' SERI DR. MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : THE ISIS CONFERENCE ROOM,
KUALA LUMPUR
Tarikh/Date : 23/12/93
Tajuk/Title : THE CONCLUSION OF THE FIRST
INTERNATIONAL MALAYSIAN STUDENTS
Let me begin by saying that I am here not to talk to
you but to talk with you. I am here not only to inform but
also to consult, to listen and to learn.
2. I do this with pride and with humility. With pride
because I know that among you are men and women of
sincerity, talent, discipline and strength, men and women
who will lead this nation towards the goal set out for it.
As a Malaysian of an older generation, I am proud that we
have been able to breed Malaysians of your calibre.
3. And I am here with you in humility because I know that
whatever is done by the present generation, we are merely
laying the foundation and perhaps the first few floors. It
is you of the Wawasan Generation who must be the principal
builders, the principal movers and shapers of Malaysia in
the first half of the 21st century.
4. In 2020 most of you and of your generation will
be in your mid or late 40s, very much in the prime of life.
I hope that by that time you and your generation will have
already accomplished a great deal. If you have not, then
our vision of a modern and advanced Malaysia would have been
stalled. I expect that even by 2020, you will still have a
long road to traverse ahead of you, for the process of
progress has to continue. We do not fix the year 2020 to
mark the end of our progress.
5. When I was your age, the Second World War had just
ended. The Japanese lost but had destroyed the myth of
European invincibility for good. The British came back with
a plan to convert their Malay State protectorates into a
colony called the Malayan Union. Power was to be exercised
directly from Whitehall. We were fortunately able to stop
them before much damage was done. The Federation of Malaya
quickly succeeded the still-born Malayan Union. But we were
still under British rule.
6. On the island of Borneo, a company by the name of the
British North Borneo Company gave a huge territory called
North Borneo to the British Crown. A family called the
Brookes gave an even larger territory to the British Crown.
This huge piece of territory was called Sarawak.
7. In no case were we, the people, consulted. If you now
go back in time to that period when I was your age, you
would not recognise this land that we now call our country.
In many senses it was not ours at all. Whatever development
there was, was not for the people of this country but for
the interests of our colonial masters. The sole purpose of
the British North Borneo Company was to make money and to
enrich its share-holders in England. As for the Brooke's,
they simply enjoyed the role of white royalty ruling
primitive natives.
8. I am sure many of you in this room are on
scholarships. In fact thousands of students inside and
outside the country study under generous scholarships. When
we were a colony, there were two "King's Scholarships" given
in the whole of the Straits Settlements each year for study
in England. In the four states of the FMS -- the Federated
Malay States -- there were two or three such scholarships
each year. Most of our children did not have places in the
`English' secondary school. Malay schools provided
education for urban children up to primary levels only. The
greatest expectation on leaving the Malay school was to be a
Malay school teacher.
9. No-one dreamt of what was to come. Of course, a few
young men and women who were no doubt regarded as impetuous
or even deranged spoke of independence and wanted to be free
and to live as free citizens in a free country. But Merdeka
was not in the air or over the horizon. It was to be many
horizons away.
10. Indeed, it was not a time for dreams and visions or
even of much hope for a people most of whom lived in abject
poverty. Most of what is now Kuala Lumpur was then jungle
or rubber estate or tin mine. Admittedly, there were not
many squatters. There were no jobs to be had in Kuala
Lumpur.
11. Then, in 1948, the Communists launched a guerilla war.
The Emergency was declared. The land with a bleak future
became the land with a black future.
12. I have gone through this very brief caricature of our
country in order to make the point that we have indeed come
a long way. We were a domino, ready to fall to the
Communist. We are now a dynamo. Still, we are only
half-way to where we want to be by 2020. If per capita
income is the criterion, we are only a quarter up the road.
We need to quadruple our income.
13. You were born free. You have entered your
adulthood in a completely different world. You are
inheriting a radically different present than did my
generation. You will have to build a vastly different
future, a future that is in many ways unimaginable today.
14. You are a much luckier generation. But let no-one
mislead you. In the years and decades ahead you will be
equally challenged. You will be faced with challenges as
daunting as we faced. You will need to respond with the
same gumption, the same sincerity, the same dedication. You
have to be all these because the challenges of success and
sustaining our thrust forward to full modernity are as great
as the past challenges of rising from our knees and giving
meaning and pride to our freedom.
15. Have no illusions. The challenges of Vision 2020 are
awesome by any measure; even by those who faced the
generation that entered adulthood after the War.
16. Let me begin with what we have defined as the ninth
challenge of Vision 2020: the challenge of establishing a
prosperous society, with an economy that is fully
competitive, dynamic, robust and resilient.
17. Our prospective plan calls for seven per cent annual
growth over the span of 30 years. We grew by an average of
6.7 per cent in the 20 years between 1970 and 1990. We have
been growing by more than eight and a half per cent in the
last five years. So you might think that an additional 0.3
per cent yearly growth is no big deal.
18. But believe me, it is. It is because for some reasons
or other economies with a big base tend to grow more slowly
than those with a small base. Developed economies do not
grow at the rate of developing economies. And so early
growth must be high in order to achieve a good average. But
if growth in the early years is not high enough while those
in the later years is too low the average of seven per cent
will not be achieved. Remember that one per cent in the
second decade of the 21st century will represent a much
bigger sum in GDP terms than one per cent now.
19. We must also ensure that we consistently improve our
competitiveness and our ability to roll with the punches, to
take the economic thump on the chin and to bounce back, in
better fighting shape. This will not be easy because
success and greater affluence will corrupt us, soften us and
make us flabby. Success and greater comfort will cause us
to lower our guard and increase our girth.
20. The eighth challenge of Vision 2020 is the challenge of
ensuring an economically just society, which we have defined
in terms of four objectives. One, eradicate absolute
poverty absolutely. Two, ensure the non-identification of
race with economic function. Three, reduce the ethnic
income gap so that after 2020 no-one will ever again be able
to say that this ethnic group is poor and that ethnic group
is rich. Four, ensure a full partnership in economic
progress.
21. We do not want prosperity for the few but for all
Malaysians. We cannot be proud of our country even if many
of our people are at the cutting edge of world civilisation,
if others are left in the backwaters of progress. We must
try our level best to move the entire nation forward.
22. Vision 2020, as you know, is not only an economic
vision but also a social, psychological, and cultural
vision. We believe in establishing a fully caring and
sharing society, one that is ferociously dynamic but not
rapacious. We want a society with a human face and a big
human heart.
23. Vision 2020 also calls for 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.
24. We also want to build a matured, liberal and tolerant
society in which Malaysians of all colours and creeds are
free to practise and profess their customs, cultures and
religious beliefs and yet feeling that they belong to one
nation.
25. Let me say a little more about our fourth challenge as
set out in Vision 2020: the challenge of establishing a
fully moral and ethical society, whose citizens are strong
in religious and spiritual values and imbued with the
highest of ethical standards.
26. In the years ahead, the attack on our moral fibre and
fabric will escalate. We know this will happen because it
has happened to most of the developed societies, indeed to
most civilisations in the past. In the end the great
nations undergo decay and decline and they fall from their
preeminent position. This is due to their disregard for the
ethical and moral values which built their society in the
first instance. We cannot allow this to happen to us. Our
achievements would be empty if we do. We must therefore
consciously guard and nurture high moral values in order to
sustain our achievements.
27. There is one other social/psychological/cultural
challenge of Vision 2020 that you must not forget and which
I must stress. This is the challenge of creating a
psychologically liberated, secure, and developed nation with
faith and confidence in itself. Such a society must be
distinguished by the pursuit of excellence, fully aware of
all its potentials, psychologically subservient to none, and
respected by the peoples of other nations.
28. Let me end this quick outline of Vision 2020 by
saying that it sets out two political challenges:
fostering and developing a mature democratic society, which
practises a form of mature consensual, community-oriented
Malaysian democracy that can be a model for many developing
countries; and the establishment of a fully united Malaysian
nation with a sense of common and shared destiny, a nation
that is at peace with itself, territorially and ethnically
integrated, living in harmony and in full and fair
partnership, made up of one Bangsa Malaysia (one Malaysian
nation) with political loyalty and dedication to the nation.
29. Of all the central objectives that are set out in
Vision 2020, we would be foolish to forget that national
unity is the most fundamental, the sine qua non, the most
basic of our objective.
30. I have been informed that the hundred students who are
in this room have been chosen through the most rigorous
process of selection, based on a wide array of criteria.
You are amongst the best and the brightest of the Wawasan
Generation.
31. Over the coming 26 years, those of your generation will
no doubt need to adjust the priorities, refine and renovate
the Vision that our nation has taken to its heart at the end
of its first generation as an independent people. But I have
every confidence that the dreams that we hold dear today
will remain your dreams and will withstand the test of time.
32. There is much to be done and accomplished in the 312
months to 2020. To achieve what must be achieved will
require the mobilisation of the entire Malaysian people.
All have a role to play, a contribution to make. But there
will also be the need for an especial contribution from
enlightened and dedicated leaders, from leaders who share
the dream at the ambition of those who preceded them.
33. I hope that you will respond to the challenge. I hope
that you will be such leaders, leading and sharing the
burden and the achievements.
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