Oleh/By : DATO' SERI DR.
MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : THE BALLROOM, MANDARIN ORIENTAL,
KLCC KUALA LUMPUR
Tarikh/Date : 08/03/2000
Tajuk/Title : THE SECOND WORLD
KNOWLEDGE CONFERENCE
"Transcending The Divide"
Let me add my sincere words of welcome to this Second
World Knowledge Conference.
2. The organisers have asked me to speak on
'Transcending The Divide'. In thinking about what to
say, I was immediately reminded of two things. First,
the story of Prophet Moses and the Red Sea. Second,
some words of Bertrand Russell. As you all know,
Prophet Moses parted the Red Sea in order to safeguard
his people and to eventually ensure their freedom and
prosperity. It required a miracle to pull off that
feat.
3. I believe that it will require a miracle, _indeed
a series of such miracles -- to pull off the feat of
transcending the present global divide between the
richest developed and the poorest developing, between
those at the cutting edge of advancement and those
being crushed by the weight of poverty, between those
who have so much and those who have practically nothing
at all. I would be completely surprised if the gap will
actually be transcended in any meaningful way. To be
sure, a handful of middle income countries can make the
quantum leap to the informatised society, thus to
become developed countries. But it would take a
miracle to prevent a massive widening of the knowledge
and the economic gap between the rich and the poor in
the years ahead.
4. As for the words of Bertrand Russell, in his
Autobiography he writes: 'Three passions, simple but
overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the
longing for love, the search for knowledge, and
unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind'.
5. I do think I have a similar longing for love from
my wife and family. I cannot claim a similar thirst
for knowledge like this great philosopher of the 20th
century. But I do share his third passion, his
unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind, for the
wretched of the earth.
6. I make no apologies for stressing before you one
of the great atrocities of the 20th century -- which
must not be perpetrated in the 21st.
7. Despite all the progress made by mankind, the
massive advances in the liberation and empowerment of
mankind, there is no denying that never before in the
history of man do we see so many living in abject and
absolute poverty. It might not be out of place to
remind ourselves, even as we ponder the wondrous
information instruments and knowledge machines of today
and next year, that vast numbers of mankind have never
opened the pages of the humblest book, although the
technology of printing is more than a thousand years
old. Vast numbers of mankind are yet to make _ or
receive their first telephone call or enjoy the
blessing of the electric bulb.
8. This morning, this afternoon and tonight, more
than three thousand million human beings on this planet
have to survive and get by on two U.S. Dollar a day.
This is less than what you paid for your cup of coffee
in the hotel where you are staying.
9. Many statistics show that over the last decade
especially, the developing have begun to catch up with
the developed. In many ways, the development gap has
indeed been narrowed. In many ways, quite
dramatically. But take the so-called miracle economies
of East Asia out of the equation and you will get a
different picture.
10. As a human being who has journeyed far and wide
over highways bustling with traffic as well as on the
roads less traveled, I have never ceased to be amazed
by how very generous poor people can be in their daily
lives. I have never ceased to be amazed by how often
the poor are willing to share what little they have. I
have, at the same time, never ceased to be amazed by
how very little some of the very rich can spare for the
impoverished. I have never ceased to be amazed by how
selfish, self-centred, greedy, avaricious, grasping and
rapacious some of the very rich are.
11. Unfortunately, in our world of reality, generosity
is something that no society had a right to expect in
the past. It is not something that any society can
expect in the present. No generosity can be expected
in the future. Unfortunately for the poor and the
backward, in the days ahead the cards are even more
stacked against them.
12. This is because the information and knowledge gap
between the economic haves and have-nots is even
greater than the income and economic gaps between the
backward and the developed world. The poorest
societies on earth are even more starved of knowledge
than they are of food. Those who need it most have the
least. Herein lies the present tragedy and the making
of a future catastrophe.
13. I am not, in the humorous words of Oscar Wilde,
young enough to know everything; but I have no doubt
whatsoever that in the years ahead, knowledge will be,
dramatically, a much, much greater determinant of human
performance in every area than at any time in the long
history of mankind.
14. Knowledge has always been important, of course.
The ancient Egyptians did not raise the stones for the
pyramids relying on the incantations to their gods.
The waters in the irrigation canals of the great Indus
Civilisation did not flow according to the laws of
ignorance. Knowledge has always been power and wealth.
15. But it is undeniable that we have now entered the
Information Age, a new historical era where economics
and every other area of human life will hinge more than
ever before on the production, accumulation,
distribution and application of knowledge.
16. Whether we know it or not, whether we feel it or
not, whether we want it or not, the paradigm shift has
already started. There has already been a 'sea
change', a phrase from Shakespeare's, 'The Tempest'
written 400 years ago. Obviously this great playwright
was the world's first multi-media masters. Shakespeare
wrote: 'Of his bones are coral made; those are pearls
that were his eyes; nothing of him that doth fade but
doth suffer a sea change'.
17. If bones have turned to coral, if eyes have turned
to pearls, if we have already seen a sea change, we
must now prepare ourselves for an ocean change. Those
who are strong enough and empowered enough to sail on
this vast new ocean will reach shores never before
dreamt of. Those who are weak and infirm, who cannot
safely sail on this tumultuous ocean, will simply be
left behind if they are lucky. They will be dragged
under if they are not.
18. A central part of the radical transformation that
has begun is the result of the I.C.T. revolution, the
dramatic impact of information and communication
technologies. A critical reason is also the breaking
down of barriers and borders and the opening of all
societies to the fierce force of global competition and
global penetration. The first revolution, the I.C.T.
revolution, is irreversible.
19. As for the globalisation revolution, it is, of
course, not new. The first globalisation revolution
started more than a hundred years ago. It culminated
in what was called La Belle Epoch. It ended with the
First World War. The globalisation revolution took six
decades to make a comeback. But the comeback has been
made. The second globalisation revolution came into
force by the end of the eighties.
20. There is today a great deal of 'globaloney' about
'globalisation', a word we so often use because we
don't quite know what we are talking about. I have no
doubt that it will be brought to an abrupt end by the
multitudes of the world if rapacious, unbridled and
unconscionable capitalism bereft of ethics, morality
and caring rides roughshod over the welfare of people.
21. The 'Battle in Seattle' was the first dramatic
'wake-up call' to us all. Especially those in the
globalised fairy-land would do well to wake up.
Globalisation is not inevitable. But I do believe that
with cycles of ebb and flow, with the arrival of
greater sanity, balance and consideration,
globalisation will find a way to not only forge forward
but also to fast forward.
22. Equally clearly, in grasping the opportunities of
the Information Age and dealing with the dangers of the
Information Age, we can expect no assistance, no real
helping hand from anyone. The only helping hand we can
rely on will be the one at the end of our own arm. If
we are to transcend the great divides, we must do it
ourselves.
23. Just as no one can do anything to us worse than
what we can do to ourselves, no-one can do for us
anything better than what we can do for ourselves.
This does not mean that we turn away from the world or
that we turn the world away from us. But it means that
we understand fully that God will help those who help
themselves.
24. What do we need to do to help ourselves?
25. We must be prepared to examine every sacred cow,
to give up every pre-conceived notion. In the pursuit
of information, knowledge, and wisdom, we must be
prepared to face reality. We must embrace change,
pursue novelty, crave innovation. We must learn. Even
harder still, we must unlearn. We must remember to
forget old ways. We must force ourselves into new
habits. We must build the new processes, institutions
and organisations that are necessary for the
Information Age.
26. My country launched our march into the Information
Age with Vision 2020, which was enunciated in 1991, and
which struck a responsive chord in the hearts and minds
of Malaysians of all stations, creeds and political
affiliations. In our Vision 2020, we set the goal of
becoming a fully developed nation by 2020, the end of
our second generation as an independent country. We
stated our conviction that 'What we have between our
ears is much more important than what we have below our
feet and around us'. We understood fully that 'our
people are our greatest resource'.
27. Vision 2020 emphasised that in the Information Age
which we had entered, our society must be information
rich. Vision 2020 noted that 'It can be no accident
that there is today no wealthy developed country that
is information poor and no information-rich society
that is poor and undeveloped'. Vision 2020 noted that:
'There was a time when land was the most fundamental
basis of prosperity and wealth. Then came the second
wave, the age of industrialisation. Smokestacks rose
where fields were once cultivated. Now, increasingly
knowledge will not only be the basis of power but also
prosperity'.
28. Vision 2020 urged that 'No effort be spared in the
creation of an information-rich Malaysian society'.
29. If Vision 2020 was the first strategic step into
the Information Age, Malaysia is now ready for the
second step. We are now ready for a concerted,
comprehensive and committed quantum leap which will re-
make Malaysian corporations and re-invent Malaysian
society. This second step will be called 'Strategic
Initiative One' of the 21st century.
30. Let me be clear about what many have called 'the
new economy' and 'the K-economy'. This is especially
necessary because there has been a surplus of vague
words, wonderful jargon, novelistic concepts and
bombastic verbiage which only confound rather than
clarify. Malaysia's 'Strategic Initiative One', the
second step on which we are now embarked, does not mean
the abandonment of our industrial backbone, which today
contributes more than 37 per cent of our Gross Domestic
Product, which provides 30 per cent of all jobs.
31. We are among the most industrialised economy on
earth and we are not going to fall down the industrial
ladder, no matter how many will try to push or pull us
off. We are also one of the most open economies in the
world. We live and we die on trade. Last year, more
than 85 per cent of our exports were manufactured
goods. Although we must dramatically enhance the
quality of our industrialisation and ensure much higher
domestic value added; although we must make sure that
every sector of our economy must be made world-class
and globally competitive, although the services sector
must inevitably expand, although we must ensure the
success of our Multi-Media Super Corridor, spawn and
build the world-class multi-media sector, the basic
structure of the Malaysian economy will not be
fundamentally altered in the short and medium term.
But through the shift to the K-economy, where the
knowledge content and the knowledge contribution will
see a quantum leap in every area, the Malaysian economy
and Malaysia's society will not be quite the same
again.
32. In the Budget presented in October last year, the
Government explicitly stressed that it was necessary to
ensure a paradigm shift: a fundamental move from the
production-driven economy to the knowledge-driven
economy. A fundamental shift from the P-economy to the
K-economy. The Malaysian Government has now started
the process of drafting The K-Economy Master Plan.
33. By the end of September this year, Insya Allah, we
will adopt a National Strategic Plan. Many of the
vital measures that will need to be taken will be
incorporated in the budget to be presented in October
this year. A series of concrete Plans of Action in Key
Strategic Areas will be completed within one year. The
whole process of national consultation, brainstorming,
drafting and national mobilisation should be completed
within 18 months from this day.
34. Our K-economy Master Plan will not be drafted by
the best and brightest, cloistered behind closed doors.
The K-economy, the maximum application of knowledge to
every Malaysian economic and business endeavour in
every economic sector, is not an elitist process but
one involving every Malaysian from the teacher in the
classroom to his pupil, to his fisherman father and
housewife mother, to the driver who drives the school
bus, to the mechanic who maintains it, to the engineer
who designs the vehicle, to the entrepreneur who owns
the company, to his secretary, the janitor and the
chairman of the Board. In order for us to succeed with
the paradigm shift to the K-economy, all Malaysians,
including the young of the Wawasan generation, will
have to be fully involved.
35. The K-economy Master Plan must be a master plan
for the entire nation and a personal master plan for
every citizen. It must belong to and be owned by all
Malaysians. This is why in the the process of drafting
it, all segments of Malaysian society must participate.
Before a full national consensus is reached, a thousand
ideas must contend and a hundred flowers must bloom.
36. I do not know if those responsible for the K-
economy Master Plan will consult me. In case they do
not, let me throw in my two cents_worth. Let me set
out some of the things that we in Malaysia must do in
the hours, days, weeks, months and years ahead in order
for us to transit, body and soul, to the K-economy.
37. Vision 2020 says: 'Malaysia has one of the best
educational systems in the Third World. But for the
journey that we must make over our second generation,
new standards have to be set and new results achieved'.
Vision 2020 also says that 'We cannot but aspire to the
highest standards with regard to the skills of our
people, to their devotion to knowledge and knowledge
upgrading and self-improvement, to their language
competence'. These words are even more relevant today
than in the early nineties.
38. We must build on these commitments which we have
made to ourselves and to our people. We must build on
the good habits and institutions. But we must be
prepared to question basic assumptions. While we must
live and work in serene surroundings we must never
forget that we gain more by investing on the passion
and the capabilities of the human members, the
librarian, technical assistant, assistant lecturers,
lecturers, associate professors and professors -- of
the faculty. A good university is a centre for great
learning, and not just a congregation of marvelous
buildings surrounded by marvelous scenery.
39. When we make the massive investments which we must
make at the tertiary level, we cannot afford to neglect
in the very least the primary level where the
foundation for learning is laid and where there is a
much much bigger bang for the buck.
40. Malaysia fortunately has a comparatively smaller
problem with regard to the brain drain than the vast
majority of developing countries. We must bring
outstanding Malaysians who have matured elsewhere back
to their country. But equally importantly, in the days
ahead, we must reach out to the four corners of the
world to ensure a massive brain gain, an infusion of
men and women of extra-ordinary talent, creativity,
knowledge, skill and other capabilities. They must
range from bakers to bankers, from chefs to computer
whiz kids, from managers to musicians, from inventors
to investors. We must take them wherever they are
from.
41. The time is not far when we must set the target of
reducing the number of foreign workers in this country
by 100,000 a year, reducing the number of the
unskilled, low-knowledge workers by 95,000 annually
whilst enriching our economy and society at the same
time through an annual infusion of 5,000 extra-ordinary
world citizens of extra-ordinary talent, extra-ordinary
creativity, extra-ordinary knowledge, extra-ordinary
skill and extra-ordinary networking and other
capabilities.
42. The whole area of human capital is critical to our
performance and global competitiveness. But much, much
more needs to be done.
43. For the Information Age and the K-economy, we must
have a first-rate National Media System. The internet
and other I.T. innovations must be a large and critical
part of this national media system. But let me stress
that newspapers and magazines and books remain
important. Broad-casting and narrow-casting television
and radio remain extremely important. They all remain
important. Indeed they will be even more important in
the Information Age and the K-economy future, even
though increasingly they will be accessed through the
internet.
44. This country must most seriously enhance the
production and supply of information, knowledge and
wisdom and assure their accessibility to all our people
in every area of work.
45. We must work hard on the demand side, always
making sure that we ensure the needed priority with
regard to access. Functional literacy must be
broadened to all, including the very old. We must aim
for 100 per cent basic I.T. literacy. We must
vigorously build on our language skills whether it be
in English or Arabic, Malay or Mandarin, Tamil, Thai or
Tagalog.
46. There will of course be need for reform in the
private and public sector. The ancient and hallowed
'sulit syndrome' must be done away with. The
traditional 'Great Information Hoard', which operates
within the corporation, the university, the civil
service quite understandable in an information and
accessibility poor environment, which makes knowledge
that extra important and therefore that extra valuable,
to be coveted, hidden and hoarded must be killed.
47. The private and public sector will need to operate
according to new rules of transparency, new regulations
for disclosure, new processes of corporate and public
sector governance.
48. All the while, we must make sure that the short
and long-term social effects are fully understood and
proactively responded to and that equity and social
justice are never neglected. All this has of course to
take place within a context of massive technological
innovation and expansion.
49. At the beginning of this address, I talked about
two great divides. The great divide between the
economically rich and the materially poor of this earth
and the great divide between the information and
knowledge rich and the information and knowledge poor
of the world. Please let me end with a few words on
the third great divide: the great divide within all our
societies between those who are information and
knowledge empowered and those who are information and
knowledge disenfranchised.
50. In many countries this is the most urgent issue to
address, the most difficult and the most critical for
no society can move forward as a cohesive social
community if the vast majority are left behind. A
country that cannot advance the vast majority cannot
sustain the welfare of the vanguard minority, no matter
how talented that minority, no matter how brilliant
their capabilities and how great their accomplishments.
51. We cannot afford and we must not afford the
shameful waste of the talents and the contribution of a
disenfranchised underclass. We cannot afford and we
must not afford the rage and the social disharmony. We
cannot afford and we must not afford the political
costs.
52. In all our societies, we must ensure not only that
as many as possible get onto the information super-
highway but also that none are left by the wayside, to
throw stones or hand grenades at the vehicles speeding
past.
53. The Information Age that is upon us holds out the
promise of a new world of shared prosperity, a global
renaissance. At the same time, it also holds out the
danger of economic exploitation, societal devastation
and a new era of imperialism and colonialism.
54. For the sake of the world, I pray that we truly
can bridge the economic and development gap, the
information and knowledge gap and the great divide
within. I pray that we can summon not only the
information, not only the knowledge, but also the
wisdom to choose the right road.
55. I hope that this conference and you who are in the
forefront of our Information Age will be able to help
us all to find that road and to inspire us all into
making that journey.
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