Happy Birthday, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

 

Today I joined many others in wishing YBM Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah many good wishes and felicitations on his 73^rd birthday. He was born in 1937, became an ADUN in 1969 and since 1974, was the MP for Gua MUsang.

He was MP since the days of fixed line telephones (when we had to go though operators sometimes) and accessibility to places like Gua Musang was by boats. In those days, in less sanguine environment, TRH ever the gentleman that he is would never refuse to partake in eating food served to him even when its hygiene was suspect. He always carried a plentiful supply of antibiotics which would be eagerly consumed once back on the boats.

He is our longest serving MP in parliament. Last year I wrote some articles after spending a few hours probing his thinking on many issues. He has proven to be most perceptive in many areas. To me personally, he is the PM we never had.

Recently he displayed the usual characteristics that have become hallmarks to his great leadership. In a speech celebrating James Puthucheary, he stated:-

On the prerequisite of economic advancement:-

Our economic stagnation is clearly not something we can tackle or even discuss in isolation from the problem of a broken political system and a compromised set of public institutions.

On NEP:-

It was and remains the most low-cost way to portray oneself as a Malay champion.

It had a national agenda to eradicate poverty and address structural inequalities between the races for the sake of equity and unity. The Malays were unfairly concentrated in low income sectors such as agriculture. The aim was to remove colonial era silos of economic roles in our economy. It has been trivialized into a concern with obtaining equity and contracts by racial quotas. The NEP was to diversify the Malay economy beyond certain stereotyped occupations.   It is now about feeding a class of party- linked people whose main economic function is to obtain and re-sell government contracts and concessions.

Happy birthday, Tengku.

Sakmongkol AK47.