A LARGE number of Malaysians have experienced living outside our beloved country for a considerable length of time. They have also met and made friends with people from other parts of the world during their stay overseas. Most of their friends from the third world took the opportunity to eventually migrate to these developed countries after completing their studies.

Yet most of us Malaysians eventually return home to serve and settle in this country. Why is this so? Have we not enjoyed our stay in big cities like London, Chicago, New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, Sydney or San Francisco? In fact many Malaysians are now spending their holiday overseas and visiting those cities as well whenever they have a chance. Some even do their shopping in such places despite higher prices. They even take pride in doing so.

Of course there could be innumerable reasons why we have returned to settle in this country. I do not think anyone can dispute that we enjoy a very fine hot and wet weather all year round. We seem to love it despite some haze at times. We are also free from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or typhoons, although we do get big and flash floods once in a while.

We are also well endowed with rich natural resources like tin and other minerals, including petroleum. When we took control of our country from the British we did not waste any time to achieve progress for our people. We carved out a national education system by formulating the Razak Report of 1956 and later the Rahman Talib Report of 1961 that is generally acceptable to our uniquely plural society. We believed in the universality of education by giving sufficient opportunities to every community to maintain their culture and traditions. In other words, we care for the needs of every race while at the same time give them the necessary grounding to develop their skills and intellectual capacity.

Although poverty, especially among the rural folk, during those formative years of our nation was glaring, we managed to reduce it through education. I remember meeting a minister from a third world country in the early 1990s who expressed shock over the amount of development we have achieved since independence. He said: "I had never expected your country to be so developed. I always thought you are like any other underdeveloped nation."

Of course we did not achieve everything in a year or two. We had invested billions of ringgit since independence on education. Surely we are now actually reaping the harvest of our three decades of serious and sincere efforts in educating our people. Similarly, we know that we are actually among very few countries in the world which have never failed to seriously embark on our five-year development plans from the time we practised self-rule in 1955.

We started the First Malaya Plan (1956-60), followed by the Second Malaya Plan (1961-65). Since 1966 we formulated the First Malaysia Plan, followed by the Second Malaysia Plan (1971-75) and now we are in the midst of completing the implementation of our Seventh Malaysia Plan. We had even formulated long-term plans such as the National Agricultural Policy, the Investment Masterplan, the New Economic Policy, the National Development Plan, the Outline Perspective Plan I, the Outline Perspective Plan II and Vision 2020.

In other words, we are very serious in ensuring that our economy continues to progress and our people benefit from development both in the medium and long term. When we embarked on the first five-year plan, we concentrated on agricultural and land development, besides putting in place the infrastructure for communications and education. We started to diversify our economy by moving into manufacturing during our First Malaysia Plan period so that our overdependence on exports of rubber and tin could be reduced. We emerged as the world's leading producer of tin, rubber and palm oil by the end of that decade.

The New Economic Policy which we formulated in 1971 paid so much attention to the two-pronged strategies of eradicating poverty irrespective of race and restructuring our society to reduce the identification of economic functions by race. We assured everyone that we were not taking away anything from the wealthy but rather we would distribute only from the increase in the size of the economic pie.

Justice and fairness were our underlying values in order to uplift the have-nots without depriving anyone in the process. Such a policy of social engineering, which many others called "affirmative action" still continues today. The corporatisation and privatisation policies of the early 1980s were yet other courageous and well-calculated efforts by the Government to encourage the rapid growth of the private sector to play a much bigger ro1e in economic development. These policies became convenient vehicles for the restructuring process of society through the development of the bumiputra industrial and commercial community.

Apart from successful development of mega projects which have become international landmarks of human achievements, we have successfully integrated our different races in various aspects of life into a harmonious society. We can clearly observe a healthy mixture of the various ethnic groups in the same restaurants, wedding ceremonies, sporting events, corporations and even in residential areas. We are less suspicious of one another. Instead we live and work together towards prosperity. These socio-economic achievements could not have come about without a high level of tolerance in our society.

Despite the prevailing religious differences, we accept Islam as the official religion of the nation and yet provide complete freedom to religious practices. Mosques, churches, temples and other houses of worship are seen everywhere. Probably, the most important ingredient is the spirit of trust, respect and justice that pervade our society. We strongly believe in sharing not only our experiences and traditions but even our political power. From day one, we deliberately accommodated the needs of every community by ensuring that each and every ethnic group is represented in the Government.

Free and fair elections are held every four or five years to elect our representatives in the government. Such a sharing of political power ensures that all sensitive issues are being wisely and openly discussed in the spirit of compromise and give and take by everyone through their elected representatives. We have seldom faced any deadlock which cannot be solved. Indeed, apart from the bloody incident of May 13, 1969, we have managed to live harmoniously. Our economic progress was almost continuous except for the periodic turmoils of 1975, 1985 and 1997. During these periods of slums, we were surely not alone. We have recorded tremendous growth rates for at least eight consecutive years prior to the recent economic downturn.

Affluence in our society is so glaring compared to years ago. Malaysians have also made remarkable achievements such as the successful conquest of Mount Everest, solo travel around the world and producing original world class scientific research. Many have gone into the Guinness Book of Records too. We have had great leaders from time to time who provided us with the right vision, protected us from economic perils, driven us to work towards higher levels of progress, made us walk tall in the international circles and feel proud of being Malaysians.

We are actually moving towards becoming a fully developed nation, probably earlier than 2020, provided we stick to the same Malaysian formula that we have so painstakingly and deliberately created. Let us go on with the same formula for the benefit of those who will live after us for many generations to come. Let us be more responsible, tolerant, transparent, honest, just and sensitive to the needs of ourselves, our communities and our nation to commensurate with what our leaders have striven for. When Sayyidina Ali Ibnu Talib, the fourth caliph of Islam was asked by one of his citizens: "Oh Ali, why is it that during your time as caliph the country is in turmoil, we fight and kill each other, we do not feel safe. But during the time of Umar Ibnu Khattab, the second caliph of Islam, the country was safe and sound, progress was everywhere and society was enjoying a good life?" Sayyidina Ali replied: "During the time of Umar, the citizens were people like me but unfortunately when I become caliph, my citizens are people like you." God knows best.
 

Datuk Paduka Dr Syed Othman Alhabshi, President & Chief Executive Officer, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak.