MGG Pillai Commentary View

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Should we bring in the IMF?

Yesterday, I asked the first 20 each of Chinese, Indians and Malay what they thought of the IMF coming in to bail out the Malaysian economy. I had chosen a sample, as fellows who make a living out of such call them, that included a "cross-section" -- i.e. people who normally drive around in Mercedes Benzes and BMWs, those who drive around in Hondas, those on motorcycles, and pedestrians. I tried hard to get those on bicycles, but was not successful. Even schoolchildren would not been seen dead on bicycles these days, it seems.

The results were interesting. The Malays to a man and woman generally disagreed with the IMF coming in; felt this would upset the NEP, that the NEP was a corrective, not a discriminatory, mechanism; that the government must do much more than it has so far in addressing the economic travails we face; with three suggesting that a new chief at the helm would give the confidence and reverse the malaise afflicting us all. The Chinese, rather gleefully, welcomed the IMF for "it would end the NEP and bring about a level-playing field"; thought the IMF would not be "so stupid" as allow foreigners to dominate the economy; when asked to provide one example where the IMF have actually helped the economies of the countries it restructured, they did not have a clue. The Indians, with their business clout depended on Dato' Seri Samy Vellu, were more balanced in their approach, talking of "trouble" ahead if the NEP is scuttled, or too much power given to foreign companies; one said IMF had a habit of coming into a troubled country and forcibly bring in those very foreign companies who could not have come in before.

I resist the temptation to extrapolate (another of those favourite words of those who make it their living) the information to make a generalised statement of what Malaysians think ... you know, like a Gallop Poll, when 1,347 Ougadougans are polled on whether they would like Genghis Khan as the next president of the United States of Ougadougou, and 675 said they did, it would say with certainty that more than 50 per cent of Ougadougans would want that. My poll is confined to those people only, and does not refer to their uncles, aunts, grandfathers, let alone their respective communities. But then I echoes Mark Twain's memorable "statistics, damned statistics, and lies".

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my