Achievements, Limitations and Contradictions

Abstract

By October 2003, the time of Mahathir’s retirement from the position of Prime Minister — the rough end point of analysis adopted for this book — poverty as a national issue had shed much of the political tension and social urgency that had surrounded it in 1970 when the NEP acknowledged poverty to be a root cause of political instability, and declared its eradication ‘irrespective of race’ to be a principal objective of national development. There was ample reason for this. As a review of Malaysia’s performance vis-à-vis the Millennium Development Goals summarized it:

In just about 15 years from 1970, when half of all households were poor, Malaysia more than halved the incidence of absolute poverty. In another 15 years from the mid-1980s, Malaysia again more than halved the level of absolute poverty. By the early years of the new millennium (2002), just 5.1 per cent of households were poor. (UN Country Team, Malaysia 2005: 34)