In his latest blog posting, Dr M criticised non-Malays for demanding more concessions from the state. He said this was unacceptable, as it is tantamount to the government helping the relatively better off non-Malays, taking even more from the relatively poorer Malays.

To substantiate his point, he went on to assert that non-Malays now own around 50% of the share capital while Malays own only 20%, far from the target set in the New Economic Policy of 30%.

I object to Dr M's arguments on three grounds. Firstly, quite apart from the accuracy of his statistics on share ownership according to ethnic groups, his focus on this particular issue is a case of wrong priority.

We all know, and I'm sure Dr Mahathir himself does, that shares and even properties of high value in urban areas are owned only by a small proportion of the total population. This is true of all communities, not just in Malaysia, but in countries all over the world, including the US and Japan.

For the bulk of the population, share ownership is far removed and irrelevant to their lives. Their concern is with obtaining a just return to their efforts and labour, i.e. with egalitarianism.

Misplaced priority

Instead of focusing on how wealth and income can be redistributed from the upper strata of all communities to the lower strata of all ethnic groups, Dr Mahathir choses instead to concentrate on redistributing wealth from one socio-economic elite group to another.

Because of this misplaced priority, the pattern of wealth and income distribution for the country as a whole, and for the Malays in particular, has gotten worse over the years.

The wholesale adoption of neo-liberal policies, such as the privatisation of massive infrastructural projects to cronies; the increasing reliance on indirect taxes, which are regressive, as a source of governmental revenue; and shrinking the role of the state sector as a provider of public goods, has led in part to this rising inequality.

What is worse, and this is my second objection, is Dr M's using very strong ethnic underpinnings in his argument, which may lead to further ethnic division and contradictions.

As a former Prime Minister of 22 years, I would have thought he would have made it his utmost priority to promote the core values of socio-economic egalitarianism, inter-ethnic co-operation and communitarian togetherness.

An unscientific assumption

It would seem that this is not the case, which is most disappointing.

Finally, Dr M, like many others who take the racial approach, has taken the simplistic and unscientific assumption that all communities are monolithic and homogenous in socio-economic terms, when in fact they are far from so.

All the ethnic communities in Malaysia are class stratified. The Malays, as much as the Chinese and the Indians, are all stratified into different income groups, with the rich making up only a small percentage of the total.

The bulk of the Chinese, like the bulk of the Malays and the Indians, are relatively poor. Over the years, these labouring Malaysians have found monetary returns to their labour unable to catch up with the rising cost of living.

Dr Mahathir's thoughts and efforts should be on how governmental policies can be better designed to alleviate their economic sufferings and not resort to pursuing racist arguments in support of one group of the rich elite.