The prime minister, at the recent Umno AGM, suggested that the rich and successful Malays should extend their help to their poorer Malay brethren. Implicit in this remark, however, is an astute observation of human nature, i.e. (i) one's success is personal and (ii) a successful person is not necessarily charitable.

In this instance, the prime minister appears to be directing his remarks solely at the Malay section of the population. However, what applies to the Malays is also true to the Chinese. Just as a rich and successful Malay may not share his personal wealth with his Malay compatriot, a poor Chinese cannot expect to benefit from the wealth and success of another more fortunate Chinese.

Therefore, it cannot be meaningful to measure the share of the nation's wealth by race, much less to formulate a national policy to ensure that people of a specific race obtain the appropriate share of the country's wealth.

The Felda scheme was created long before the New Economic Policy was formulated. More than a million acres of land have been developed into palm oil land at the government's expense and the ownership handed over exclusively to the Malays.

Some of the land is situated in areas suitable for housing development. However, the worth of the Felda scheme has not been counted towards the equity ownership of the Malays. Thus, the ownership figures in respect of the Malays, which the Umno Youth chief has stated, is just over 18 percent, may have already exceeded the 30 percent target set for the NEP if proper accounting were done.

The ownership data used for presenting each racial community's share of the national wealth is fraught with conceptual and coverage problems. For a start, Felda schemes and Malay reserve land do not count towards the Malay community's share of national wealth.

Further, only the aggregate nominal equity share capital value of limited companies is included for comparison. Thus, though bumiputeras have more than 50 percent of the banking sector ownership, their influence and control in business is much higher than the equity share capital of equal value in other economic sectors.

It is important is for the government to ensure that losers in the competition of life do not lose their livelihood. Losers need help to survive. Thus, help should be offered to all losers, or the weaker members of the society so that they do not suffer undue hardship or perish from this earth.

When the government decides that assistance is to be directed only to specific groups categorised by their needs, the beneficiaries would be only too happy to graduate out of the dependency group. They would have then succeeded.

On the other hand, when assistance is provided to persons based on his race then the beneficiaries will consider that the assistance is a right by virtue of his race. Any affirmative action policy considered by its beneficiaries as a right of birth will be expected to be for an indefinite period.

The current leadership now finds itself in a dilemma as a result of the convenient categorisation of persons for assistance by race. Even though the NEP is not needed by some Malay families, they will not say that the NEP is not needed by them, if asked.

The prime minister has indicated why reliance on hand-outs has made Malays weak, and he was sad to see the inherent positive characteristics of Malays melt away as a result of the decades-old policy of governments hand-outs.

He appealed for a change of mindset. It is time now to stop dividing the Malaysians by race. The wisdom of Onn Jaafar in opening Umno to non-Malays was unfortunately not acted upon half a century ago. It deserves a re-look now.