Edmund Terence Gomez says it all in Who owns corporate Malaysia , and he's absolutely correct in observing that the Chinese Malaysian entrepreneurs have not managed to develop brand names or move up the technological ladder as a result of the NEP.

And I'm glad to read that the likes of Mohamed Ariff , executive director of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER) agrees that another NEP policy like the kind that we've had before is not a wise move.

In 1969, Samsung Electronics (Korea) was a start-up company that aspired to be like Sony (Japan). Sony at that time was already a household name and global brand.

It was about the same time that Malaysia embarked on its NEP journey.

Today, Samsung Electronics has overtaken Sony both in terms of revenue and profit, and is now one of the most innovative, respected and profitable world leaders in the consumer electronics and semiconductor business. Samsung is reported to have registered 1,600 US patents in 2004 alone, more than Intel.

If not for the NEP, one would argue that by now, Malaysia would already have produced super companies and super brand names like Samsung and Sony.

Instead, Malaysia continues to drive her most gifted (but less 'well connected') Malaysians such as entrepreneurs, engineers, managers, scientists, researchers, etc out of the country to work for other world-class companies.

If the whole idea of another NEP policy is still to try to get the bumiputeras to own 30 percent of corporate Malaysia, then we'd have missed the big picture altogether. Because there's a bigger pie out there and corporate Malaysia has to get serious about competing globally rather than to still try and decide how to divide our own little pie amongst ourselves.

Happy birthday, Malaysia.