After the drum-rolling buildup to the 9th Malaysia Plan, its unveiling displays a triumph of style over substance. There is nothing substantially new or refreshing in the 9MP. Its makers open the document with the pronouncement that "we are embarking on a new phase of development", then proceed to say the same things as before in different words and catchphrases.

What has changed? New details and numbers show up; projects and budget allocations ebb and flow. The outline has been given a makeover. Now we have a National Mission with five thrusts.

This is Abdullah's first Malaysia Plan and he wants to make it his own. I guess that's considered reason enough to jettison the terminology of the preceding one. So the National Vision Plan, which was supposed to run from 2001-2010, is history.

The veneer of freshness, however, does not last far beyond the front cover. The main objectives of the 9MP enhancing value-added, going back to agriculture, bridging the growing urban-rural divide and rich-poor disparities, developing human capital, improving bureaucratic efficiency were enunciated back in the 7th (1996-2000) and 8th (2001-2005) Plans. That was 270 billion ringgit ago, in case we've forgotten.

What is deafeningly absent in the 9MP is the neglected question: why did we make little progress in achieving 7MP and 8MP objectives?

In mistaking style for substance and in entertaining illusions that the 9MP offers anything new, we neglect to seriously ask where and why we have fallen short, and we fail to note some truly new and troubling changes beneath the headlines.

The reserved responses in media and among the public seem to reflect more of a wait-and-see posture. There's an overwhelming sense that much more work remains to be done, or as commonly spoken, 'now the hard work begins'. But the hesitation has been largely confined to whether the projects will be implemented swiftly and cleanly or get mired in corruption.

There's been little attention to the overall orientation of the 9MP.

One disturbing change that has gone unnoticed is the renaming of the character of economic growth. Chapter 16 is entitled "Growth with distribution". The 7MP articulated the need to balance "Growth with equity" (7MP, p. 12). The 8MP projected a theme of "Growth with resilience", the financial crisis apparently inspiring us to appreciate the taste of sweat. Now there seems to have been enough clamour for a return to sweet Malaysia Packages.

There is lots and lots of money to be had, RM220 billion over five years. We must ask at least two questions. First, how will this RM220 billion be distributed? Second, what is the over-arching plan for distribution?

The theme "Growth with distribution" does not commit to a clear objective. There is ample explanation that equitable distribution will be pursued, but why have we dropped equity as a first principle? In fact, growth with distribution is a meaningless phrase, if you think about it. If we want to change the pattern of distribution, we should be thinking in terms of re-distribution. There is no important mention of re-distributing in the 9MP.

I hope the abandonment of equity from the headlines does not reflect a shift away from the principle, but I fear it does. The general disposition of the 9MP seems to be towards appeasing the corporate sector, which we would expect to scoff at the idea of equitable distribution or income redistribution.

According to the 9MP, we cannot redistribute Malaysia's existing wealth because it is "protected by the Federal Constitution" (p. 325). How about that for a 'snuff out the opposition line'! Am I nitpicking or stirring up "non-issues", as PM said the other day? Sometimes it's the obscure phrases that make all the difference.

The Constitution invocation and proscription of debate implies that the present distribution (disparities between rich and poor, regardless of ethnicity) is totally legitimate. Is it? When many among the richest got there through political connections or the opportunities they were born with? Is it, when Malaysia has never instituted a minimum wage to protect the lowest paid workers?

The 9MP contradicts itself. If we need to engage in distributing the benefits of growth, then surely the status quo is not good it needs to be changed. There is something bad ethically, politically, and economically about high and increasing income inequality. While this happens, the 9MP's commitment to redistribute dwindles. It just makes a few vague statements about creating future wealth and all Malaysians playing their part.

But if existing wealth must not be touched, then the growth rate of poor people must exceed the growth rate of the rich in the future. Where are the safeguards that this will happen?

For one thing, the government refuses to use the bargaining power at its disposal and get more out of contracts for common people. For all the billions to be spent on private sector contracts, there is no mechanism to distribute that national wealth more equitably between employers and employees. Businesses have been getting the goods from the Malaysia Plans for generations. How about asking for a little give-and-take, some sacrifice of profit margins for society's sake?

What about policies to raise income levels? Instead of berating the youth for being 'choosy' and browbeating them towards taking low-paying jobs, how about some commitment and vision towards increasing their incomes? We really need to stop denigrating them for the government's failure to provide well-rounded training and self-confidence, and the insufficiency of jobs that meet graduate needs.

Narrow the rich-poor divide? One has to really wonder how this will happen.

Without clear vision and plan for increasing wages and incomes and redistributing wealth, it is difficult to see how the 9MP will set the course for bridging the gap. The uncomfortable truth is that there cannot be more equitable distribution of future wealth without touching that of the present.

Another unsurprising, but nonetheless troubling, feature of the 9MP is that there is nothing substantively new or progressive about our vision of unity: we cannot think beyond ethnic terms.

We are still stuck with the mentality that the only inter-ethnic gaps that matter are those between the bumiputera and Chinese households and the bumiputera and Indian households. We are glad that the gap has narrowed between 1999 and 2004. The Chinese:bumiputera income ratio dropped from 1.74:1 to 1.64:1, the Indian:bumiputera ratio also fell from 1.36 to 1.27.

Truly that is a good thing, although we must be cautious about such a general statistic, since it only captures the difference between the average Chinese household income and average bumiputera household income. This does not give an insight into the gap between other categories, such as between low-income bumiputera households and low-income Chinese households.

We should also lament that, 15 years from Vision 2020, there was not even a mention of the Chinese-Indian disparity. This unfortunately stayed the same from 1999 to 2004. In fact, the Chinese:Indian ratio increased from 1.28:1 in 1999 to 1.41:1 in 2002 before returning to

1.28 :1 in 2004.

And on education and schooling, the government yet again completely misses the mark. The decline of education standards starts with the demoralisation of the teaching profession. We got it wrong under Mahathir's administration, when we decided to spend money on laptops and IT gadgets instead of teacher salaries. We're still getting it wrong. Wouldn't it be more effective to increase the operating budget through streamlining the education organisation and significantly improving teachers' salary and benefits?

This will be essential to revive morale and draw more non-bumiputera into the service.

All the above underscores the imperative of moving toward a need-based affirmative action, away from the current race-based system.

Malaysians have been talking about this for years. The 9MP did not need to be fresh. It needed to be bold. The authors tried to make it fresh, but only on the surface.

As for being bold, they didn't even try.