I refer to the letter Bumi policies will drive away foreign money .

That the NEP has already driven a lot of foreign investors away has long been acknowledged by the foreign investor community which has deployed their capital to less hostile economies. It is only of late that Malay intellectuals are voicing out what the non-bumiputeras have been clamouring for decades - that the NEP has failed Malaysia and even the bumiputera community as a whole.

This is borne out by the increasing number of disaffected highly-educated and well-travelled Malays who are migrating permanently away from Malaysia.

I do not dispute that there is a minority of individuals and elites that have benefitted from this policy and thus have a vested interest in maintaining the policy. Neither do I dispute the author's assertions that ‘a majority of middle-class and millionaire Malays are the by-product of affirmative action by the government to restructure society’.

However, I do question the quality of these NEP-created millionaires and middle-class. We saw the fall of many of these so-called billionaires in the last financial crisis of 1997-1999. Where a certain sector has been dominated by the NEP-created middle-class, we have seen the erosion of standards and decline in the quality of service delivered be it in the legal (refer to current crisis in the judiciary), medical (who can forget the tudung -wearing doctors who examined their patients with pencils), academic (eg, the fall of Malaysian universities in international rankings), financial and civil services.

I won't even bother to mention the police and defence services. Yes, the NEP has created many mediocre-types just to make up the numbers - that's the ultimate result of any quota-based system of ethnic preference.

Gone are the days when true towering Malays shone because of their personal merit and integrity. I refer to the likes of the late Tun Ismail Ali (first Bank Negara governor), Tun Salleh Abbas (the former Lord President) and Tun Dr Ismail (our second deputy prime minister). Today, all we have are fly-by-nights who eventually get caught out because they are too small to fill the big shoes they currently wear - their current positions are not due to their own merit. Ultimately we all fall or rise to our true levels.

What is new now and needs to be challenged is the toxic mix of religious fundamentalism and ethnic economic nationalism that is further strangling Malaysia and her economy.

I quote from an article discussing the impact of the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Asia and its impact on different Asian economies by a leading foreign investment intelligence commentator:

‘ Malaysian Islam has become entwined in her unsuccessful bumiputra programmes and what was a benign Islamic environment now threatens the very fabric of Malaysia's secular state. The setbacks are not an Islamic issue per se, but have allowed an assertion of fundamentalism through inadequate political leadership, corruption and nepotism, and ill-advised and wasteful policies to wrest economic power from local Chinese and Indians.

‘And what a waste it has been - any demonstration of the potentially beneficial influence of Islam on Malaysia's economic performance has been pulled down into the depths of a few politicians' dark dreams and excesses. It will take political courage to rediscover the path, without which we are likely to see Malaysia return to the economic mismanagement that fuelled race riots 40 years' ago, with Islamic fundamentalism stepping up its attacks on secularism by fostering anti-Western sentiment’.

Contrast this against their more positive comments on Indonesia's practise of Islam:

‘ In Indonesia, Islam has by and large peacefully coexisted with animist, spiritual, Buddhist and Hindu values since its introduction by traders some 800 years ago. The turning point for Indonesia came in 1945 with its founding as a nation state and the philosophy expounded as Pancasila (Unity Through Diversity), integrating Buddhist and Western thought around five basic principles.

‘The days of one per cent of the population owning and controlling 90 percent of the country's wealth are gone. It is Islam's role in that process that is telling - fundamentalists, after a brief hour in the sun, are being displaced by society's core driver of a benign Indonesian Islam, concerned with welfare and equity’.

Based on current socio-economic trajectories, Indonesia and a host of less-developed nations (e g. Vietnam, even Cambodia) will over take Malaysia in living standards in 15 to 20 years time.

Of course, the ‘Talibans’ in Malaysia will continue to deceive their followers into believing that living standards are not important. In which case we should welcome with open arms Malaysia's rejoining the Middle Ages where Afghanistan is today and where Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (when the oil runs out) are sure to join tomorrow.