comment What's in a NEM that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, we are told?

The New Economic Model (NEM) preserves the race-based affirmative action policies that went under the former names of the New Economic Policy (NEP) and New Development Policy (NDP). Privatisation and divisive quotas that feed corruption and racial prejudice like the NEP, by any other name, would smell as foul.

"Practices that support the behaviour of rent-seeking and patronage that have long tarnished the altruistic aims of the New Economic Policy" - as Prime Minister Najib said - will continue to dominate the NEM, because there is no prospect of any change in political will in the present government.

Economist Paul Krugman argues that the political environment shapes economics, in opposition to the more conventional wisdom that economics determines political development, a view favoured by neo-conservatives and unreconstructed dialectical materialists alike...