Those who demand the extension of the New Economic Policy (NEP) today are really saying 'it is OK in Malaysia to continuously oppress another citizen'.

If today it is OK to oppress by race, why not tomorrow oppress the not-so-well-connected, without regard to race? And that is what has been happening under NEP over the past decade.

No, the vicious treatment of former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim was not the outcome of an accidental clash with then premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad. It was the inevitable and repeatable outcome of NEP.

Send in another strong man determined to implement NEP, and another protagonist determined to fight corruption in general, and the latter will meet the exact same fate. They are only pawns to NEP socialism.

The potential destruction of Malaysia by socialism has not ended with Anwar's release from prison. You can sense that danger in the increasingly desperate but clueless tones of Umno Youth today, to win attention and position of power in the shrinking inner circle.

Why else would born politicians go into frenzies of competitive self-promotion and unnecessarily expend energy during a non-election year and post party elections? Someone is desperately chewing on a shrinking pie. There is also the prospect of a cabinet reshuffle to drool over.

We can expect more keris-waving Umno Youth head Hishammuddin Hussein or the concept of MCA-owned media or political schools, TV campaigns to resurrect the communist threat, shrill tones of Umno Youth seeking scapegoats in educators, journalists, opposition politicians, historical political ghosts, and increased demand for corporate share percentage, among others.

All this will be very scary to level-headed foreign investors when they are not obliged to mumble their approval of the government in public.

NEP, again like socialism and communism, after a generation only breeds a subsidy mentality and political dependency, handicapped economy, increasingly centralised government that cannot extricate itself from corruption, and occasional political and social convulsions.

To maintain NEP, Umno and its sidekick parties require oppressive laws, control of the media, outrageous propaganda, a high tolerance for unfairness, centralised power, stringent control of institutions, protectionism, ownership control of major corporations directly and indirectly through pension funds controlled by federal appointees, currency control (the ringgit still cannot be traded overseas), and frequent descend into witch hunts and scare-mongering - passing the fascism test with flying colours.

Source of corruption

Malaysians should simply face it: NEP is dangerous socialism.

Socialism corrupts a people to the bone and soul. Given the activist, Keynsian and socialist seduction of 1970s, the bleeding-heart do-gooders of that era never expected this.

Socialism is intrinsically corrupting because it requires the concentration of power in the hands of a few 'organisers', 'planners', or 'allocators'. There is not a socialist state in the world - past and present - which has not started with romantic idealism only to go the way of either oppression (USSR, China, France past) or getting stuck in subsidy mentality (France currently).

Although it was not intended as such, NEP socialism has turned out to be the mother of all corruption after 30 years of implementation.

It has created top-level mega corruption and lay-people fatalism that 'this is life in Malaysia...what can you do?'.

While high officials lament how corruption permeates all walks of life in Malaysia, the source is really the NEP. Generations of Malaysians have grown up in a country that neither respects nor expects a fair game. What else do you expect?

There is no way Malaysia will achieve developed status as long as NEP exists to breed centralisation, economic destruction and fear. You can't eliminate corruption unless you eliminate NEP.

Socialist beast

There are other ways to create fair opportunities for the under-privileged and to set up a safety net for the helpless.

The DAP cannot shine unless it more boldly advocates a libetarian view on social and economic issues. Its 'socialist democracy' is based on the tradition of mainstream political parties in UK and Australia.

Parti Keadlilan Rakyat cannot win justice for the country unless it convinces the Malays that NEP is as devilish as communism, that NEP itself has become the root cause of the very injustice that it is supposed to eliminate. NEP has bred a socialist beast that has turned against the exact people it was supposed to protect.

In a related argument, PAS cannot win broad democratic support unless it clearly recognises that religion plus substantial power is inevitably abused to oppress individuals in the exact mould of socialism, communism, and fascism, as has happended in history and the Middle East, even though fascism would seem to be the natural enemy of all religions.

Supporting the separation of church and state is the only way to insure against fascism and to advance a civilisation. Not supporting the separation can only mean handing inhuman power to human - what can be farther from the greatest religious teaching?

What happens going forward? It really depend on us as a people, whether we continue to support NEP socialism and its inevitable results of corruption and oppression, or whether we demand freedom.

Not the kind of 'freedom' smeared by Asia's senior leaders to mean freedom to do harm. Not freedom as distorted by socialists to mean freedom from want - a form of bribery and greed. But freedom minimally defined as freedom from oppression or arbitrary rule by another human being. That's all we need to subscribe to.

CHEAH KAH SENG consults and lectures on investment ethics, valuation and portfolio management. He considers himself a student of the Austrian School of classical economics. The first part of his article was published yesterday.