COMMENT | In three weeks, the year 2020 will end. Incredibly, it has been a year largely devoid of any serious discussion of Vision 2020, its significance, and the lessons its achievements and failures offer for the future.

The philosopher Santayana warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Hegel had observed earlier that history repeats itself, to which Marx added, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”.

In February 1991, then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad articulated a bold vision for the future of Malaysia in three decades, branded Vision 2020, soon after the New Economic Policy’s (NEP) Outline Perspective Plan for 1971-1990 ended.

Thirty years later, instead of realising its promise of perfect vision, 2020 will soon end differently. The reality today is quite different, with the blame game continuing over what went wrong.

Many agree that 2020 unexpectedly became l’anno di vivere pericoloso, Sukarno’s ‘year of living dangerously’. But worse, it has been a disastrous year for most of the world for various reasons, Elizabeth II’s annus horribilis.

Nevertheless, Vision 2020 offered a visionary commitment, comparable to Abdul Razak Hussein’s Rukunegara and NEP two decades earlier in 1971 after May 1969. Razak sought to promote ‘national unity’ by ‘eradicating poverty’ and ‘restructuring society’ to eliminate the identification of race with economic function.

Vision 2020 aspired for a psychologically liberated, liberal, mature, ethical, tolerant, democratic, scientific, developed, industrialised, prosperous, progressive, caring, economically just, united and civilised Malaysian bangsa (nation).

This was soon accompanied by the notion of Melayu Baru, asserting a new self-confident Malay in ‘bangsa Malaysia’ rid of ketuanan Melayu’s supremacist racist pretensions.

Vision 2020’s forward-looking vision was elaborated by three now departed Malay intellectuals at the...