Two recent comments by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad expose his ignorance:

  • that oil producing Muslim countries can unite to fight western imperialism and
  • Malaysia can follow Korea Inc.

    • In the first instance, Mahathir is presumptuous about the Muslim world

    dominance of the oil production. While the Muslim world is a large exporter

    of the product, their share of global production is actually less than 20 percent.

    Even with the inclusion of OPEC which includes Catholic countries like

    Venezuela, the Muslim world really does not control total production of oil.

    The truth is since the oil crises of the 1970s, the world including US has

    become less and less dependent on Muslim countries' oil and gas. Because there are now

    many more sources of oil (e.g., Russia) and the dependency on oil is less,

    no cartel will actually hold together for long. The truth is that the Muslim

    world is more dependent on oil revenue than the rest of the world is

    dependent on them as an energy sources.

    There is no way Malaysia can follow Korea Inc. simply because Malaysia is

    no where near Korea Inc's level of industrialisation. While Korea used

    protectionist policies to climb up the industrialisation scale, Malaysia

    used it for social engineering with only limited success. Korea has even

    surpassed Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore in industrialisation but Malaysian

    factories cannot compete without cheap Indonesian labour.

    While Mahathir can be considered visionary in some respect politically, the

    truth is he is not that smart about many matters including economics and

    administration and these two examples clearly show it.