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COMMENT Today, the combined wealth of the forty - not 40 percent - highest earners in Malaysia amounts to 40 percent of the national gross domestic product (GDP) of Malaysia. The combined net worth of the top 10 richest Malaysians is a staggering US$54.8 billion - nearly one sixth of the nation's GDP of US$312.4 billion.

This level of inequality has been tinged with a racial slant by the pre-independence colonial powers who divided economic power by ethnicity. Post-independence, the government sought to use the New Economic Policy to reduce the wealth gaps between the races. However, in the decades that followed, the chasm has exacerbated.

The BN government’s stock remedy for income inequality has been, and continues to be, race-based affirmative action policies. It must be stressed that we (the writers) make no negative assertions towards affirmative action as a concept, yet the Malaysian experience has been an abysmal one.

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