Economic recovery after Covid-19 will take a long time, says Dr M

YOURSAY | Clever Voter: Not many will disagree with former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad that our economic recovery will take time. How long is anyone's guess.

There are several known factors. Past regimes have failed to diversify the economy away from our reliance on commodities.

With oil prices dipping below US$20 per barrel, Malaysia will suffer double-dip. We should have a strong manufacturing base, which we did not upgrade as many preferred cheap labour.

With a huge operating bill, the new finance minister relies on the ecosystem – meaning using public savings and sovereign funds wherever he can find – to prop up an ailing economy that should have been restructured.

The government will be hard-pressed to borrow more to support a hungry vote bank.

Just A Malaysian: It will be a long and painful recovery process for Malaysia. Countries with strong fundamentals will recover faster and with lesser pain.

After 60 years of stupidity, bigotry, racism, corruption and religious fundamentalism, we are too fractured, weakened and broke to stand up again.

Our fundamental strengths are all gone, sapped by racial and religious dominance. Our natural resources depleted and squandered to create 200 billionaires and 20 plus million poor people with little survival skills.

Our talents were driven away and eight million uneducated immigrants make this country their home. Our entrepreneurs are crowded out by government-linked companies (GLCs), creating an interventionist economy not able to compete globally.

Mahathir, if you can travel back in time, will you reset all these or just do the same? Based on your second term as PM, it looks like nothing has changed.

Anonymous 770241447347646: Mahathir, when you do not honour your promises and do not intend to honour them, then your advice or statements have no value.

You have to take responsibility for your effort in handing this nation back to the same people who were responsible for the condition this nation is in.

The economy of the country will rise again in time. The facts are that the people will face serious challenges but they have no choice – to survive and put the nation back to where it was and maybe lift it higher.

You could have made it easier for them if the previous administration was still in power. Yet, for your selfish political agenda, you put this nation in line of danger.

So please retire and stop making statements or give advice as you do not possess any credibility. Let Pakatan Harapan continue the fight and maybe in time, they will recover the position that is rightfully theirs.

Anonymous_1583374005178.90011583373451643: As a medical doctor who proclaimed to be best man in Malaysia to lead this country as PM, you should be ashamed of yourself for neglecting your obligation to put the well-being of Malaysians before your political interest.

From Feb 23 to March 10, instead of focusing on implementing preventive measures to fight the coronavirus, you and your entire entourage of yes man were busy engaging in a messy political orgy that involved mass gatherings, hand-kissing, boot licking, etc, leaving no one paying attention to the imminent danger that was unfolding under your nose.

This reckless behaviour is the reason why the coronavirus crisis has evolved to this stage in Malaysia. In just a short span of five days after the swearing-in of the new government on March 9, a shocking 190 new confirmed cases were detected, which indicated the infections were happening during the period when the politicians were busy playing their game of thrones.

And now, resting comfortably, well-protected and locked away in your multimillion-dollar villa, you are making a video and trying to offer lip services as if you were not responsible for this crisis.

Quigonbond: What we need is a paradigm shift. We need a critical mass of highly productive people, regardless of race, religiosity and financial stature, to keep the national economy resilient, especially if there are going to be, almost assured, future pandemics of this scale.

That's what meritocracy is all about. That's what secularism and openness are all about. For the economy to be an advanced one and a society to be an enlightened one, we need to be at the cutting edge of innovation, and we need a strong dose of moderation and balance.

It means less red tape, less moral policing, less religiosity, less focus on racism and a greater level-playing field.

You can worry about affirmative action after you've taken care of this fundamental shift in thinking. It is the way of the future, anyway.

It's not the fault of the non-Malays in Malaysia that someone somewhere is out of work because of increased automation and AI (artificial intelligence). We just need to ensure that when some sectors become highly productive, some of the taxes are channelled back to a social safety net - a living wage, if you will, for the rest.

This thing about quota, about pushing up people who are less qualified, is increasingly a thing of the past, given the limited resources we have.

Fair Play: Hmm… When asked a curveball question, Mahathir replied that he would prefer to revisit the past. Of course, of course. What choice do you have?

When an aged man has no future, he can only look back to his past and reminisce his achievements or, more likely, the lack of it.

Sadly, and perhaps tragically too, Mahathir was given not one but two opportunities – the first time, to write his legacy and the second time, to refine it.

But those who are not destined to succeed, they will blow it, regardless of how many times they are given the opportunity.

Federal Bakery: For a person who has been a cause of national grief, who could not avoid doing the wrong thing, of not providing leadership but indulged in self-aggrandisement, a disease like Covid-19 must appear like a competitor with sharper skills to cause the same grief to the country that he caused.

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