Anwar: MEA replace NEP, Opposition form alliance

refer to www.themalaysianinsider.com

KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 – Anwar Ibrahim and the Opposition continued to throw the government off-balance with bold pronouncements yesterday.
The de-facto Opposition leader told Singapore’s only Malay-language newspaper, Berita Harian, that the PKR-DAP-PAS will formalise their alliance in a few days and will then replace the New Economic Policy with a landmark Malaysian Economic Agenda (MEA), a colour-blind initiative aimed at lifting the fortunes of all Malaysians.
The move to formalise the alliance will be cheered by Malaysians who believed that the gains made by the Opposition on March 8 would lead to a two-party system here. It will also shred like wet tissue the argument by the Barisan Nasional that the Opposition alliance is akin to a sham marriage.Even more important, the MEA will pose a major challenge to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s reform credentials. By proposing to do away with affirmative action for one race, Anwar is setting the bar very high for a coalition which has been allergic to any talk of dismantling the NEP.
In the interview with Singapore BH, Anwar said the Opposition alliance had been working on the MEA for the past one year.
“I would like to assure the Malays that the Malay agenda will remain but we also have to sketch a new agenda for Chinese and Indians,” he said. On his website, Anwar said the MEA can be implemented at state level to reduce race-based affirmative action policies and replace it will a more competitive, merit-based system.
“This will immediately increase foreign investment, improve the state’s tax revenue and begin to promote equity and income parity,” he argued.
Political analysts say that the Chinese and Indian voters deserted BN in droves because they felt that the ruling coalition had turned a deaf ear to their grievances over the NEP. BN’s ability to respond to an imaginative idea like the MEA will be watched closely by the communities.
It is unclear how Malays will react to the removal of NEP from the Malaysian vocabulary.
But Anwar believes that even the Malays will accept that there has been a distortion in implementing the NEP. Another PKR leader who captured the imagination yesterday was Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim.