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Dear Editor, I want to express my views on some of the comments made by Helen Ang over my article " MCA Must Regain Its Vision" in the Sun recently.
If my article seems incoherent to Helen and her readers, I am happy to clarify the position on the fact that certain terms and expressions I used cannot be clear to every reader. And if one finds 'liberal conservatism' an oxymoronic term, I assure you that at the philosophical level, it is no more confusing than the word "social democracy" whereby Anthony Giddens argues that leftist thinking cannot be all about openness but disciplined with conservative values. He also insists that radicalism is cannot be equated with 'being on the left'. Nothing wrong with that but its something that liberals have been advocating all this while. I did comment about populist thinking not being new because such movements have been repeated in history many times over. Just because it happened in Malaysia it does not mean we have to fear it but to challenge the position taken by the Opposition. If the people of Malaysia are genuine about moving towards a two-party system, we cannot be playing to the politics of redemption because either side could chalk up just as many 'bad guys' if we want to. What i am envisaging in my article is to create a political spectrum in the Malaysian political landscape to which either side could state their arguments at the ideological level. Thus, allowing space for that sort of debate is something, I would imagine, that is openly championed and encouraged by your readers. The people may have been angry with the BN for its arrogance (among other things) but not for it to be replaced by Opposition hubris, I am sure. In the article, I was in fact giving due recognition to the Opposition particularly, DAP for their ability to move from a diverse political platform to converge into a debate that surrounds social justice. It was a good tactical move but requires closer examination. Social justice based on whose argument is what I would like to understand. There is a significant class of the entrepreneurs as well as professionals who believe in less government intervention and are against the distribution of wealth without qualification. We are not comfortable in having a social welfare STATE as a way to achieve social justice. Their manifesto and the policies are even less clear. MCA should not advocate a dependency culture based on more layerings of blanket subsidies and price ceiling and other forms of market controls. The BN should take this opportunity to strategically remove them but in stages like what Indonesia has done in the last 10 years and quite successfully,too.Under the MCA economic blueprint's Global Entrepreneur Expansion (GEE), we want to encourage more young entrepreneurs to venture into new areas rather than feed them into thinking that the country owes them something,...forever. Independence, competitiveness, entrepreneurship and innovation are the kinds of value system we would like to see the next generation of liberals take on. We are proud to be on the right side of the political spectrum. We are pro-growth and pro-market, and we should not be apologetic about it. We do not believe that all young people should jump on the populist bandwagon just because its the flavour of the month. We also need to scrutinize the core values of their beliefs, as they do with ours. What we are offering is another facet of liberalism which is not necessarily radical but based on open, sound thinking and policies. As to whether we need a better welfare SYSTEM, then the answer is yes. We have not done enough in this area and the lack of transparency in the allocations of funds to genuine NGOs is a problem. Finally, as for those attacks on basis that INSAP is a pro-establishment outfit are extremely shallow - even for you, Helen Ang and Harris Ibrahim. Fui K. Soong CEO Institute Of Strategic Analysis and Policy Research (INSAP) (INSAP is a research body and think tank of MCA.)
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This Think Tanks are nothing but a DoDo.
Go live in a bloody real world and not live in a web of Academic Hubris.