I refer to the article Change, but on our terms and I simply cannot agree with most of the writer’s arguments.

First of all, I think the writer is making rather weak excuses for Malaysia's relative economic under-performance when compared to Singapore. The writer said that Malaysia can't be compared to Singapore since Singapore started off from a much higher economic and education base.

Yet Malaysia is blessed with ample fertile soil and plenty of natural resources. Surely that would have at least made up somewhat for our initial handicap?

Yet Singapore's GDP per capita (according by the IMF) by purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2008 was US$51,000 while Malaysia's was US$14,000 (I prefer using GDP by PPP as a fair measure of economic strength since that takes into account the artificially high cost of living in many advanced countries).

That means that the average Singaporean is more than three times better off than the average Malaysian. Singapore is ranked fourth in the world. In fact, they are doing better than the US, Australia, UK on this front.

In contrast, Malaysia is ranked 60th. Even if Singapore was slightly ahead of us in 1963 when we separated, they are 3.5 times ahead of us now.

That means that in the four decades since separation, Malaysia has not been able to leverage its natural resources to put up a decent challenge to Singapore's slight economic advantage. Instead, Singapore pulled well ahead of Malaysia. That has to be a damning result for Malaysia. No excuses are necessary!

One would also expect that if Malaysia's initial weakness is our slightly weaker education system, Malaysia should have invested heavily in education and we should have closed to gap between the two countries. Again, that isn't true.

Singapore's education is reputed to be one of the most rigorous in the world. Their universities are consistently ranked among the best in Asia and they attract the best talents from all corners of the world. In contrast, the University of Malaya was the premier university of the region at the time of separation. Today, nobody would even consider it a close fight.

The writer also said that ‘considering our rate of development and ability to distribute wealth in a fashion that has not given rise to ethnic clashes, Malaysia has been quite successful.’ I can't disagree more.

Our national obsession with wealth distribution is the reason why our results today are so miserable. Malaysians wasted all their time, energy and intellect on figuring out how to distribute wealth while Singaporeans put all their efforts into actually growing wealth.

We are like kids of one family who inherited little money and fight amongst ourselves on how best to distribute it. Meanwhile the kids of our next door neighbour actually went out there and made money. We spent all our petrol money on subsidies rather than investing it for when the petrol runs out.

Our protectionist economic policies have given rise to inefficient taxpayer subsidised industries (eg, Proton). Affirmative action has not had the desired effect; instead it has given rise to croynism and corruption.

It is also debatable that we have done better than Singapore in terms of managing ethnic relations. We see Indian Malaysians being massively unhappy with their conditions (Hindraf). They have felt so neglected for so long and are so fed up with the government's distribution of wealth that they have taken to the streets.

I will not deny that minorities in Singapore have their grouses. Indeed, all races in all countries have to deal with contentious issues. But note that none of them have felt the need to take to the streets.

So yes, I think the writer being a proud Malaysian finds it hard to admit that Singapore is now so far ahead of Malaysia in every possible measure. But making excuses is pointless. The first step to solving any problem is to accept that it exists.

We must admit that we have been second best to date and strive for a better tomorrow.