The continued existence of the New Economic Policy (NEP) has transformed Malaysia from an Asian tiger into an Asean 'pussycat', said academician Dr Lim Teck Ghee.

Speaking at a public forum in Kuala Lumpur last night, he said the policy has caused the country to lose its competitive edge and is driving away the nation's educated young.

Entitled 'Imagine Malaysia without NEP', the forum was organised by Youth for Change (Y4C) and the National Young Lawyers Committee.

Lim said the policy, crafted in the wake of the 1969 racial riots to reduce the income disparity between the races, must be abolished to halt any further erosion of the country's economy.

He said NEP contributed to a growing sense of disunity, a widening gap between the rich and poor; increased corruption, wastage and fraud, the loss of economic competitiveness and public apathy in the nation's political processes.

"We are a long way from reaching the goals of (Vision) 2020. It is losing out in the race against other countries," he added.

Lim was the former head of the Asian Strategic and Leadership Institute's (Asli) centre for public policy studies.

He resigned from the think-tank last October when Asli retracted a controversial report which claimed that bumiputera corporate equity ownership was around 45 percent instead of the government's figure of 18.9 percent

'Asean pussycat'

Meanwhile, Lim said Malaysia is unable to compete with many of its Asian neighbours due to factors like corruption and the lack of high-skilled labour force.

"With the oil and gas bonanza in the sixties, we should have forged ahead. We should not be with countries that we are currently labelled with. We should be up there with South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. But we have fallen back, and we are starting to lose out to Vietnam and even Indonesia on some accounts.

"We are no longer the Asian tiger. We are very much the Asean pussycat," he added.

He said the business community, foreign investors and other key players have formed negative views about the civil service.

According to him, a representative civil service with enlarged non-Malay participation at all levels had been part of the original NEP objectives but it was not achieved.

During the time of the NEP implementation and in the last 15 years after the NEP ended, this objective was neglected or overlooked, he said.

He blamed non-Umno Barisan Nasional parties for failing to prioritise the issue and to comply with racial based administrative power sharing.

"It is time race-based political parties come to an end," the former World Bank official stressed, adding that the NEP has driven away the nation's best talents.

"There is a sickness in our society, a cancer. I think we need to recognise it and we need to deal with it. Time is not on our side, our resources are depleting. The world moves on. It's not going to wait for us to continue returning to the NEP and revisiting this past policy," he said.

On the same note, Lim conceded that the NEP has helped with national stability and eradicating poverty.

He also blamed BN for pushing the NEP as a political platform despite opposition from non-bumiputeras.

He said Malaysians must demand for the removal of the policy.

"It is important to have room and encourage dissent. All citizens have the right to dissent, to say that the NEP must go, we must not have any kind of keris waving or similar acts to deter us. BN is getting fat, lazy and inefficient. It's time for a change," he said.

"The British in 1957 did not leave us with a screwed up country. They left us with a relatively prosperous country," he added.