For some time, Malaysia’s New Economic Policy (NEP) has been touted as a successful case of “affirmative action” by world standards. The term “affirmative action” originally came about during the US civil rights struggles in the middle of the 20th century. The NEP’s primarily ethnic focus for over half a century is hence unlikely to significantly lower economic inequality. Unsurprisingly then, despite over half a century of the NEP, total income inequality remains high. Affirmative action seems to imply the acceptability of otherwise unequal societies in which aggrieved groups are no longer disproportionately under-represented.
