Upon close analysis, you will find that one of Umno's implied agenda is to keep a large segment of the Malay population poor. Consider the following:

Umno, which effectively runs the government, is riddled with corruption and croynism. Members crave for the award of lucrative government contracts given out under the pretext of the NEP. But the party is filled with bureaucrats with no management skills and no productive economic skills.

In a freely competitive market, they would be in the lower rungs of the public sector or would have lost their jobs altogether. To maintain their way of life, they have to ensure that the NEP is continued at all costs.

To justify the continuance of the NEP, they will need a large segment of the Malay population to remain poor. This will provide support to arguments like the one made by Johor Umno that requiring a poor Malay to compete against other races on merit in a free market is like requiring a handicapped person to compete in a marathon against healthy runners (whether the analogy is appropriate in the first place is open to debate).

A large segment of the Malays are still poor after 35 years of the NEP and on top of this the income disparity between the rich and the poor has widened. Clearly, the NEP as a method of equalising economic disparity has failed.

The benefits of the NEP to the poor Malay is a pittance compared to the benefits to the rich and well-connected Malay. It is in reality a tool and facade for the rich and elite Malays - who are in the minority - to continue their extravagant way of life at the expense of the rest of the country.

The cost of the NEP so far include increased racial polarisation, declining education standards, unemployable graduates who are mostly Malay, an inefficient and incompetent public service, a government which makes decisions first and studies the impact later, bailouts of well-connected companies, brain drain just about everything that is wrong in this country!