QUESTION TIME | Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s current beef is wealth inequality, and so he wants to restart the redistribution of wealth - to Malays (and bumiputeras). This is something which I commented on here. But that’s not even a stopgap measure, because acquired wealth can be sold off. It also reflects the policies of old, which have already been discredited.

The only way that wealth can be increased and retained within a community is to increase incomes, rather than to distribute existing wealth, even if it is held by the government. And the only way incomes can be increased is to put in place plans to raise incomes for all Malaysians, since 67 percent of the population is bumiputera, with Malays forming 50.5 percent.

The issue of wealth and income equality comes back eventually to the effectiveness of the government and how successful it has been in narrowing opportunity gaps between rich and poor through well thought out and carefully implemented programmes.

But for that to happen, it is necessary for some steps to be taken. And I agree that for this to happen, it is not just the duty of Mahathir but the partners in the Harapan coalition government to exert their force, for at the end of the day, Mahathir only commands a small minority of MPs in the coalition.

And considering that he is advanced in age and may be lacking in vitality, it is necessary for change to start from his other partners - the leaders in PKR, DAP and Amanah - who had envisioned a different plan and programme than that of Mahathir’s Bersatu, a racial reconstruction of Umno, where the membership is exclusively restricted to Malays and bumiputeras, with many of its members having come from Umno...