Plundering Malaysia's resources

In Henry Lawhutt's letter to the editor which appeared in Salient No. 12, he is quite right to say that Malaysia is a land rich in natural resources, tin, etc. and the second largest producer of pineapple and copra in the world. But this is nothing to be proud of and does not imply that Malaysia is a prosperous country and Malaysian people enjoy the high living standard since 70% of our economy is controlled by foreign capitalists and the rest is in the hands of a small number of local capitalists. These capitalists enrich themselves by plundering our natural resources and exploiting our people. The more our natural resources are exploited, the poorer our country and our people would become. This is why after having exported rubber, tin etc. for so many decades, Malaysia is still regarded as a "developing country" and her people still live in misery. (From 1963 onwards, the formation of the Malaysia, the so called "independence", have achieved nothing to improve the peasants' economy but in fact have created a gang of Malay bureaucratic capitalists, who colaborate with the foreign investors to exploit the Malaysian people.) To carry out her "development" programmes Malaysia has to encounter many difficulties. For example, according to government sources at least more than 2/3 of the budget of the Pacific sector for the second Malaysian plan has to come from the foreign and the domestic borrowing. Another example, the financing of the so-called "South East Asia's largest and development scheme", the Jengka Triangle Project in Pahang, enitrely comes from the World Bank.

Henry Lawhutt should be ashamed of himself that even our Kiwi friends know the real situation in Malaysia better then him. In the same issue of Salient our Kiwi friends pointed out in an article entitled 'Quick bucks from fascists' roads' that "every year Britain obtained 300 million pounds in profits from Malaysia and Singapore. Foreign investment in Malaysia is defended on the basis that the country is short of capital for development. With such massive out-flows of capital each year that is hardly surprising."

It is no point for me to argue with Henry Lawhutt anymore. But I would like to point out that he tries to evade the following points which I made in my letter entitled 'Economy build on quick sand', in No. 9 Salient that it is clear that the FELDA Scheme is solely for the benefit of the foreign investors, up to 1972 each one of us owe about $(M)600 in foreign debt, that the foreign capitalists are extracting cheap labour ($(M)1 per day) for a local factory worker quoted by Tun Tan last year.