Foreign investment and multinational corporations as part and parcel of imperialism, benefit only the imperialists and their local accomplices and not the broad masses of the people of this country. The continued reliance on foreign investment has only perpetuated neo-colonialism in our country whereby the politics and economics are still in the hands of Anglo-US imperialism and their hangers-on, resulting in a massive outflor of capital from our country, galloping inflation, increasing unemployment and acute landlessness. The imperialist and neo-colonial economic and political domination is the root cause of the backwardness of the Third World countries, including our country, and the deprivation and hardship of the vast majority of the people. To argue about the need for foreign investment and foreign expertise in order to develop the country is nothing but to rationalise the control, plunder and exploitation of our country and people by Anglo-US imperialism, comprador—bureaucrat capitalism and feudalism. Therefore in order to develop our country so that our people can live in prosperity, peace and harmony, the country must first and foremost be fully independent. Only then can an independent, self-reliant and progressive economy be developed which would benefit the broad masses of our people of all nationalities. This was the essence of the speech made by the General Editor of Truth, Sdr. Rahman Embong to repudiate the arguments presented by Encik Shahril Samad, the political secretary to the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, and Puan Rafidah Aziz, a lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya, at a forum on "Foreign Investment and National Development" held on October 4, 1973 at Mara Institute of Technology, Shah Alam. A capacity crowd of over 600 students, who were very enlightened and enthused by the scientific analysis given, punctuated Sdr. Rahman's speech with loud applause.

Similar points were also raised at a seminar on "Multinational Corporation: Its implications to Developing Countries" held two months earlier under the auspices of USIS at Hotel Merlin in Kuala Lumpur, when a patriotic Malayan intellectual repudiated the imperialist propaganda spouted out by R.G. Hawkins, Nixon's advisor on foreign trade and two other imperialist academics, Jose de la Torre and Ingo Walters.