From The Malaysian Insider – The Malaysian Economic Agenda

8 pm News Flash – Anwar’s double whammy: New rival plan to replace bumiputra policy, Opposition to form formal alliance – signals 2-party system is here

• New plan called, Malaysian Economic Agenda, will replace NEP, keep Malay agenda, draw up new agenda for Chinese, Indians

• Opposition leaders continue to throw govt off-balance with bold moves – Selangor chief minister visits site of demolished Hindu temple

KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 – Anwar Ibrahim and the Opposition continued to throw the government off-balance with bold pronouncements yesterday.

The de-facto Opposition leader told Singapore’s only Malay-language newspaper, Berita Harian, that the PKR-DAP-PAS will formalise their alliance in a few days and will then replace the New Economic Policy with a landmark Malaysian Economic Agenda (MEA), a colour-blind initiative aimed at lifting the fortunes of all Malaysians.

The move to formalise the alliance will be cheered by Malaysians who believed that the gains made by the Opposition on March 8 would lead to a two-party system here. It will also shred like wet tissue the argument by the Barisan Nasional that the Opposition alliance is akin to a sham marriage.

Even more important, the MEA will pose a major challenge to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s reform credentials. By proposing to do away with affirmative action for one race, Anwar is setting the bar very high for a coalition which has been allergic to any talk of dismantling the NEP.

In the interview with Singapore BH, Anwar said the Opposition alliance had been working on the MEA for the past one year.

“I would like to assure the Malays that the Malay agenda will remain but we also have to sketch a new agenda for Chinese and Indians,” he said. On his website, Anwar said the MEA can be implemented at state level to reduce race-based affirmative action policies and replace it will a more competitive, merit-based system.

“This will immediately increase foreign investment, improve the state’s tax revenue and begin to promote equity and income parity,” he argued.

Political analysts say that the Chinese and Indian voters deserted BN in droves because they felt that the ruling coalition had turned a deaf ear to their grievances over the NEP. BN’s ability to respond to an imaginative idea like the MEA will be watched closely by the communities.

It is unclear how Malays will react to the removal of NEP from the Malaysian vocabulary.

But Anwar believes that even the Malays will accept that there has been a distortion in implementing the NEP.

Another PKR leader who captured the imagination yesterday was Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim.

He visited Kampung Rimba Jaya in Shah Alam – the site of Sri Maha Mariamman Temple which was demolished in November last year. This act of pulling down the temple a few days before Deepavali ignited anger among Indians across the country.

Mayor Mazalan Md Noor said the temple would be rebuilt soon on 10,000sq feet of land.

“The developer has been directed by the state government to provide the land and RM40,000, the cost of the building construction. It is up to the temple committee and the developer to decide when to start the temple construction,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Khalid announced that he would propose that every household in the state gets 20 cubic metres of water supply free monthly. It is expected to be implemented starting next month. Based on the estimated one million domestic users in Selangor, an exemption of water rates for usage of up to 20 cubic metres translates to a monthly value of RM11.4 million a month.

At a time when those in the lower-income bracket are groaning under inflation, the savings of RM11 per month per household will be welcomed.