The newly minted Prime Minister Datuk Ismail Sabri Yaakob must prioritise the issue of corruption and money politics by strengthening the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission as part of efforts to restore investor confidence in the country, a prominent economist says.
Sunway Group Corporate Advisor, Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam told Business Today the PM should introduce more measures and policies that would inspire confidence to reflect the fact that the MACC is not selective and that it would also go after the “big fish”.
“Within the first 100 days, if the PM can stamp a mark here, it would go a long-way as saying that he is recalibrating the country in the right direction,” Ramon says.
The new Prime Minister Ismail Sabri was sworn in as the ninth Prime Minister last Saturday and in his first maiden address to the nation yesterday, he introduced the concept of the Malaysian Family by urging the people of various religions, races, and ethnicities to help the nation recover from the current economic and health situation.
He says that using the concept of the ‘Malaysian Family’ is more inclusive and cuts across religious, racial, and ethnic boundaries.
Ramon adds that the PM had set the tone on how Malaysia should embrace multi-ethnicity in a broader sense and must see the end of racial and religious bigotry to move towards building a more united Malaysia irrespective of class, creed or religion.
Towards achieving this in the long-term, he should take a look at the civil service and aim to have a civil service that reflects the racial composition of the country.
In the medium-term, he says the PM could also look at the NEW Economic policy that seeks to deploy it on a need-based policy. Such a policy should see the equal distribution of aid and assistance to needy groups irrespective of their ethnicity.
Ramond also says that civil servants can play an important role in stirring the country to the path of economic recovery by coming up with new proposals for the government to consider.
“What we need is for the secretary-general of each ministry to come up with five policy proposals. This will ensure that the prime minister has 100 new policies to implement in his first 100 days in office,” Ramon says
