KUALA LUMPUR, March 8 —Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak clarified today that his administration has not rejected Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s Wawasan 2020 or Vision 2020.
Najib said his administration’s Transformasi Nasional 2050 (TN50) policy, which he introduced while tabling the 2017 Budget last year was a continuation of Dr Mahathir’s aspiration for the country.
“There are people who assume we have rejected. No. This is a continuation, but what’s different is we want to have a national strategy, there is execution of plans and monitoring,” Najib said in the Dewan Rakyat during Question Time.
He was replying Mersing MP Datuk Dr Abd Latiff Ahmad who asked the prime minister to state difference in structure between TN50 and Wawasan 2020.
Najib also said that neither Wawasan 2020 nor the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1971 introduced by his father and second prime minister Tun Razak Hussein were failed policies, though he acknowledged that they had their “weaknesses”.
“If we stopped the politicking in our country, it is easier to achieve these targets.
“In reality, we did not fail but we admit that there are weaknesses,” he said in reply to Rantau Panjang MP Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff who claimed Wawasan 2020 had failed to achieve its target to close the wage gap between the east and west coast of the peninsula while the affirmative action NEP had not seen the Bumiputera community progress much.
While tabling the Budget last October 21, Najib announced that a series of national discourses would be carried out to chart the nation’s direction for the next 30 years under the TN50 plan.
Najib also told a public forum in January that he hoped Malaysia would be ranked in the top 20 countries by 2050 but said this could be in any area including its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or purchasing power parity or even the levels of public happiness.
