(Parliament, Thursday): I challenge the UMNO leaders including the UMNO Youth leaders to declare to the delegates in UMNO Assembly, their personal assets and share equity holdings and also those assets and shares held by their immediate family.

I call on the UMNO leaders not to play with statistics on the equity holdings of Malays, be it 19%, 36.6% or 45%.  What is important and what the UMNO leaders must tell their delegates and all Malaysians is how those shares held by Bumiputras are distributed amongst the Bumiputras.

Reading newspaper reports from the UMNO Youth Assembly, one has the impression that the general Malays feel that they are being marginalized or left out from the mainstream of development.  For that, they have to question their own leaders for a satisfactory explanation instead of directing the blames on the other races. 

According to The United Nations Human Development Report, Malaysia suffers the worst income disparity between the rich and poor in South-East Asia. This was conceded in the 9MP Report which showed that the bottom 40% of the population only earns 13.5% of the country’s share of income in 2004 while the top 20% of the population earns 51.2% of the share of income of the nation in 2004.
 

Amongst the 3 main races in Malaysia, inequality in distribution of income is worst amongst the Bumiputras.  In 2004, the Gini Coefficient for Bumiputras was 0.453 while the Coefficient for Chinese and Indians were only 0.446 and 0.425 respectively.

Given the gross unequal distribution of incomes amongst the Bumiputra, the general common Malays will continue to be marginalized even if NEP were to be continued until 2020.   The longer NEP were to be continued, the more wealth these UMNOputras and their cronies are going to amass themselves with, at the expense of all other Malaysian, including the general common Bumiputras.

Therefore, the key to help the general common Malays is to rectify and change the mechanism with which the shares and equities held by the Bumiputras are distributed among themselves.  For the start, the UMNO leaders must declare their shareholdings and assets and those of their immediate family members to the delegates and all Malaysians.