Where ethnocapital refers to economic activities and business ownership that are closely tied to a particular ethnic group. Capitalism Clientship is a system where businesses depend on close relationships with government officials to survive or grow. Often, companies get favors (like contracts or licenses) not because they’re the best, but because they are loyal to those in power.
The 13th Malaysia Plan (13MP) promotes “user-pay” mechanisms to alleviate the government’s fiscal burden which shifts immediate fiscal pressures onto ordinary citizens, and consequentially consolidates ethnocapitalist and rentier-based economic order.
The next piece - on GLC/GLIC link with PPP - uncovers how development is co-opted by oligarchic interests aligned with monopoly-finance capital from the Global North. The 13th Malaysia Plan (13MP) also sets a pivotal shift in national education and workforce development, focusing on the roles of TVET and STEM.
With global tariffs in place, there is a need to assess the short-term fallout and long-term policy recalibrations necessary to shield domestic industry, especially the small manufacturing industry, in the unequal exchange patterns that typify North-South trade dynamics. There is also a need, in light of US tariffs, to recalibrate our semiconductor strategy.
In alignment with the 13MP, we need to have a new food security strategy, too, while exposing the pitfalls of the five-season rice plan, especially in the context of cartel-controlled production. All these aspects are tied beyond-green-capitalism, with an ecosocialist reorientation toward country’s new environmental agenda.
One mustn't be neglecting the plights of the Orang Asli in semanjung and the Orang Asal in the hinterlands of Sabah and Sarawak where policy instruments like JAKOA and proposed amendments to the Aboriginal Peoples Act 1954 continue to disenfranchise these first native original communities within an ethnocapitalist framework. Nor should we be hindering the-path-to-indigenous-led-forest-governance.
in solidarity,