KUALA LUMPUR, March 10 – Last night, amid cheers from American scientists, US President Barrack Obama revived US government funding for stem cell research.
He also in no uncertain terms restored science as a top priority for America, making clear that it would no longer be subject to the vagaries of religious belief or political ideology.
In reviving the spirits of the US scientific establishment, Obama has probably caused much gloom elsewhere in the world. The flood of research dollars driven to scientists in countries such as the UK, South Korea, Sweden, India and Singapore thanks to the Bush administration, is probably about to dry up.
Malaysia, too, jumped on the bio-technology bandwagon – eventually – with the BioValley, then-Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s last Vision 2020 project.
It was to help reverse the country’s brain-drain, and pull in millions of dollars in investment.
But the BioValley remains today, as one influential scientific publication called it in 2005, the Valley of Ghosts.
Unlike Singapore and South Korea, Malaysia was slow to capitalise on short-sighted American policies. While these countries now face tough competition with a resurgent US, they have so much to show for those wonderful Bush years. They have cutting edge laboratories and facilities, and more than that, they have knowledge and patents, techniques and methodologies.
What does Malaysia have? Much like the Multimedia Super Corridor, and Cyberjaya, and probably Iskandar Malaysia, another failed real-estate play, victims of the command-and-control mentality that pervades policy-making.
Today, the second stimulus package will be unveiled. After the let-down of the first stimulus package, it’s safe to say there aren’t especially high hopes riding on this one.
Whatever is announced will probably underline how tight the government’s finances are and how few the options available.
Where did the money go? Aside from salaries for a bloated bureacracy, compensation to infrastructure concessionaires and some really expensive screwdrivers; aside from those, it went into the mega-projects. This is the bitter lesson we must learn.
Each failed mega-project costs money, in development expenditure allocated under each Malaysia Plan, in investment shunted away from more productive enterprises, in speculative real estate plays.
More tragic than that, these failed initiatives are squandered time. The BioValley represents at least five years’ of wasted opportunity, the MSC close to two decades.
Anyone can make more money, but no one has ever bought more time. No amount of money will bring back those Bush years when pharmaceutical companies would have helped us gather knowledge, strengthen intellects and, who knows, maybe even make a crucial breakthrough that would have saved lives.
Those were real years wasted, real lives affected, when Malaysians could have had better jobs, higher pay, and improved living standards, something we could have been truly proud of.
All those corridors and zones and mega-projects are no substitute for clear, fair, competitive and transparent policies, speedily implemented and consistently applied.
All the government needs to do is provide a conducive environment for industries, businessmen and entrepreneurs. They do not need to be forced to buy land. They just want a half-decent chance to invest, to build up a company, to earn a return. Wherever they go, the real estate play will follow.
It’s too late to undo the harm of the Mahathir years. We can’t recreate the lost opportunities, recover the wealth frittered away.
But it’s a good time to make this plea: Unleash us on the economy, set us free. Let the future be up to us
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