I am very glad to meet the Malaysian community in Chicago and I am glad that they have set up a club to get together, and also as he said just now in order to preserve Malaysian culture in this place which is 13 hours away from Kuala Lumpur. It is good that you should want to preserve your culture and your heritage because when you are living abroad, very often you forget how these things are, and …assimilate.. and forget about your homeland. Malaysia is our homeland. Malaysia is a country that has given you a start, maybe some of you are now settled down permanently in America but nevertheless, you start off in of course Malaysia and therefore, it is only right to feel some attachment to the country of your origin. It will be sad if you completely forget your country of origin.
Malaysia has been doing quite well since independence. As you know, we have just celebrated the 43rd year of our Independence. Since independence, Malaysia has made tremendous progress. We were growing very rapidly until of course the currency crisis struck us in 1997. Suddenly, we became very poor because our money was de-valued almost half its original value which means of course that every thing that we import cost much more and if we were to travel abroad, you will have to spend much more Malaysian Riggit in order to exchange the foreign currency that we need when we are abroad. Suddenly, our businesses were collapsing and soon our banks. A lot of people advised us to go to the IMF to ask for loans from the IMF to overcome our problems but if we do that, if we did that, then of course we will be indebted to other people. And Malaysia is one country that has avoided borrowing abroad.
We don’t borrow very much which was what saved us because we did not need to find money in order to pay our debt. Instead, we were able to manage the economy quite well and by resorting to rather unorthodox methods, namely what we call "Selective Currency Control", we manage to recover our sovereignty over currency and our economy. And since then September of 1998, the economy has been recovered. Today it has recovered practically fully. Our growth rate last year was 5.6%. This year, we expect two-thirds of majority and achieved a three-quarters majority and the government is strong enough to be able to insure political and economic stability.
On the political side, we have unfortunately a hate campaign carried out by the opposition. The opposition has been propagating hate against the government for many, many years, for 30 years…..beginning in Kindergarten by showing them pictures of the members of the government, asking them to spit on those pictures, stamp on those pictures, little children being taught how to hate. And they have now grown up and they continue to hate people because of once you are taught to hate, it is very difficult to overcome that. And so, because of that, we lost quite a few support. But we plan to overcome that hate, that hatred for the government.
Unfortunately, until recently, there is a group of people decided that they should overthrow the government by violence, by force of arms, and so something like 25 of them robbed the armory and collected about 100 guns and ammunitions and they camp in a place called ….and they try to arouse the people against the government particularly members of the armed forces. They fully expected the armed forces to rebel against the government. They fully expected the whole population to rise and overthrow the government. But nothing of that sort happened.
The army actually put an end to their venture and the people were fully behind the government, fully behind the security forces which restored law and order, but they cannot be killed by bullets. The bullets cannot penetrate their body. This scene of emotion seems to influence a lot of people every now and again. It is not time to believe you cannot kill because they are invulnerable, but they are not, they have since found out that one of their members were killed, accidentally when a gun that were handling rather inexpertly .This member of their group was shot dead.
Unfortunately, they killed two members of ….forces, a policeman and soldier, both of them happened to be non-Muslims unfortunately. This could have caused a lot of Muslim - non-Muslim conflicts. However, nothing of that sort happened because Malaysians are rational people. They knew that this group is an isolated group, has no backing whatsoever from the general population. They don’t think that this is a kind of Muslim effort who are oppressing the non-Muslims in our country.
At the moment, the country is very peaceful and we think that we can explain to the people so that they can understand what actually happened. Of course, there are some problems with some members of the opposition who say that we staged these things in order to win public support for us. In other words, we put our members of security force at risk in order for these people. Sad story. Nevertheless, they have been going around saying that the whole affair was staged by the government.
Actually, we collected the guns and put them in that place and then we got this group of people who hated the government go to that place and thereby exposing them to a lot of danger. I can’t understand how people who are so bitterly against the government… country is peaceful and the economy continues to grow.
I’m very happy that despite all these race relations in Malaysia. One thing is very good. We have no problem here. In your own group as you can see there are Chinese, Malays, Indians and you gather together without any animosity, without any fear of each other. That is, the way it is in Malaysia. It is not so in many other country people of different ethnic groups live. In Malaysia, we have managed to achieve harmony between people who are divided not just by race but also by religion, also by language and culture. Just now we saw an exhibition of at least two cultures. The Kompang is Malay and the Lion Dance is Chinese. No problem at all, you can have that. In fact during our festivals when we celebrated the Independence Day. All the cultures were shown. We wore all kinds of different dresses which are so unique in their own community or type. It is a very colorful event because of the dresses that they wear. So, that is our country. It is a peaceful country, a place where many cultures mix, it is the crossroads of the East where the Chinese and Indians work there and help us. They acquire a lot of skills here.
If you feel like coming home, you are welcomed. But even if you stay here still remember what they call the old country, by all means, I’m quite sure that you will be able to maintain close contact. Even if you have become citizens of another country. But I think I should stop here and give you a chance to ask questions." APPLAUSE…..