It's good that Wan briefly introduced what the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) is. He said that often people look at free marketers as not too concerned with high inequality and the poor, so they made it clear that their goal is to "make markets work for the poor."
Both the administration and the opposition in Malaysia
know that IDEAS is free marketer and hence, not exactly their ideological ally.
But they see IDEAS as truly independent, receive no money or funding from the
government, so they entertain the 3rd party engagement of IDEAS in various
policy discussions.
Wan showed also a map of Malaysia. You may also view the presentation in slideshare, here.
One principle in Malaysia before was the New Economic Policy (NEP). When Prime Minister Razak Najib came, he introduced the New Economic Model (NEM) and it is pretty liberal and free market leaning, to correct or reduce the distortions of heavy state involvement and welfarism in Malaysia. Wan gave examples of how Malay-bias the government policy is, at the disadvantage of non-Malays like the ethnic Chinese and Indians in the country.
The 13th General Elections (GE13) result last May however, has threatened the liberalization reforms that PM Najib wants to introduce. And even though the elections were conducted rather unfairly. When IDEAS released the result of their findings of the elections, their website crashed for more than a week due to heavy online traffic, people downloading the report, reading articles and interviews of Wan and other think tank leaders.
