Can't do away with racial affirmative action in Malaysia yet

I think everyone is underestimating the problem in Malaysia, no I'm not taking about the ailing economy.

In the first place, we don't know how many people supports the racial affirmative action. We can't just suggest that the government scrap these kinds of policies. How many would be unhappy?

In South Korea for example, the new president wants to lift the ban on US beef in an effort to deregulate the economy, promoting freer markets (especially for the US-Korea FTA) and moving the nation towards being an advanced economy. Free markets, like meritocracy, are supposed to be more efficient, they keep the best and trash the bad. Free markets however isn't desired by Koreans who prefer to protect their own livestock industry. I assume that the health concerns are only overplayed as it has been 5 years since the outbreak of mad-cow disease.

This is the way things are in a democracy. The majority dictates what is right, it doesn't matter what is best. It's just what democracy is all about. I'm not saying that most Malaysians are like that, I'm not sure myself. Just noting that we don't know if they are or are not like that. We can't just expect racial affirmative action to go away. Not yet.

I have a feeling that a lot of Malays voted for PR not wanting to drop racial affirmative action. They just did that because they're unhappy with BN. We're all not sure and it's a bit far fetched to assume that their support for PR is proof of their support to end the NEP. Why did Lim Guan Eng became defensive when he was quoted for opposing the NEP? He probably got calls from PKR leaders telling him it's not politically good.

People who voted for BN is the same thing. They may feel that preserving the bumiputra status-quo as more important than ending corruption. Evidently there's still a lot of such voters. No they're not stupid, they just have different priorities than us.

There's just so many things that are good, but we can't do them because we are a democracy. Sometimes the majority supports something that isn't supposedly the best choice (I actually believe dropping fuel subsidies is better for the nation, a lot of economists point this as an economically sound choice, but Malaysians don't share my sentiment and the government is now pressured to reinstate it). The majority has a larger voice than you, I'm sorry.

People power may not always yield the best results for the nation.
But in a democracy, it is right.