THE FREE MARKET 2

1. When I wrote about the free market, I was not thinking of wanting to make money from the United States. It is good if we can but without the US market Malaysian palm oil is doing extremely well.

2. I just wanted to show the hypocrisy of America. We do not go around the world preaching free market, so if we are not so free as alleged, we are not being hypocritical. I had always been sceptical of ideas coming from the rich. They are all self-serving.

3. They preach and fiercely demand that all Governments stop regulating their trade. Yet they are the ones most guilty of protecting their trade.

4. In fact the US has gone beyond that. Trade is to them a political instrument for the promotion of their agenda for the world. By applying sanctions in trade they will try to force countries to submit to their policies. If a country does not support their sanction they have means of squeezing companies or banks from that country.

5. Sanctions is denial of free trade in totality and in Iraq before the 2003 invasion it caused the deaths of 500,000 children. That is how far the abuse of free trade is indulged in by the US. But they talk all the time that trade must be free. If this is not hypocrisy, then what is hypocrisy?

6. Incidentally they talk much about democracy i.e. the freedom to choose one's own Government. But they have no hesitation about warring and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in order to force them to accept democracy. Is this the free choice as advocated by democracy?

7. Is there democracy in the United Nations where one country can negate the will of 190 other member countries? Yet this same country talks so much about democracy and the good that democracy will bring. Practise first, then talk.

8. In my time I had often enough said that Malaysia was not and did not aspire to be a liberal democracy. And when we did things which did not seem to be in keeping with liberal democracy it is because we did not promise to be a liberal democracy.

EDUCATION

9. Some have asked me to comment on our education policy. While we have concentrated on making education available to almost everyone, the quality of education is obviously in need of improving.

10. It is not having examination which is wrong. It is the kind of examination we conduct which is wrong. We need to study the kind of examination and improve it rather than simply abolishing examinations.