The Way Forward

The Way Forward - Vision
The following is a complete text of the Working Paper - The Way Forward presented by His Excellency YAB Dato' Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the Malaysian Business Council.

The purpose of this paper is to present before you some thoughts on the future course of our nation and how we should go about to attain our objective of developing Malaysia into an industrialised country. Also outlined are some measures that should be in place in the shorter term so that the foundations can be laid for the long journey towards that ultimate objective. 

• Hopefully the Malaysian who is born today and in the years to come will be the last generation of our citizens who will be living in a country that is called 'developing'. The ultimate objective that we should aim for is a Malaysia that is a fully developed country by the year 2020.

• What, you might rightly ask, is 'a fully developed country' ? Do we want to be like any particular country of the present 19 countries that are generally regarded as 'developed countries' ? Do we want to be like the United Kingdom, like Canada, like Holland, like Sweden, like Finland, like Japan ? To be sure, each of the 19, out of a world community of more than 160 states, has its strengths. But each also has its fair share of weaknesses. Without being a duplicate of any of them we can still be developed. We should be a developed country in our own mould.

• Malaysia should not be developed only in the economic sense. It must be a nation that is fully developed along all the dimensions: economically, politically, socially, spiritually, psychologically and culturally. We must be fully developed in terms of national unity and social cohesion, in terms of our economy, in terms of social justice, political stability, system of government, quality of life, social and spiritual values, national pride and confidence.