Mahathir plays the Malay card

Mahathir plays the Malay card

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has accused foreign currency and stock market speculators of wrecking Malaysia's affirmative action program to help ethnic Malays, reports said on Tuesday.

Mahathir, quoted by the state news agency Bernama, said Malays and other indigenous races were once again "only among the low- paid workers, hawkers and petty traders" following the economic crisis which swept Asia from July 1997.

The premier, speaking at a dinner in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, on the sidelines of the Southern Africa International Dialogue, said Malaysia must start all over again with its New Economic Policy.

But he vowed that it would not be abandoned despite what he called objections to it from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Western media.

Unlike Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia, Malaysia refused to turn to the IMF for help when the economic crisis hit.