Friday, September 28, 2012

Tun Dr Mahathir's rule in terms of foreign exchange value of the Ringgit

Normally, people compare a country's performance in terms of Per Capita Income of the population. Let's take a look at Tun's performance (July 16 1981 to October 31, 2003) using Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) against USD, as compared with Singapore's SGD against USD. I am using the information from the following website, fxtop.com:

Currency converter in the past
http://fxtop.com/en/cnvhisto.php?A=100&C1=USD&C2=EUR&DD=28&MM=09&YYYY=2012&B=1&P=&I=1&btnOK=Go%21

On July 16 1981, 1 USD = 2.155 SGD; 1 USD = MYR 2.346
On Oct 31, 2003, 1 USD = 1.739 SGD; 1 USD = MYR 3.80 (presumably still pegged)
On Sep 27, 2012, 1 USD = 1.228 SGD; 1 USD = MYR 3.076  (latest to date)

On Aug 9, 1965,  when Singapore was ejected from Malaysia, 1 USD = 3.061 SGD! It was uncanny that the exchange rate was almost the same as that of MYR against USD now, while SGD's performance improved 2.5 times.

Based on the number of years under his watch, Tun Dr Mahathir was in control 40% of the time since Independence (22 years out of 55 years) todate; 47% of the time since Singapore was ejected.

That Singapore had virtually no natural resources other than human, as compared with Malaysia which had and still has natural resources in abundance, shows Malaya, then Malaysia, under Alliance, then Barisan Nasional had obviously failed. Do we still want the devil that we know to continue? To quote Tengku Razaleigh (ex-DPM, and still an Umno MP) something to this effect : 'If the doctor has been giving you wrong medicine, there must be something wrong with the doctor; there must be something more seriously wrong for the patient to go back to the same doctor.'

Update on Sept 29: Haris Ibrahim quoted LKY's initial shock at being expelled by Tunku in 1965, but as it turned out, was a blessing in disguise...
http://harismibrahim.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/a-glimpse-of-what-might-have-been-but-for-umnobn-mahathir-pak-lah-and-now-najib/

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