KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad took two hours to deliver a 21-page address at the opening ceremony of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) assembly on June 21. During the assembly's closing session two days later, he took another two hours to elaborate on the key points of his earlier speech before 2,000 party delegates.
In his address, Mahathir spoke of the position of the Malays, the politically-dominant group in multiracial Malaysia's, and how they came to be dominated by other races but subsequently regained their political supremacy when the country became independent in 1957.
A 20-year program of affirmative action from 1970, called the New Economic Policy, gave the Malays back what they had lost as the indigenous people of the country, Mahathir noted. This took place after the country saw its worst racial riots in Kuala Lumpur on May 13, 1969 following a keenly contested general election where the ruling party lost a lot of ground to the opposition.