Sorang dilantik jadi Penasihat Kerajaan Negeri Selangor dan sorang lagi dicadangkan dijadikan Menteri Kanan. Adakah pertembungan seumpama 1998 akan berulang kembali?
“…the Government’s policy has been to build a framework within which enterprise flourishes and foreign capital is attracted to invest in Malaysia. Particular praise is due to Dr Anwar Ibrahim, the Finance Minister, for the prudent monetary and fiscal policies which he has pursued, and indeed for making Malaysia such an open financial centre. If Finance Ministers could be transferred like star football players, I could think of several very much larger countries who would pay astronomic transfer fees to get him!”– Margaret Thatcher’s Speech to Citibank in Kuala Lumpur ( September 3, 1993)
The Iron Lady of Great Britain is unafraid to call a spade a spade. I remember the Late Tun Tan Siew Sin once remarked to the former National Westminster Bank Chairman–and later Bank of England Governor– Robin Leigh-Pemberton in my presence that (Baroness) “Mrs. Thatcher is the Only Man in the British Cabinet”. Tun Tan admired her for taking on and taming the Trade Unions, empowering the private sector, and dismantling the system of “milk and butter” socialism of Labour Prime Ministers, Clement Attlee and James Callaghan.
For your information, Prime Minister Thatcher was a disciple of Friedrich August von Hayek (author of “The Road to Serfdom”) and the economic soulmate of President Ronald Wilson Reagan who was influenced by Milton Friedman and his University of Chicago economists.
Thatcher’s comments on Anwar Ibrahim is a compliment since she herself had the brilliant and strong willed (Lord) Nigel Lawson as her Chancellor of the Exchequer and LSE’s urbane don Sir Alan Walters as her Economic Advisor. —Din Merican
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