It’s 2020. Welcome to the future!

But just how clear is our vision this time around?

AN unexpected benefit of growing old is that I can see better! I kid you not. I was mildly myopic as a teenager but still needed glasses to drive or watch a movie in the cinema.

I graduated to contact lenses, which I wore for most of my adult life until I started developing presbyopia or long-sightedness. That kind of “cured” my short-sightedness and now I don’t wear my specs unless I have to read very fine print.

My ophthalmologist says my eyes, while not quite 20/20, are really good for a person my age. I only wish I could say the same thing for my country. Yes, you know where I am going with this: Vision 2020.

This catchphrase is really popular among governments, not just ours. It appears many were captivated by this ophthalmological term. To the laymen, vision 20/20 is “perfect” eyesight, which I have learned is not true.

It is simply the standard that an average person can see at 20 feet or six metres.

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, 20/20 vision is not perfect vision.

As it explains: “A person can have 20/15 vision, which is sharper than average. If you have 20/15 vision, you can see a line in the eye chart at 20 feet that the average person can only see when they are 15 feet away. Generally, the goal of correcting vision with glasses or contacts is to bring a person’s vision to 20/20.”

That would appear to be what many governments, like ours, tried to do: set their sights on bringing their countries and economies to a so-called perfect level, which is to reach developed status by the year 2020. Malawi, India and Nigeria are among them.

But while some progress was made, all these states lost sight of their lofty goals along the way.

Our Vision or Wawasan 2020 was first presented by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad on Feb 28,1991, as “The Way Forward”, at the Malaysian Business Council.

He started by saying that he hoped the Malaysians born today and in the years to come would be the last generation of our citizens who would be living in a country that is called “developing” as the country aimed to be fully developed by 2020.

Later that year when he introduced Wawasan 2020 during the tabling of the Sixth Malaysia Plan, it made headlines of course. It was so catchy and outlined an inclusive, wholesome plan to develop a multiracial nation that looked doable with its 29-year timeline.

I had forgotten the details of Wawasan 2020, so I googled and this is what is on the Prime Minister’s Office of Malaysia website (www.pmo.gov.my/vision-2020).

“By the year 2020, Malaysia can be a united nation, with a confident Malaysian society, infused by strong moral and ethical values, living in a society that is democratic, liberal and tolerant, caring, economically just and equitable, progressive and prosperous, and in full possession of an economy that is competitive, dynamic, robust and resilient.”

Truly lofty, noble and ambitious goals beautifully articulated, which were exactly what our nation needed and still does.

But according to Dr Mahathir, Wawasan 2020 fell short because of Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s “bad policies”.

What I find remarkable are the similarities between Malaysia’s experience and those of other Vision 2020 countries.

The 1998 Malawi Vision 2020 Statement proclaimed: “By the year 2020, Malawi, as a God-fearing nation, will be secure, democratically mature, environmentally sustainable, self-reliant with equal opportunities for and active participation by all, having social services, vibrant cultural and religious values and a technologically driven middle-income economy.”

In 2009, Nigeria under President Umaru Musa Yar’adua envisaged making the country “among the world’s top 20 economies by 2020”, after Vision 2010 launched in the 1990s under military rule failed to achieve its objectives.

As for India, it was its much admired 11th President from 2002 to 2007, APJ Abdul Kalam, who said: “A developed India by 2020, or even earlier, is not a dream. It need not be a mere vision in the minds of many Indians. It is a mission we can all take up and succeed.”

Like Malaysia, the failure to achieve the dream was blamed on, among other things, bad planning, poorly thought-out and overlapping policies, shoddy implementation with no periodic reviews, and of course corruption.

This seems to be the curse of many developing nations.

Ayo Olukotun, a columnist with Nigerian newspaper The Punch, described the country’s Vision 2020 as “dotting our policy landscape as a memento of planned failure” and joining “the graveyard of Nigeria’s abandoned projects”, which could very well apply to the Malaysian context too.

But that hasn’t stopped the Pakatan Harapan government from trying again with a new development plan with a new deadline that is not as sexy as 2020 though.

We now have the Shared Prosperity Vision 2030. It’s defined as “a commitment to make Malaysia a nation that achieves sustainable growth along with fair and equitable distribution, across income groups, ethnicities, regions and supply chains (and is) aimed at strengthening political stability, enhancing the nation’s prosperity and ensuring that the rakyat are united whilst celebrating ethnic and cultural diversity as the foundation of the nation state.”

Its primary aim is to provide a decent standard of living to all Malaysians a videcade from now. No mention of developed nation status anymore but what “decent standard” we are aiming for is anyone’s guess at this point.

When Dr Mahathir spoke at the Malaysian Business Council in 1991, he was 66 years old. He said, “Most of us in this present Council will not be there on the morning of January 1,2020. Not many, I think.

“The great bulk of the work that must be done to ensure a fully developed country called Malaysia a generation from now will obviously be done by the leaders who follow us, by our children and grand-children.

“But we should make sure that we have done our duty in guiding them with regard to what we should work to become. And let us lay the secure foundations that they must build upon.”

These words are still applicable and more relevant and urgent today than before. And this man, our fourth and seventh prime minister, has amazingly beaten the odds and is here on the first day of 2020.

He has the rare opportunity to reset the country’s future even though – unless by some miracle – he will not be there on the morning of January 1,2030, to see the results.

With just 10 years to do go, it is imperative that he build that secure foundation, avoid repeating the same mistakes that led to the death of Wawasan 2020 and put in place worthy and principled leaders after him who will do their duty. That is probably the tallest of orders in our increasingly fractious and nasty political landscape.

So to Dr M, I can only wish him good health, a strong heart and political acuity to steer our nation in the year ahead.

And to everyone else, Nigerians, Malawians and Indians included, good luck, happy 2020, or thereabouts.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.

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