MALAYSIA cannot seem to end its love affair with five-year plans. It is now in its 12th (2021-2025). Policymakers and civil servants are undoubtedly consumed with endless meetings for the plan’s upcoming mid-term review. Once that is done, they will again be distracted by having to hatch the next (13th) plan. What would it take to disabuse the government of its continuing folly with rigid five-year plans?

As a young surgeon in Johor Baru in the late 1970s, my colleagues and I were often taken away from our clinical duties due to endless meetings for the mid-term review of the then 5th Plan. Then, just as I thought the ordeal was over, a few months later we were back with another series of meetings, this time to plan for the upcoming 6th plan. I did not endear myself to my superiors when I wrote, “finish incomplete projects of previous plans!”