Joseph Stiglitz just wrote an article regarding Malaysia's 50 years of development.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz91/English

It's sad that a lot of the good things in there, need to be revised because they are no longer applicable or applied in Malaysia.

• Affirmative action now needs to be non-racial, it should be more towards target groups such as rural areas and plantation workers. I don't see the need for affirmative action anymore for foreign educated, middle class Malays (or worse uber-rich Malays).
  
• "following or rejecting outsiders’ advice on a pragmatic basis", this sadly is being ignored since departure of Dr. Mahathir, and now more often than not, the government follows blindly whatever large foreign corporations (or their proxy the US government trade groups) say Malaysia should do. Kudos to government bodies like MAMPU and K-Perak for example that indepdently evaluate and suggest plans that are beneficial for the local IT industry and local economy by advocating FOSS. In these areas, we are even ahead of more developed countries like the UK.
• Lack of free speech and corruption. The article overlooks the costs of corruption in Malaysia.
  
• There are also numerous complaints on the state of our education system, especially tertiary in which academic freedom is curtailed and there are student quotas limiting local opportunities for the best students.