We were criticised by everybody, but we believed strongly we only had the people of Malaysia to answer to," former finance minister Tun Daim Zainudding said last Friday in a phone interview from Kuala Lumpur.
"We had seen what had happened with African nations that had taken aid from the IMF; they never are free."
Malaysia defied the prevailing orthodoxy of the day and closed its doors to outside aid even as Asian financial markets, including its own, were collapsing.
Even Daim credits part of Malaysia's turnaround to the country's ability to export oil, electronics and textiles.
But most economists agree that at the very least the plan did not sink the economy into further depths.
