'It has resulted in a waste of crucial resources, energy and time and has distracted from the real issues confronting the country,' he said.

Despite being a member of the ruling party himself, Mr Zaid took issue with the idea of Malay supremacy that the party had worked out, saying it did not match the principles of democracy and rule of law Malaysia was founded on.

The former de facto law minister quit last month in protest against Internal Security Act arrests.

His comments, made at the LawAsia 2008 conference yesterday, came soon after Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak spoke of plans to dismantle elements of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which favours Malays and bumiputeras, in the near future.

Unhappiness with the NEP among non-Malays, as well as young Malays who feel it benefits a select few, was one of the factors that contributed to Barisan Nasional's major losses in the March polls, which Mr Zaid cited as evidence that BN no longer speaks for the people.

'We are a deeply divided nation, adrift for our having abandoned democratic traditions and the rule of law in favour of a political ideology that serves no one save those who rule,' he said.

While affirmative action was justified in the country's early days to help Malays, he noted, 'a certain segment of the Barisan leadership' had 'restructured unilaterally' the social contract in the 1980s to give it a more 'racialist tone'.

'The essence of its reconstructed meaning was that Malaya is primarily the home of the Malays and that the non-Malays should acknowledge that primacy by showing deference to the Malays and Malay issues,' he said.

'It was, and still is, impossible to reconcile the principles of equality and civil rights of the people of this country with the primacy of one group over all others.'

Urging the BN government to abandon this 'reworked' social contract, he said: 'It is time for us all to practise a more transparent and egalitarian form of democracy and to recognise and respect the rights and dignity of all the citizens of this country.'

Mr Zaid also had a word of assurance for Malays. They now, he stressed, had a clear majority in numbers, so 'the fear of their being outnumbered is baseless'.

'They are not under siege. The institutions of government are such that the Malays are effectively represented, and there is no way the interest of the Malays can be taken away other than through their own weakness and folly,' he said.

Rather, he declared, bumiputeras had to be given 'new thinking tools' to take part in the global economy.

Calling for a 'new dynamic' of cooperation and competition, he said: 'If affirmative action is truly benchmarked on the equitable sharing of wealth that is sustainable, then we must confront the truth and change our political paradigm; 40 years of discrimination and subsidy have not brought us closer.'