Tag: Malaysia

Posted on

Three Things I am Thinking about Today #6

  1. This is a good read in The Economist by Noam Chomsky, a long-time critic of American imperialism, reminding us that every nation ends up with some warped idea of its own benevolence, especially when that country bestrides the world in economic and military power. For a relatively small nation like Malaysia, the lack of ability to project imperial power means that we are removed from such temptations. And yet, even within our own borders, we often act in ways that belie our insistence on a benign and harmonious “Keluarga Malaysia”. Forced labour, killings in police custody, rounding-ups of “illegal” workers and many other instances in Malaysian history seem to suggest that if ever we were offered power at the imperial scale, we would likely also fail to wield such power with wisdom and restraint. 
  1. Jeff Bezos, through his private investment vehicle Bezos Expeditions, has made his maiden investment in an Indonesian e-commerce startup, raising the stakes for Southeast Asia as a frontline in the global competition for tech investments. As it is, most foreign investors would flock to Indonesia – for its sheer size within the larger Southeast Asian region – or to Singapore, for its more mature markets and investor-friendliness. In the meantime, Malaysia is adamant in its insistence on ethnic navel-gazing, pleased at being able to play an outdated game of racial one-upmanship. I suppose we deserve to be where we are, if we continue to insist on keeping our heads firmly stuck in the sands of irrelevance. 
  1. In the meantime, PM Ismail Sabri is asking us to “forget our differences”, in the spirit of “Keluarga Malaysia”. It will be interesting to see if this call – noble and much-needed as it is – will be translated into tangible policy changes. Having seen the twists and turns of Malaysian politics over the past few decades, I will not be holding my breath.   
Posted on

Three Things I am Thinking about Today #5

  1. The Government is tabling a bill to raise Malaysia’s statutory debt ceiling from 60% to 65%, in order to fund stimulus measures to help Malaysians get through the pandemic. I think this is timely, and much needed. What is not clear, however, is whether this is a temporary or permanent raising of the debt ceiling (the title of the Bill suggests that this is temporary, but this is not made fully clear), and whether there is a clear plan for Malaysia to bring its debt levels back down to below 60% once the pandemic is truly over. We must not allow emergency measures to become a slippery slope that drives our nation’s finances into further indebtedness, especially after all the losses that we are incurring over the 1MDB looting. 
  1. While the debate in Malaysia’s parliament over raising the debt limit looks to be perfunctory, the United States seems to be spiraling into yet another bout of partisan bickering over its own debt ceiling. Madness? Yes. But this is the blowback that the US political class has purchased for itself when it walked blindly into the morass of the War on Terror, and the disastrous consummation of its flirtation with nativist no-nothingism with the Tea Party that had eventually led to Trump’s presidency. There is always a price to pay when you play with extremism in the pursuit of narrow parochial interests.  
  1. Here’s an interesting and totally expected thing that usually happens when you conflate a succession race with a plan to recover from a pandemic: the politics will almost always get in the way. What is Singapore thinking? Like mentioned in the article, this is not something that would have happened during Lee Kwan Yew’s time. Another chink in the armour, then, for the PAP government under Lee Hsien Loong? 
Posted on

Three Things I am Thinking about Today #3

  1. Biden is setting a new goal for global vaccine equity: 70% of the world to be vaccinated by next year… which is already a stated goal by the W.H.O. “The U.S. wants to be engaged,” French virologist Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny said in response to this development, “but they still don’t know exactly how to engage with the new world that has developed while they were away.” Isolationism is not just a plaything for Trumpian political appeal: it has a real cost, on real human lives.
  2. The “bloated” size of the Malaysian civil service has been a favourite topic amongst opposition politicians of the past several decades, so this take on the size of the civil service is a pleasant surprise. Granted, the PSM would certainly have a bias for stronger public services. But at a time when much attention is being devoted to the Government’s operational expenses – and the heavy cost of civil servants’ emoluments – it would be interesting if a more nuanced position can be staked out on this long-running debate.
  3. Another taper tantrum ahead? At least it is good to know that the recovery seems to be progressing in earnest. But with concerns over Evergrande and the punishments being meted against Chinese businesses, a tapering could lead to oversized shocks for developing economies.  
Posted on

Budget 2021: A Walk into the Unknown?

As the debate over the 2021 Budget rages on in Parliament, we are faced with a possible outcome that has not been on the table for at least my own lifetime: the likelihood of a Budget Bill that is voted down by Parliament.

Firstly: how likely is this? The Government was clearly anxious enough about the likelihood of this Budget passing through Parliament, that it actually triggered the option of an Emergency (which was thankfully rejected by the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong). Instead, the Ruler exhorted all parliamentarians to set aside party affiliations, and lend their support to the Budget Bill, keeping in mind the ongoing economic carnage that has been wreaked by a global pandemic that is raging unabated.

And yet, the Agong’s call has been left unheeded. 

Parties on both sides of the aisle – in weighing their own political interests – have made their own demands on the Budget, raising the spectre of a rejected Budget. 

On the part of the Government, they have not yet fully given up on the hopes of triggering an Emergency; sprinkled throughout the daily newspapers over the past few days are the comments of various rent-a-quote professors, eager – no doubt – to ingratiate themselves with those in office by recalling their so-called merits of an Emergency that would allow a Budget to sail through unmolested. 

The more interesting question is: what happens if the Budget is not passed? The responses have been interesting. 

Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul have raised the possibility that civil servants might not get paid if the Budget is not passed. (This is technically correct: a failed Budget Bill could lead to a government shutdown, if the appropriate sums to run the day-to-day operations of the Government cannot be appropriated.

What the Finance Minister has left unsaid, and which DAP leaders have been (almost gleefully) pointing out, is that a failure to pass the Budget Bill will likely, based on Westminster convention, lead to the fall of the Perikatan Nasional government. A new Prime Minister needs to be appointed, and the Government formed by that Prime Minister will need to pass a Budget Bill in Parliament. 

It is this grim outlook for the Government that has led many within the Perikatan government to still raise the option (almost longingly) for an Emergency, so that a Budget could be passed without the Government of the day incurring the risk of stepping down. 

Personally, I don’t think an Emergency would be likely, or desirable. Could the Government fall? I would give it a 30% probability that something like this could happen. More likely is that some sort of last-minute compromise would be cobbled in order to come to a Budget that enough Parliamentarians would deign to vote for. 

The alternative may well be uncharted waters for Malaysian democracy! 

Posted on

Malaysia, An Immigrant Nation

The recent debate on the merits of accommodating Rohingya refugees continues to perplex. If anything, this debate underlines Mahathir’s adage that people often forget.

After all, Malaysia is, first and foremost, an immigrant nation. Unless you are part of an Orang Asli tribe, chances are that your own family line has been a very recent addition to the melting pot of multiracial Malaysia. In fact, I believe that for most Malaysians of my generation, a quick look up the family tree would reveal at least one grandparent or great-grandparent who made that fateful decision to devote their lives to this land that has now become our “tanah tumpah darah”.

My own maternal grandmother was the daughter of a religious preacher from the uplands of Sumatra who eventually settled in Padang Rengas, Perak. Another grandmother was actually an immigrant herself, coming to these shores in matrimony to a local cleric in Kuang, Selangor.

Malaysia is a land built on the blood, sweat and tears of immigrants. Plantation workers, rubber tappers, tin miners, moneylenders, petty traders: the modern Malaysian economy was built on the contributions of those who chose this land to be their own.

And yet here we are, descendants of immigrants, so eager to jump on the most virulent of racist tropes about the Rohingya. And more so, in these first days of Ramadan, when Muhammad himself was a refugee who escaped persecution in Makkah to build a new life and a new Muslim nation in his newfound home that he renamed Madinah.

In the spirit of this holy month, let us together learn to let go of our prejudices, and learn to accept our fellow Muslims – nay, our fellow human beings – with the conviction of love and dignity that our Messenger made his life’s work.

Posted on

What I’m Reading Lately – Sun 5 IV 2020

  1. This is a good read on the growing phenomenon of “zoombombing”; clearly a sign of the times.
  2. Warren Buffett said it best: it’s when the tide goes out that you finally see who amongst us have been swimming naked. The buzz around “founders” and the deification of “entrepreneurs” has always been a pebble in the shoe for me; this Economist article exposes “fake tech” and other frothy detritus of our tech-crazed era.
  3. So it turns out that the man of the moment, Malaysia’s Director General of Health and the face of the Malaysian Government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, is a son of a single mother, and grew up in a public housing project. I like him even more now.