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Politics & government

[2961] Umno’s calls for stability is a racketeering slogan

Stability is Umno and BN’s rally cry for this general election. But it is a disingenuous political messaging given that all recent instabilities are directly caused by Umno and their allies.

Umno’s argument for stability is akin to racketeering. Wikipedia has a concise definition: when somebody offers “a service that solves a problem that would not exist without the racket.” One concrete example involves a shop paying protection money, which the protection is from violence perpetrated by the fee collectors. Yet another concrete example is, well, Umno’s version of stability.

Umno and their allies, and this included Pas until recently, manufactured ethnic tensions throughout the 2018-2020 Pakatan Harapan administration. The manufactured inter-ethnic crisis brought instability to the country, all with the hope that Pakatan Harapan would fall, and be replaced with a government that Umno would be part of. Pakatan Harapan government collapsed under the pressure as Bersatu—naive and shortsighted as they are—fell for the racket.

Ethnic tension quietened once Umno were back in power, which highlights the fact that high ethnic tension during that period was unnatural. It was manufactured by partisan forces that were Umno and Pas. It was a racketeering done at the expense of the country: a dishonest scheme to obtain power and money. To more than a few people, it was a scheme to avoid jail time.

Despite being part of the federal government after the fall of Pakatan Harapan government, Umno members were unhappy that they played second fiddle to Bersatu. To address their unhappiness, Umno sabotaged their own government for their own partisan benefits. Instability ensued until they won. Stability is something Umno want only when they are at the apex of power. When they are out of it, stability is a liability to them and must be pushed aside, regardless the cost to the country.

And the country paid the cost: Malaysia lost anything between 2 to 6 weeks of reaction time during the Covid-19 economic and health crisis. While Umno maneuvered for private partisan gains, thousands paid the price with their lives. More than 36,000 deaths in Malaysia are linked to Covid-19 up to this day. Millions more suffered economic hardship due to incompetent and late handling of the crisis, as the Umno raced to secure their political positions.

Ultimately, the 2018 change in power itself was, in a large part, caused by Umno and their corruption. 1MDB was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was the final factor that made public anger go bubbling. Without the 1MDB corruption and the subsequent power abuses to cover up the crimes, Malaysians would not have been so angry to do what they have done in 2018. And the people did not make a mistake in 2018 as Umno alleged. The people went out of the their way to make sure the check-and-balance mechanism worked, in spite of all the institutional abuses by Umno.

If Umno really want to label the 2018 democratic change as instability, then everybody should see through the veil: that the source of the so-called instability is Umno themselves. Truly, Umno has no moral authority to campaign for stability and their calls for stability is nothing but a racketeer’s slogan.

 

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Politics & government

[2793] Choice of words and the shaping of opinions

When I think of the terms “coup d’tat”, “overthrow”, “topple” and the like, I would think of a violent change in government. The revolutions in Egypt and Ukraine would come to my mind. Closer to home, having tanks rolling through the streets of Bangkok is another excellent example.

In contrast, when I think of the case of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi — backstabbed by his UMNO colleagues and pressured to resign what seems ages ago — the whole episode falls under the realm of peaceful power transfer.

It lacks the violence or coerciveness that colors the words “coup d’tat”, “overthrow” and “topple” so thickly. The events in 2008-2009 were messy but democracy is always unruly. It is never as clean as an autocrat dressed in a democrat costume would like. These autocrats think modern democracy is about having regular elections only while ignoring other prerequisites that are just as important.

I do not think the definition of “topple” I have outlined exists only in my mind. The violent undertone it brings falls within the everyday understanding of the word. If “topple” had been used to describe the end of the Abdullah-led administration, then I would think the term has been abused grossly.

And so I frown when Najib Razak’s supporters and the police chief especially throw around that word to describe attempts at removing the prime minister from power through a vote of no confidence in Parliament. So insecure they are that even calling for his resignation is a go at coup d’tat.

But perhaps after so much power and institutional corruption committed by UMNO and their BN allies in government, it is only natural for the same side to corrupt the language we use every day.

I would think they know they are twisting these words beyond their intended meaning. It is a purposeful exaggeration to meet their selfish political end, which is to stay in power even at the expense of the country.

The bigger problem is when the intended recipients of the political message, mostly men and women on the streets, accept the word subversion without critical examination and then blindly reuse it in that unnatural way.

To understand why this is an issue worth highlighting, we have to understand that language has the power to shape our opinion. Language is not merely a neutral medium of exchange but it also influences how we perceive information, and from there on shapes our views.

Since “topple” comes with the violent connotation, applying it in the context of peaceful power change would likely cause the uncritical message recipients to balk and recoil from any call for change. They would hesitate from supporting change out of fear, merely because the words used.

That is the purpose of word subversion. It tries to pollute the legitimate peaceful means of change with the created image of smoke, fire and death. It is done to instill fear in us, make us feel hopeless and convince us to do nothing even in the face of injustice. It is to discourage the case for peaceful power change.

The sages of old told us not to judge a book by its cover. But let us face it. We almost always act on the first impression. We read the headline and prejudge without reading the whole article. We live in the too-long, didn’t-read culture.

In the same line of reasoning, most of us do not think too much of how “topple” has been used. I have spotted too many innocent men and women reusing the word in the corrupted context without realizing it, thus perpetuating fear and serving the pro-Najib camp.

I am sure I am guilty of the same sin I warn of here in other cases elsewhere. It is truly tiring trying to be critical about every single word uttered, read and written all the time with a thick dictionary by my side.

But during this chaotic dishonest period when words are abused frequently, meanings are not so straight forward and outright doubletalk is the norm, we must stand guard for the tabula rasa that still exists in the corners of our mind. We just cannot afford to be the uncritical blind consumers of language waiting to be exploited in these deplorable days full of deceits.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
First published in The Malay Mail on August 25 2015.

Categories
Politics & government

[2691] Soon, Reformasi will fade

The wisdom of our age has it that young adults are more likely than not to vote against Barisan Nasional. A survey carried out by the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research backs this up. In a report it published on May 3, the poll agency found out that Malaysians in their twenties and thirties preferred Pakatan Rakyat to BN by a significant margin. In contrast, support for BN was the strongest among those aged 50 or older. In a country where the median age is younger than 30 years old, that offers some hints about the political future of the country.

While that is so, nothing guarantees that wisdom will last for too long.

The generational divergence Malaysia is witnessing now has a lot to do with the political turmoil of the late 1990s. The sacking of Anwar Ibrahim as the deputy prime minister and the subsequent events that followed made a lasting impression on the minds of these young Malaysians who then were still in school, in university or new to the labor market. Whether it was about Anwar or about a larger sense of justice — that something was extremely wrong — they were moved by the event.

These Malaysians are also the largest age cohorts that Malaysia has ever seen yet. It is not merely a coincident that BN comes under intense political pressure exactly when these generations are maturing and exercising their political muscles.

Each generation has an episode which defines their political belief and partly, their worldview. Those above 50 years old now remember the old Umno and hold dearly onto those nostalgias. Future young Malaysians, those in their teenage years and even younger, will no doubt have their very own episode.

Unlike the others however, these new young Malaysians have their book wide opened and its pages unwritten yet. There has not been any big wake-me-up moment for them so far.

One thing is certain though. Time has the power to make society forget the past. The old old generation will disappear into the background, hopefully bringing with them the ghost of May 13, among others. The old new generation — the young adults of today — will have their political views at the new bedrock of Malaysian society. The new new generations will challenge the prevailing views, as youth always do all around the world.

These new young Malaysians will not remember the events of 1998 because they will never experience it. It is much like how young adults today do not remember the events of 1988 when the old Umno was disbanded and the judiciary came under assault by the Mahathir administration. It is the exact reason why many young Malaysians today are not swayed by May 13 and scaremongering opportunists who fuel their sad career on racist politics.

History books alone are insufficient to influence a whole generation so comprehensively. No matter how moving words in the archives can be, reading them in a dark library room up in the stacks or deep in the basement is a passive, cold action. Words of history may work for a minority with true appreciation of history who read heavily but for the majority, they have to be in the dizzying mist of action before the essence of the era seeps into his or her being.

So the new new generation will forget. Society will forget. Slowly but surely, the what-we-call Reformasi era will take a bow, come down off the stage and be relegated to the pages of history.

That may be a comfort to BN. It is a second chance for them in what seems to be a contest between BN the rock and PR the water.

Nevertheless, BN will have to suffer the demographics and the momentum of time for now.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
First published in The Malaysian Insider on May 31 2013.

Categories
Politics & government

[2684] For reconciliation, Najib needs to address UMNO first

It was a Pyrrhic victory for Barisan Nasional and Najib Razak’s post-election speech called for national reconciliation. That is perhaps admittance that his 1Malaysia policy has not been as successful as he had hoped. It is all a nice, humble speech but his call for national reconciliation suffers from credibility crisis.

Soon after, various UMNO leaders made it clear that they did not plan to take up the reconciliation tone. They immediately took up their racialist perspective and blame the Chinese for their loss. The bitter former Chief Minister of Malacca Ali Rustam who lost his election went as far as accusing the Chinese as being ungrateful. Only the heaven knows what Utusan Malaysia will spew out today and the days after.

Najib may be sincere about reconciliation but the party is always bigger than him even as Najib is proving to be more popular than everybody else in his party. The truth is that the majority in his party does not believe in an inclusive Malaysia. If Najib is honest in reconciliation, he has to address his party, not the wider Malaysians, about his reconciliation agenda. He needs to convince his party of reconciliation and not the wider Malaysians. The wider Malaysians hear both Najib and his parties and there are stark diverging themes going on there.

Besides, it was UMNO — the primate party of BN by far — who pushed the Chinese aside. Can you really blame the Chinese for rejecting UMNO and BN?

And the suggestion that BN lost because of a “Chinese tsunami” is not entirely true. BN lost the popular votes for the first time in a long time. That would not have been possible if it were all Chinese votes. There are just not enough Chinese voters to go around making that kind of shift. And the Chinese have been hostile to BN for quite some time now. Does the death of MCA, Gerakan and SUPP not tell you something?

Maybe it was something else. Maybe, it was the urban-rural divide. The urban-rural factor has more explanatory power to describe BN’s loss of popular votes.

Maybe BN believed in its lying media too much that they thought they would have performed better. Maybe, the lesson of 2008 of the importance of credible media has not been learned by BN. They ate their own propaganda and then when it tastes bitter, they begin to blame for someone else.

For reconciliation to happen, BN needs to look at the urban-rural factors. Looking through the racialist view and then talking about reconciliation just will not fly.

Categories
Economics Politics & government

[2682] Comparing manifesto-related fiscal deficit, sort of

I am curious at some of the projected fiscal deficit figures which have come out from the internet. A number of them are fanciful.

One that I have read has the deficit under Pakatan Rakyat manifesto rising to close to 12% of nominal GDP while BN would be as low as 4%. The 4% figure is really the number that is stated in the 2012/2013 Economic Report as published by the Treasury for the 2013 budget back in September 2012. This number was published much earlier than 2013 BN manifesto and I doubt the 4% incorporates most if not all of BN manifesto. So, citing the 4% is misleading. In any case, I have written how that 4% in fact is increasingly an incredible figure. I have in fact wrote about this at work as early as October 2012. It is just common sense if you know your stuff and have been monitoring government finance for some time.

First, I have a gripe on some of the numbers. Many projections appear to be based on 2012 nominal GDP figures. Obviously, any ratio based on that number will overstate the deficit ratio since the 2012 GDP figure will very likely be smaller than the 2013 GDP figure.

Second, some take the whole manifesto expenditure and lump it up in just one year when it is clear that many of those spending will be distributed across multiple years. Naturally, you will get a humorously humongous number if you do that.

So, I am annoyed. And to disprove those numbers, I need to produce one of my own.

I hate to disprove Syed Hussein Alatas but I am lazy. I am taking manifesto expenditure figures estimated by The Malaysian Insider and comparing it to Treasury’s 2013 nominal GDP figures. I am not fully convinced of the numbers estimated by TMI but like I said, I am too lazy to produce my own estimates. After all, these are numbers for my blog. If it were for work, I would be more diligent. So, the TMI is the best I have. In my defense, the TMI numbers do not suffer from the two criticisms I have listed down.

TMI has it that BN manifesto in the first year would cost RM12.5 billion while PR’s to cost RM25.6 billion. I do not know the assumptions behind it but I am taking it in good faith.[1]

The Treasury in its Economic Report projects the nominal GDP for Malaysia in 2013 to be slightly more than RM1.00 trillion.[2] The Treasury also projects a fiscal deficit of close to RM40 billion in 2013.[3] So, the base case has the fiscal deficit as 4.1%.

Taking a simple view that all manifesto expenditures are unaccounted for in the 2013 fiscal deficit, that would mean BN manifesto would increase the deficit to 5.4% while PR manifesto would push it to 6.7%.

As you can see, the numbers are less alarming than what political hacks all around have been brandishing. That is not to say those figures are acceptable and I am sure Fitch, S&P and Moody would stand up and yields to spike a bit but it is not the end of the world.

Now, the definition of first year is problematic because the winner of the election will have only about six months to implement their manifesto in 2013. Furthermore, the expenditure for 2013 has been set, notwithstanding possible additional unbudgeted spending that may come later in the year. Furthermore, the six months of 2013 will likely be months of firefighting for both sides.

Because of that, it is probably better to look at the deficit number in 2014 instead.

Now, let us say that the nominal GDP in 2014 would grow at its 2011-2013 growth average (inclusive of the 2013 projected figure), which is about 6.6%. That suggests the nominal GDP in 2014 would be close to RM1.07 trillion.

Let us also assume that the deficit stays the same at RM40 billion however unlikely that will be.

So under a base case scenario before accounting for manifesto spending, the 2014 deficit-to-nominal GDP ratio will be 3.7%.

Accounting for manifesto spending, for BN it might be 4.9%. For PR, it might be 6.1%.

Now, PR manifesto cost might be slightly overestimated. This is especially so because the TMI figures is a gross number. PR will likely institute open tender system more widely and that may reduce overall expenditure by a bit.

As for BN estimate, it is likely slightly overestimated given the base case because I would think some manifesto expenditure would have been included in the budgeted expenditure. Furthermore, some the MRT spending is a kind of contingent liability expenditure: it is “off the balance sheet”. It is just not included in the official deficit calculation.

And the revenue side has not been considered yet. But I am not going to do the revenue projection. After all, the purpose of this entry is to show that it is not the end of the world.

There is just too much uneducated fear mongering and I hate that.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
[1] — [Populist pledges weigh on Malaysia’s wallet, reports WSJ. The Malaysian Insider. April 30 2013]

[2] — [Gross National Income by Demand Aggregates. Economic Report 2012/2013. Malaysian Treasury. Accessed May 1 2013]

[3] — [Federal Government Finance. Economic Report 2012/2013. Malaysian Treasury. Accessed May 1 2013]