For those who fear confrontation with respect to Perak may lead us to the path of Thailand:
Democracies exist only because enough people were unwilling to be sheep, and brave enough to fight violent wars to achieve a share in power. [Page 227. Good and Bad Power: The Ideals and Betrayals of Government. Geoff Mulgan.]
I consider it as a game of war of attrition.
…and that is get the local mosques to tone it down.
In Saudi Arabia, they are doing just that:
Saudi Arabia is cracking down on overly loud loudspeakers used to call the faithful to prayer, as mosques increasingly drown each other out, the official SPA news agency said on Saturday. [Saudi cracks down on blaring mosque speakers. AFP. April 25 2009]
I do not know if the local mosques here in my area shout into the speakers with the intention of drowning out other mosques but one thing is for such, the call to prayer is too loud.
In my uneducated opinion, a call to prayer should be done politely in an unobtrusive manner. But how it is done in this part of Kuala Lumpur is as if the mosques are trying so hard to invite scone. Not just from the non-Muslims mind you. As a person generally uncomfortable with loud noise, be it in Zouk or by the highway, I find the calls to prayer are made with unholy loudness.
In these days of modern technology, a loud call to prayer is unnecessary.
In Michigan where I used to live, each county has the ability to broadcast emergency messages across all channel. It functions exactly like a radiowave jammer except that instead you really like to know if a tornado or a snowstorm is coming your wave. The call to prayer can be broadcasted the same way to make it suitable to local variables, given that each location has different time of prayer. Not to all channel of course because that would be almost as obtrusive as shouting into the loudspeaker.
But that require investment and some mosques are poor. What they could do is tone the call to prayer down instead of conspiring to give those living with the vicinity of those mosques a heart attack.
Shouting into the loudspeaker is really one of the reasons why a lot of people are unhappy with Muslims. And some people wonder why Muslims are not respected.
Why do some people refuse to pay income tax?
Perhaps the word ”˜some’ understates the gravity of the matter. The Ministry of Finance just recently shared that out of approximately two million Malaysians within taxable income bracket, only just over about half of them paid their due last year. This has prompted the Internal Revenue Board to hunt down those who have not paid their income tax yet.
It is likely that a majority of them do not actually explicitly refuse to pay their taxes. It could be a simple oversight, for instance. Indeed, there are multiple possible reasons contributing to non-payment but I am only interested in those who actually explicitly refuse to pay income tax. It is so because this question is crucial in understanding how much trust citizens have for the State, the direct benefactor of such taxes.
Before we explore the original question together further, it is imperative to understand the reasons for taxation.
From classical liberal perspective, there is no doubt that the biggest reason of all is to support the State for rendering services which in effect protect citizens and those within the jurisdiction of the State. That protection at minimum means protection of individual rights.
If the State fails to do so, the obligation to pay taxes evaporates. In fact, failure on behalf of the State to protect these rights eliminates a reason for such a State. This later calls for the creation of a new State capable of discharging its duties better, lest the dissolution of the previous incompetent or tyrannical State leads to an unstable state of anarchy.
This is part of a social contact between citizens and the State as embraced by classical liberals, henceforth libertarians.
Within Malaysian context, the State or the Barisan Nasional-led federal government in many cases has failed to protect various individual rights. Worse, the State itself has in the past threatened and actually infringed on the rights of its citizens.
To be fair, the current administration has so far refrained from doing so and seems to have given some commitment to continue the trend of restraint. How long will that restraint persists is anybody’s guess. We are after all still too early in the days of Najib administration to be confident of anything.
Notwithstanding the question of fairness, the Najib administration is still a BN-led government and the BN-led government has developed a very bad reputation among various groups in Malaysia.
That bad reputation affects classical liberals’ willingness to contribute to the State’s coffer in no little way. Why should libertarians contribute to the State which has the reputation of infringing on private citizens’ rights? To contribute is idiotic and libertarians are not so idiotic.
The unwillingness of libertarians to pay taxes is enhanced further on the economic front. This tax money will in one way or another financed State’s enterprises which will inevitably compete against private enterprises. Why should business owners support their competitors? I will not pursue this point further in hope that I do not digress from the main point and that I do not complicate the flow of thought here unnecessarily. I believe a focus on civil liberty will be sufficient to demonstrate my point clearly.
Admittedly, there are not so many libertarians in Malaysia and therefore, a libertarian explanation does not come even near in explaining comprehensively why so many people refuse to pay their income tax.
The more all encompassing answer probably relates to trust citizens — or more specifically individual taxpayers — maintain for the BN-led government. When seen from this angle, the libertarian answer forms as a subset to a larger explanation.
The trust is associated with the manner which BN-led government manages the tax money. Here, again, the reputation of the BN-led government does not shine and sucks in unsavory adjectives.
Corruption is seen as rampart. Observe the Auditor-General reports highlighting multiple suspicious dealings which include a screwdriver with an astronomical price tag. Has any action been taken to allay such suspicion? Have any culprits been taken to task?
The answer is a resounding no.
More recently, three prominent UMNO members were convicted of corruption by their own political party. Surprisingly, they were allowed to contest for party positions. One of them even went on to win an important party post. Another continues to hold a Chief Minister post.
If the party that leads the state government is seen as corrupted, there is no reason to expect the state government is clean. The same logic goes for the federal government. Does this encourage trust?
The answer is yet again a resounding no.
And then there is the abuse of power, characterized by the slogan ”Satu lagi projek Kerajaan Barisan Nasional”. There is a tendency among BN politicians to obfuscate the difference between the State or the government and political party. This tendency can be seen during by-elections when the BN unabashedly spends millions of ringgit of public money as part of its campaigns, be it in form of direct cash handouts or newly paved road.
BN has no qualms in using state machineries for its benefits. They without guilt consider government machineries as their own private property.
During the last UMNO General Assembly, a delegate made parallel the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission to a dog turning around to bite its master’s hand. That is a highly inappropriate statement and yet, it is hard to imagine if UMNO members attending the assembly saw any problem with that statement.
The best example of obfuscation yet is the nature of Radio Televisyen Malaysia. Despite being a public institution, it is woefully a mouthpiece of BN. To understand further how badly the function of RTM has been abused by BN, a comparison with the National Public Radio in the United States of America and the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom is necessary.
Both the NPR and the BBC are public institutions like RTM. Unlike RTM however, both the NPR and the BBC serve public interest, not the interest of the ruling political party. This can be proven by its independence and largely neutral reporting as far as local politics are concerned.
RTM lamentably is just one institution which has been abused by BN. There are others like KEMAS, the police and the civil service. Many times whenever I listen to members of these institutions speak, I wonder if I were listening to the government or to BN.
So, given the corruption, the abuse of power and disrespect for individual rights, why should taxes be paid? These money are paid to fund wrongdoings.
When a group of people believe that the government does not belong to them and instead belong to someone else which they do not identify with, the group of people will hold that they do not have a stake in the government or the State. When they do not believe that they have a stake in the State, then they will have no moral obligation to support the State, i.e. pay taxes.
Even if this group paid their taxes, it is only akin to paying protection money to some parasitic thugs.
The antidote for this is simple: convince a majority of taxpayers that they do have a stake in the State. This can be done by making public institutions independent and free of political bias. Make these institutions accountable to them and not to political parties. Such setup is working in the US and the UK and there is no reason for it not to work in Malaysia.
Trust me, income tax collection will go up leap and bound if people feel they do have a stake in the State. More so if they actually feel proud about their State.
First published in The Malaysian Insider on April 20 2009.
nb — a lot of people at The Malaysian Insider failed to differentiate between positive (descriptive) and normative (prescriptive) statements. This article is a positive article, not a normative article.
Many thought that I was advocating for all to not to pay income tax (normative). On the contrary, I am only offering a reason why nearly a million people do not pay their income tax (positive).
A person try to imply that I am against the idea of taxation. No, I said not such thing. This article is not an opposition to the idea of taxation in general. Again, it is only an effort at suggesting several reasons why many individuals do not pay their income tax. It is not an advocate of shirking from responsibility of every citizens.
Remember the positive-normative dichotomy. If you failed to comprehend the positive-normative dichotomy, then you might misunderstand the message.
In the inaugural specialized column on Asia, The Economist pays respect to Perak’s democracy under the banyan tree:
In early March, in Perak in Malaysia, the state assembly convened an emergency session under a tree. It was, said outraged national ministers, a return to the jungle, making Malaysia a laughing-stock. We beg to differ. An ancient connection exists between public business and the banyan tree, as between its huge overarching shade and its deep intertwining roots. In South-East Asia, and Java in particular, the shade was a place of learning and a site where rulers vowed justice. Those are Asian values to which Banyan will happily subscribe. [In the shade of the banyan tree. The Economist. April 8 2009]
Hail.
Thailand has been a popular role model for monarchists in Malaysia, who believe that the monarchy has the potential to be the umpire for an increasingly competitive Malaysian democracy. Now that Thailand again finding itself in shambles, the same Malaysian monarchists are no longer quite as willing to cite our neighbor up north. For others like me, who have always been uncomfortable with the idea of an activist monarchy, this reaffirms our commitment to organic politics.
Thailand finds itself in a quagmire because its government refuses to return to the Thai people to earn mandate to govern. Rather than appealing to the electorates, the ruling class preferred a top-down approach to legitimize their grip to power.
In a society that stresses great respect for the monarch, appealing to the monarchy may be the best way to obtain the mandate to rule. It is hard to ignore the influence of the Thai King over the Thai people. In discussing the politics of Thailand, various publications inevitably work extra hard to remind all of that fact.
Slowly however after a series of unending political conflicts, the reverence for the King may be slowly becoming irrelevant. The latest episode of uprising may finally force a rethink of that reverence as the red-shirted Thai people — Thaksin supporters — organize themselves to confront the yellow-shirted royalists, who are Abhisit’s supporters.
There were multiple opportunities for those holding power to return to the Thai people ever since the military coup d’etat against the Thaksin administration in 2006. Each time the opportunity arrived, however, the yellow shirts — he People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and supporters of the current Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva — misused that opportunity. They either appealed to the monarchy — at the expense of democracy — or pressured the government that they disliked to step down without returning to the ballot boxes fairly.
PAD did this because they know they cannot win a general election fairly.The rural population makes up the majority in Thailand and the ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, together with his allies, are popular in the rural areas.
The politics of Thailand is more or less defined by this rural-urban divide, with allowance for those in the south who aligned themselves to the urban elites. The urban elites — almost synonymous to the educated class — align themselves with the royalists. Tyranny of the majority is a real concern when the majority is bent on threatening the rights of the minority. Such majoritarianism is distasteful.
To address such majoritarianism, a liberal democracy where individual rights are secured is required.
But distaste for crass majoritarianism is one thing. Distaste for democracy is another.
What is happening in Thailand, however, is not distaste for majoritarianism but, rather, distaste for organic politics in favour of a top-down approach. The royalist elites’ low opinion of organic politics is visible when PAD proposed what they called ”a new politics”. They wanted a Parliament whose membership is not earned through the ballot boxes but granted by the King.
Such a political maneuver can only certainly disenfranchise the majority while it unduly strengthens the minority, making democracy redundant. Clearly, the word ”democracy” in PAD’s acronym is not worth much. Democracy is only a convenient empty rhetoric to PAD as well as to the Abhisit-led Democrat Party.
When the military executed the coup d’etat with blessings from the monarchy in 2006, the action was presented as an effort to save Thai democracy. At that time, this appeared to be the case and the military and the yellow-shirted masses deserved the benefit of doubt, given the issues associated with the Thaksin administration.
The involvement of the monarchy in breaking the deadlock then was immediately hailed as a wise move, even in Malaysia. Seizing the moment, Malaysian royalists argued that without the monarchy, Thailand would have descended into further chaos.
Never mind that the ones who caused the chaos, the ones who became the judge and the ones who benefited from the involvement of the monarchy were, suspiciously, from the same side — the Thai royalists and their allies, the yellow shirts.
Approximately three years have passed since that royal intervention. And as time progressed, the real effect of that coup d’tat and royal intervention has become clear.
At this juncture, neither has Thai democracy been saved nor does royal intervention appear wise. Instead, in retrospect, the intervention has worsened the situation, from protest by the elites to protest by the masses.
What is visible now as Bangkok falls into a state of emergency once again is the failure of the top-down approach. This is a direct rebuke to monarchists in Malaysia who opined earlier that the monarchy has a greater role to play in Malaysian politics.
The top-down approach and, specifically, the act of deferring to the monarchy, does not work because it does not address real organic differences that exist among the masses. These real differences can only be addressed through the will of the people and not through the will of the monarchy. The answer for Thailand is the ballot boxes and not further royal intervention.
The Thai monarchy — as well as the military, which has shown royalist tendencies — has to be taken out of the equation.
Only a free and fair election can truly break the deadlock. The losers, at the same time, must accept that result of such an election and stop trying to bring down a government that earned its mandate from the people.
Refusal to do so will prolong the chaos.
And if the losers continue to return to the monarchy to subvert the will of the majority, sooner or later that respect the majority has for the monarchy will suffer erosion. The majority will become tired of witnessing their rights being abused again and again by the royalists and the monarchy.
If that abuse happens once too often, Thailand will become a republic.
Already the majority has decided to openly challenge a side that always hides behind the Thai throne. In the past, the Thai royalists’ association with the monarchy is enough to discourage opposition, for fear of being seen to be disrespecting the King. That fear appears to be diminishing now.
For the Thai King’s own sake, he should disengage himself from Thai politics before it is too late.
In a more democratic Malaysia where the monarchy enjoys much less reverence from the people compared to our neighbor to the north, deferring to the monarchy on various issues such as languages and selection of Prime Minister is undesirable.
Unless we dream to subvert our problematic but maturing competitive democracy, and unless we want to risk the status quo for our monarchy, our country must continue to be driven by wisdom of the people.
We should not tread the path the Thais are on if we ourselves do not wish to progress — or regress — further along the evolutionary line of forms of government.
First published in The Malaysian Insider on April 14 2009.