Category: Society

Categories
Economics Politics & government Society

[2895] Lim Teck Ghee is exaggerating, but Pakatan has no choice but to do better

It was a hobby of sort of mine to attend public forums (fora?) a long time ago when I had time to kill. The late 2000s was a period of flourishing of civil society, and there were plenty of forums going on all around KL, from the most mundane to the most seditious.

At one of them, I remember a lawmaker admitting to exaggerating while making political claims, though he claimed not by much. He reasoned such exaggeration was meant to jolt people into action. A dry statement of fact alone would not inspire, with many surrendering to nonchalance on big issues.

I do see many exaggerations out there today. One of them is about how Vietnam is overtaking Malaysia.

Such event is a possibility. After all, history is filled with instances of countries falling from grace. Myanmar was once among the richest colonial economies in Southeast Asia and today, it is far behind multiple other countries that used to do worse. Malaya used to be at par with South Korea in terms of economic wellbeing but now, Malaysia is far behind the East Asian country, though we are doing not so bad.

But reasonable projections based on existing economic growth, population growth and several other factors point towards how Vietnam-overtaking-Malaysia scenario is possible but unlikely. Already having one of the oldest demography in the region – specifically 31 years old versus Malaysia’s 29 – with nominal GDP per capita at a quarter that of Malaysia, it is highly likely Vietnam would take quite some time with great difficulty to converge with Malaysia’s level, much less pass it.

I think Vietnam belongs to the same group as Thailand (and China): countries that will grow old first before they grow rich. The situation in Thailand is far worse: median age is 39 years old with nominal GDP per capita about seven tenths of Malaysia. Both Vietnam and Thailand are handicapped by with a quickly ageing population, leaving them with not much time for hastened growth. This is orthodox growth economics of course. Behind many of the leading growth models, beyond capital accumulation, tech progress and human capital, is population growth. Unfavorable demography usually leads to slower growth.

But again, it is not impossible for Vietnam to overtake Malaysia. Low likelihood, but still possible. There could be one event or two disrupting Malaysia’s and Vietnam’s growth path. It is hard to predict those events from happening compared to growth projection based on current scenario. But this is where exaggeration can help: it brings up fresh possibilities to take us out of our boring model forming our reasonable basis. It spices things up, opening up room for creative scenario planning.

Lim Teck Ghee claimed that Pakatan Harapan was “an unmitigated disaster for reform from whichever aspect or way you look at” at a public forum. He listed down his disappointments to back it up. “Education, governance, race relations, religious relations, the debacles of Icerd, Zakir Naik, the Melayu Dignity Congress and more. The list of political disappointments and failures keeps growing.”

Yes, there have been disappointments and I share them too. But I am never that naïve to believe all changes will take place from Day One, especially given the way Pakatan Harapan achieved the mandate to rule in the last general election. It is inevitable for democratic compromises to take place frequently, no matter how much one wants to stand one’s ground. This is not a technocratic dictatorship. It is a democracy, and increasingly less flawed at that.

But calling Pakatan Harapan as an unmitigated disaster, I would argue strongly, is an exaggeration given the reforms that have been carried out so far.

I can list those reforms. My favorite is the wider implementation of open tender throughout the public sector: democratic compromise has led to even contracts reserved for Bumiputras being given out via open tender and no longer given out directly most of the times. There are exceptions, but I feel many of them can be explained well. Indeed, for a monster organization unused to open tender system, implementation problems were aplenty and starting totally afresh was not always possible. But by and large, there are more and more adoption of open tender, creating a new culture that makes everybody afraid of dishing out direct contracts. Remember, just less than two years ago, nobody in the public sector would bat an eyelid for giving out direct contract. Direct negotiation was the norm.

Other examples of executed reform include fairer broadband internet market, more independent Parliament with all of its new Select Committees, more independent anti-corruption commission, freer press and even in education, the move away from exams towards a more liberal education.

And there are many more coming our way with good progress made: greater transparency in the public sector in the form of the shift towards accrual accounting and the establishment of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) within the 5-year mandate.

Almost none of the reforms that have happened or expected to happen would take place under the previous administration riddled with corruption led by a shockingly and outrageously dishonest leader, trapping the country’s institutions in a sticky thick morass that would scare any institutionalist away. To me, a disaster would have been a complete no-change scenario.

There clearly has been substantial change since May 9 2018. Only a blind man would deny that.

I cannot know his true intention, but from the perspective I have shared, perhaps Lim Teck Ghee’s exaggeration is needed to jolt us out into action. There are disappointments. And that means we have to work harder to overcome all those barriers to change.

Pakatan Harapan voters had high hopes – they still have great hopes – that Pakatan Harapan would achieve great things and completely change Malaysia for the better. Pakatan Harapan is better than Barisan Nasional, but Pakatan has no choice but to do better to match those great expectations.

Categories
Politics & government Society

[2893] We are too eager fighting our culture war

There are hard positions in our society. It is the product of years of abuse and mistrust, and it will not go away anytime soon. One small issue that rekindles our prejudice in the smallest of ways would ignite a culture war sucking almost everybody in the most unproductive manner.

Some culture wars are worth the fight. Our society does need a can opener to open up its canned mind, especially so when too many of us are so coddled inside our small world to the point that wrongs go unchecked and eventually become a right. It has become so bad that many are beginning to be scared of doing the right thing, just because such action would hurt the feeling of immature persons on the internet armed with incomplete or even downright inaccurate information. Explicitly racist behavior should be called out. Some things just have to be done lest we slide to an equilibrium that is so unbearable that migration would be the only way out.

But a lot of the culture wars we are fighting today are unnecessary.

One example is the teaching of Malay calligraphy-Jawi in school. The Jawi controversy besetting us recently reveals what we have known for the longest time: we live in a sensitive society – sensitive is only a euphemism that would not take much to decipher. We do not need such controversy to tell us that. The whole episode came to surface through an oversight within the government. The course was set several years back. Too few people noticed it that it developed its own procedural momentum that in the end forced all of us into a situation where no one could paddle back, without incurring significant political cost.

This reminds me of a scene from the movie War Game where the artificial intelligence holding the trigger to a nuclear holocaust, after going through all simulations, concluded that the only way to win is not to play the game.

[youtube]MpmGXeAtWUw[/youtube]

Too bad that we have no time machine to use, no restore point to return. To abuse slightly the meaning of the Malay idiom, terlajak perahu boleh diundur, terlajak kata buruk padahnya.

Another example is the conversion bill in Selangor. We know religion and child conversion are subjects our overall society unable to deal with coolly. So, we all should approach it with care. Yet, the Selangor state government thought pushing the controversial bill through was the wisest course of action. Not only that, once we were given the chance to pull the brake halting our vehicle resting dangerously close by the cliff, the state government instead insisted on playing the game that nobody would win. Has it got this bad that the game has to be played anyway?

Our society is damaged and this is not the most incisive observation of the day. The last election gives all of us a chance to repair it, and be better. This government is reforming our institutions that for so long abused have been for personal gains. The trust deficit is still there. That is a huge barrier to fight.

I truly believe for Malaysia to get to the next level of development, we need to improve our institutions. We do not need more big malls, more tall buildings.

And those institutions are not merely government institutions like the parliament, the police, the judiciary and anything of the like. It is also about our social capital, that is trust among ourselves.

Culture wars, especially the unnecessary and avoidable ones, do not build trust. Instead, it erodes it and makes bridge-building harder.

Yet, we all are too eager to fight it. And to one-up the others online (adversaries who we likely have never met in real life, or even human bots), we type the harshest words and switch on our scorched earth mode to burn everything that moves.

And god, there are so many other things to do. Yet, here we are with our culture. All heat, no light.

Categories
Politics & government Society

[2879] Illberal troubles besetting the West liberate liberals elsewhere

Development in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe where racist and fascist sentiments are hogging the headlines is worrying. It has been going on for some years now and it is proving to be a long-term trend rather than just an election-cycle blip.

One of many reasons why it is a concern worldwide is that major countries that used to be associated strongly with liberalism now are more reluctant in defending liberal values globally as they struggle to contain domestic problems at home. Some are even uninterested in doing so because, arguably, they no longer believe in liberal values. For instance, it is quite fanciful to think that Donald Trump believes in liberal values.

But it is not all bad news. Difference circumstances exist throughout the world. Indonesian and Malaysian societies for instance, exist in a context that is different from the one in the US and the UK.

Liberals in places like Malaysia from time to time get accused as being Western puppets or having their minds colonized by the West. When the Western world was the leader of the free world so-to-speak, the accusation had been used by local conservatives to mean that liberalism was alien to the local society and served foreign interest. When Bersih was busy protesting, the BN machinery was quick to link the movement to outside interest like George Soros. To be fair, Malaysian liberals do look abroad for help and inspiration while living in an environment that might be unfriendly to them.

I do not think such accusation is a uniquely Malaysian experience. When a large Iranian protest partly fueled by Iranian liberals erupted in 2009, one of the most popular opinions out there was for the US then led by Barack Obama to not be too vocal in their support of the protest and instead let the locals do their thing, out of fear the Iranian religious establishment would run the propaganda that the protest was fueled by outsiders, and ignore the legitimacy of the protest.

However, today, I think that accusation is starting to lose its traction.

I believe so because liberalism in the Western world – I use the West here in the general popular sense referring to the North America and Europe while keeping in mind the problematic definition as well as the fact there are places where liberal values are still held closely, like in Canada – is in trouble and as a result, the West is losing its role as the prime example of a liberal society.

As the West loses its role, liberals elsewhere get a chance to prove that they are liberals not because they look up to the West, but because they believe in principle that transcends geography and culture. And more importantly, the West does not control the local liberals. With the West in trouble and even local liberals starting to condemn the illiberalness of the West, the accusation that local liberals are Western puppets are becoming less and less relevant.

In other words, illiberal troubles besetting the West liberate liberals elsewhere.

Categories
Liberty Society

[2877] ICERD is not the be all and end all

I did not follow the ICERD debate closely until recently. I felt like the issue rose to national prominence out of nowhere, and then it died a spectacular death before I properly understood what it was all about. If you had asked me what ICERD was, I would be able to mutter some keywords like anti-discrimination before I would exhaust my time trying to be intelligent and having to google Wikipedia to understand it.

Nevertheless, as a layperson with liberal bias, I would gravitate automatically towards supporting ICERD ratification. I consider myself as a liberal, even if these days, some of those who claimed to be liberals in the past feel some kind of political reluctance to wear the label anymore, lest they become superliberals and attract the wrath of their political idols.

And so, I do feel slight disappointment how the ICERD debate has played out. Slight, because I do not think ICERD is one of the most important things in the to do list.

To be honest, while I do not believe in the eye-rolling allegations by its opponents that ICERD would require amending Article 153 of the Constitution, it is unclear to me — and even to other liberals who I have talked to and are more invested in the issues than me — what would entail after its ratification. That makes me feel that a ratification is more of a signalling exercise than anything else. The whole ICERD debate generates more heat than light, partly because the so-what questions have not been addressed, and so giving space to red herring counterargument like “Israel signed ICERD.”

In the end, I think there are many reforms that are more important and urgent that liberals should push first, like electoral reforms including local council elections, instead of ICERD.

But for liberals out that who invested more on the ICERD issue, please do not feel too discouraged. I am reluctant to use this argument but perhaps it is not the right time for it. Perhaps we should continue to do what liberals have been doing: conversations, fora, awareness, understanding, empathy on the ground on values like equality.

That kind of activism would prepare the grounds for a more liberal societal attitude than a sudden ratification of ICERD would do. After all, for changes like these to happen, it usually needs to come from the bottom-up, not from the top-down.

Categories
Economics Politics & government Society

[2872] Lasting change needs more work, more time and wider support

We have the right to celebrate May 9. It is after all the first time in Malaysian history change at the very top happened. For years we were only chipping at the edge. Progress felt irrelevant. But now, here it is. Change.

[youtube]rhr4rBJgs5g[/youtube]

Yet, not all or even most of the changes Malaysia needs will be instituted quickly. It will take time and work for these changes to happen. There will be residual resistance to change and perhaps using the adjective residual understates the problem at hand. After more than six decades of Perikatan/Barisan Nasional in power – seven decades if you go all the way to the first Malayan general election in 1955 – there is a kind of deep state the new Pakatan Harapan government will need to win over and even fight.

There will be disappointments, and Pakatan supporters and sympathizers will accuse the new government of betrayal and hypocrisy.

But before any of us levels those accusations, we must understand that the government will have to pick their battles. Some will be won. Some will be lost. Pakatan and their supporters will need to be smart in which battles they want to win.

More importantly, before throwing those accusations in the future, we need to understand the long arc of history all of us have to deal with. Malaysia’s deep multifaceted history – with dimensions of race, religion, Peninsula-Borneo, federal-states, urban-rural, national origins, class, gender, etc – is the proper context to judge the new government in the next few years. No action could be judged in isolation.

And the future is just as important as the past in understanding this new Malaysia and the new government.

Our demography and culture are changing at glacial pace. It is slow but the inertia is massive: our society is set to become less diverse in a meaningful way. By 2050 the Bumiputras will form 70% of total population from about 60% in 2014. So would be the Muslims. The Malay population share will rise to 60% from 50% in the same period.

At the same time, we will be an aged society by 2050, from our low median age of 28-29 years old and low dependency ratio.

I fear the two demographic shifts could make our society less open and less progressive in our values. It is not the Malays and the Muslims per se that I fear. It is the increasingly monolithic nature of our society, and hence, the possible intolerance of differences. I fear that future where the Malaysian mind would narrow to a point that leaving is the only reasonable option for too many people.

This is the reason why the 2018 election was the last chance to change in time. The trends are pushing against us, especially against the liberals. It is not simply an election rhetoric. It is a real long-term concern about the fate of Malaysia. This is why I feel spoiling your votes or not voting is unwise: the advocates of the tactics (who wanted some kind of change) are ignorant of history and blind to demographic changes.

It was also the last chance to change because substantive changes that Malaysia needs could not be made by the same side that benefited from the closing of the Malaysian mind. Najib Razak tried it in 2009-2013 and he failed. All his attempts were in the end reduced to mere silo economic targets that stood alone outside of multifaceted Malaysian contexts, making them utterly dissatisfying as a vision. So dissatisfying that we had to go back to the 1990s to move forward.

And substantive change will need more support from Malaysians. While the Pakatan victory is the first step, we have to remember Pakatan won only plurality in popular votes, not majority. Lasting change would require Pakatan to get more Malaysians on board.