Category: Conflict & disaster

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Conflict & disaster Economics

[2934] Hindsight is 2020, myopia is 2021

We did not know many things about Covid-19 back in 2020. Early on, the authorities and health professionals were urging the public not to panic by highlighting the probabilities of dying from other causes were higher than Covid-19. The intention of avoiding panic was probably good: by end-January 2020, I was looking for face masks to buy but most stores ran out of it. We know better now that the logic was wrong. Covid-19 is serious business.

We made missteps. The Pakatan Harapan government was worried about border closure and its effects on the economy. Nevertheless, travel restrictions were imposed eventually, though not comprehensive.

Then as we were learning about the virus further, party politics got in the way. The unexpected political maneuvering stole from Malaysia several weeks’ worth of lead time to fight the pandemic. At this time, members of Perikatan Nasional and their collaborators appeared unconcerned with the virus and took time to buttress their political position. The new government was lucky because Pakatan Harapan’s last act before their fall was to launch an additional government spending to fight off Covid-19. That bought Muhyiddin Yassin, the Prime Minister nobody elected, a little time as the health crisis worsened quickly.

Eventually, his unelected government got it right: lockdown with financial assistance provided. Lockdown implemention was chaotic, and the accompanied assistance should have been bigger. But the mistakes were forgivable however angering. Year 2020 was a new reality altogether and the hesitance in bringing in the big bazooka was understandable although less than ideal.

Moreover, it was a new government facing a steep learning curve: new ministers on the job had little understanding of fiscal levers, while facing an unprecedented crisis. Like I said, less than ideal but we had to make do.

After several months of mucking around, it seemed Malaysia was succeeding, in large part due to the civil service. The public sector had handled outbreaks before albeit on a smaller scale. That institutional memory served the country well at a time when the executive was scurrying in the dark. Additionally, there were economic response templates from other countries to follow by April-June 2020. Malaysia copied it.

There was damage to many aspects of Malaysian life. Democracy and basic rights were sacrificed. It was a dangerous sacrifice with adverse long term repercussions, but we could argue we skipped the worst. Whether we would pay for our sins is yet to be seen.

In the meantime, we bragged about our success while multiple countries, particularly the US and UK, were bungling their responses.

We bragged so much that overconfidence overcame us. That led us to repeat the same mistake we made in February-March 2020 in the second half of the year. Just like when party politics interfered with crisis management at the start of the pandemic, unreasonable political ambition to take over Sabah state government in the middle of the pandemic brought in the second wave.

This time, the trouble was so not new. There was less excuse to be made. Double-standard regarding quarantine during and after campaigning, and other questionable decisions by the government, made things worse. It was during this period health measures suffered from serious credibility erosion.

But we all need reminding from time to time. Sometimes, we make mistakes because we forget our lessons.

The point is, in retrospect, throughout 2020 we probably would have done things differently. But things should be judged not by how we would have done it differently knowing now things we did not know then. Instead, it is only fair to judge previous decisions based on how they were decided based on the best available information at that time. And we did not have the best information for most of 2020. It was all too new.

We can be angry about 2020. I still am. But that was how the cookie crumbled. Things happened and decisions were made based on the best, or second-best available information.

That excuse can no longer be used for 2021.

If hindsight is 2020, then myopia is 2021. By this year, we know more and we know almost enough information to fight the pandemic effectively. Yet somehow, we refused to use the information.

The disastrous handling of 2021, I think, could be traced back to November 2020, when Budget 2021 was debated in the now suspended Parliament. The budget could have been used to fight the health and economic crises comprehensively.

But we did not use that opportunity.

The government of the day preferred to declare victory prematurely, and engaged in fancy public relations exercise. A sharp V-shape recovery was taken as the base case scenario: base effect was taken in as victory. “This is the biggest budget in history!” declared the government, somehow forgetting the budget of the current year almost always the biggest in history. Rarely does government spending fall. Such was the nature of the government’s meaningless sloganeering to invoke awe in the unenlightened minds.

The budget was big, but it was just not big enough. Budget 2021 rested on rosy assumptions. So rosy that the government intended to resume fiscal consolidation immediately while the economy was still in recession.

So intent the government was on fiscal consolidation that the RM5 billion meant to vaccine-related purchases were not actually included in the Budget. How outrageous could it be?

Constructive criticism came in quickly. The government was told the budget was not big enough. The government was told it should take a more precautionary projection. The government was told to widen the deficit significantly to fight the pandemic off.

Critics were proven right. Budget 2021’s rosy assumptions were dismantled just 4-5 months after it was passed. In November 2020, the government aimed to cut the 2021 deficit ratio to 5.4%. By March 2021, the figure was raised up to 6.0%. It is likely higher now given how things are going. Not only was fiscal consolidation was the wrong policy to pursue at that time, but now since it could not be achieved, the government’s credibility has taken a hit.

The budget should have been rejected: the failure of Budget 2021 is both the fault of the Perikatan Nasional government—including Umno for those still in denial—and Pakatan Harapan. The non-rejection in the House was mind-boggling: we live in a tragic comedy.

Now, as Covid-19 is making its ugliest spread yet, with death toll mounting, health workers exhausted, the Ministry of Finance approved another RM200 million for the public health sector.

What is RM200 million when a vaccine dashboard alone worth RM70 million? What is RM200 million when the total Health Ministry Budget is RM32,000 million a year, and that the public health sector is running out of capacity?

To solve this crisis, we require a much bigger deficit spending: boost the deficit to 9%-10% or even more. Do whatever is necessary to finance the fight. Do it properly instead of through half-baked measures. There is no time for dry powder.

The cost of failing to address this crisis is greater than the cost of higher deficit ratio.

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Conflict & disaster Society

[2925] Free COVID-19 vaccines for more people, and not just Malaysians

Vaccines for COVID-19 will be made free for Malaysians, said the Prime Minister. That is good but there is an issue here. A big gap. Foreigners will have to pay for it.[1]

I am thinking the vaccines should be made free for low-income foreign workers as well. I say so because as we have seen, the strength of our community response towards COVID-19 is as good as our weakest links. And the low-income foreign worker community is part of those links. Regardless how we like to marginalize them, they are part of our Malaysian community.

In the past few weeks, we have seen Malaysia’s total cases spiking over and over again. There is no guarantee that we have seen the global peak. The worst is yet to come.

Daily new Covid-19 cases

Given the trend and the government’s actions of late, it seems they have given up the fight for containment. Instead, they are betting on the arrival of the vaccines. I feel this is the wrong position to take because while the first vaccines should arrive next year, it will not be enough to cover sufficient portion of the population until 2022 or 2023. That is a long way to go and it will necessitate prioritization of recipients.

Regardless of the need to prioritize, a good chunk of the cases involve transmission among low-income foreign workers. The government has long given a minimal damn about it, but COVID-19 is making that lackadaisical attitude a luxury even for a bunch of racists. If the foreign worker transmissions are not managed well, it could threaten to spill over to the wider population, and make the already bad situation worse. This is especially so with the government’s weakening will to fight the pandemic as seen through inconsistent and hypocritical regulations and enforcement.

To prevent the spillover risk, I think it is necessary to vaccinate low-income foreign workers working at the construction sites, plantation grounds and factory floors for free. Or at least, subsidize the cost so it is cheap enough for them to get vaccinated.

Additionally, we may need to provide free, or cheap vaccine to long-term undocumented immigrants and this will have to come with amnesty. To fight COVID-19 fast and effectively, we need to vaccinate as many persons living in Malaysia as possible, regardless of their status. I would also make it compulsory.

Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — PUTRAJAYA (Nov 27): The Covid-19 vaccine will be given free to Malaysians but foreigners will have to pay a charge determined by the Ministry of Health, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today. The prime minister said the government has no plan to make the vaccination compulsory and the vaccine will be administered only to those who agree to take it voluntarily, particularly people at risk and prone to disease. [Bernama. Covid-19 vaccine to be given free to Malaysians, says PM Muhyiddin. The Edge Markets. November 27 2020.]

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Conflict & disaster Society

[2839] Syrian refugees on Jalan Bukit Bintang

Part of Jalan Bukit Bintang has been transformed into a mini-Arab town over the past 5 or 10 years. It has been quite an intriguing trend.

Arab restaurants and tourists are not uncommon along the stretch between the Pavilion and beyond Jalan Raja Chulan. They like Malaysia for various reasons and it is easy to see that they are a wealthy bunch, fitting the general stereotype assigned by the locals to those originating from the Gulf quite nicely.

But in recent weeks, something extraordinary has been happening. I am beginning to spot Arab women and their children begging on the streets on Jalan Bukit Bintang.

The first time I noticed them, I found myself feeling incredulous, feeling that this must have had been some kind of a prank. Many beggars all around the city are linked to some kind of syndicates. Some are manipulating public sentiment for disagreeable personal gains while others are truly desperate in need of help. The prevalence of syndicate-related beggars and the second group of people make me suspicious of these Arab beggars.

But yesterday, I spotted a woman in her black purdah without a face veil sitting on the floor just outside the newly renovated Isetan store in Lot 10. He held a small placard, telling passerby that she was from Syria and she needed money.

I do not how true her claim is but my heart melted nonetheless.

 

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Conflict & disaster Society

[2823] It is wrong to say ISIS has nothing to do with Islam

As an individualist, I do not condemn a whole community for wrongs of the few. I do not subscribe to collective blaming for individual crimes. Each person is responsible for his or her action. In the context of terror acts frequently committed by Islamic extremists these days, I would not ask a random Muslim to apologize for killings done by his coreligionists located thousands of miles away. To make such demand is just dumb.

It is dumb because Islam as practiced all over is diverse and its interpretation varies from group to group. The interpretations range from puritan to liberal, from medieval to modern, from mystical to logical. One interpretation can even be hostile to the other, making the act of blaming one side for the other’s violence as nonsensical.

The same diversity makes it wrong to claim ISIS and all of its terror acts done in the name of the Islamic god has nothing to do with the religion. As if there is one true Islam and only those Muslims subscribe to it. On the contrary, ISIS has everything to do with the religion.

There is no one Islam anymore. However strongly many Muslims would want to stress on the unity of the religion, the truth is that the successful proliferation of Islam beyond Arabia is due to its ability to absorb local beliefs, among other things. Its syncretic nature gives rise to its diversity.

All Muslims share several core tenets but that does not make all Islams as the same. The nature, the nuance, the outlook and the way of life of a Malaysian Muslim is very different from that living in the Middle East. Even within Malaysia, the general Islam experienced in Kuala Lumpur is very different from that in Kota Bahru.

War did advance Islam but war alone could not guarantee lasting belief. The religion had to be tolerant of some local practices to entice and keep people to its side. You could observe the result of the syncretism among the Malays in Malaysia. Traditional Malay wedding ceremony for instance has hints of Hindu influence. The Malays after all, were largely Hindus, Buddhists and animists before the arrival of Islam in the 1100s-1400s to Southeast Asia. Archipelagic Islam developed based on that old Malay (and others like the Javanese) foundation. Post-independence nation state context further influences the interpretation and practice of Islam in Malaysia and elsewhere in the region, that the state used religion to promote nationalism. Brunei is the other example where religion is a subservient tool of nationalism.

The idea that there is one Islam is not only untrue across geography. It is also untrue across time. Karen Armstrong in her book A History of God shows that early Muslims believed they were part of the Christian community. While mainstream Muslims today accept all of the Christian prophets, they do not consider themselves as Christians. Early Muslims did not share such a strong distinction. A separate Islamic identity developed only after the hijra. Indeed, before meeting the Medina Jews, Muhammad thought Christians and Jews were of the same belief and Islam was merely renewing the two religions that came from the same god. The conflation between Christianity and Judaism would not have been a mistake if Muhammad had lived centuries earlier when Jesus was preaching. Armstrong demonstrated that early Christians thought they were Jewish in religious terms and that they themselves thought they were renewing the religion of Moses.

Gerard Russell’s Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms chronicling the old communities of the Middle East shows how minor religions like the Mandaenism sprung out of the Abrahamic beliefs by holding on to dogmas modern Judaism, Christianity and Islam now reject. Apart from the rejected beliefs, these minor religions are or were similar in so many ways to the major three faiths. These minorities are fossils from the days when the three world’s religions were rapidly evaluating their creeds and figuring out what worked and what did not. They are the living proofs that religion evolves over time, just as dinosaur fossils are proof that the Earth is older than 4,000 years.

All religions evolve and adapt to time, geography and culture and whatever other secular forces.

The one Islam may exist as a Platonic idealism but that model is irrelevant to the material world. The Islam that matters are the practical ones: the interpreted ones.

And so I do disagree with the claim that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. ISIS’s is a disagreeable brand of Islam but it is a brand of Islam nonetheless. It is a brutal brand as a reaction to the disastrous 2000s war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

There is a parallel to this. A harsh puritan form of Islam appeared after the massacre and the razing of Baghdad in the 1200s-1300s by the Mongols. That Islam sought to return the religion to the early Meccan and Medinan days, rejecting intellectual progress achieved in the previous 700 years that made Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus the great capitals of the world during its times.

There is a Muslim tradition that leads to ISIS. That post-Mongol puritan Islam as rationalized by Ibn Taymiyyah informed modern day wahabbism and the salafism, which in turned influenced ISIS.

We should go further and explain why ISIS’s interpretation is so problematic. Their interpretation is that theirs is the true form and everybody else’s is false. ISIS believes theirs is the one true Islam while rejecting the diversity that exists in the religion.

That similarity, between ISIS and those who claim ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, amuses me. Both sides build their argument that their version is the one true Islam.

That logic shared by the two parties is not merely a source of amusing coincidence unfortunately. There is something more sinister about it.

Because there is only one true interpretation, then there is only one way of doing things and everything else is wrong. The religious diversity is rejected altogether. The magic word here is puralism. The corrupt Malaysian state is also guilty of this by politicizing Islam to legitimize its increasingly undemocratic hold to power, that the state is the guardian of the supposedly Platonic Islam. To add to the sense that the religion is being manipulated, I should write, the guardian of Platonic Malaysian Islam.

From where I stand, I feel the difference between the two sides is only a matter of degrees of intolerance and coercive force. I would not be shocked if it really about the ability to exert coercion for a large minority in Malaysia. After all, did a survey last year not show 11% of Malaysian Muslims sympathize with ISIS?[1]

And this is a problem. When you want to fight ISIS yet you share the same intolerance however different the degree is, your fight is logically unconvincing and turns out into choosing the lesser of the two evils.

Sometimes, we can reject all evils.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — See In nations with significant Muslim populations, much disdain for ISIS. November 17 2015.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s — Tolerance to diversity itself does not make ISIS okay. There are other values more important that blind diversity, like individual rights.

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Conflict & disaster Economics Society

[2812] Government failure causes bauxite vigilantism

Powder kegs that are too close to the fire. That is the situation in Kuantan right now.

Local residents frustrated by the rampant bauxite pollution are beginning to take matters into their own hands. Threats have been made and carried out. Trucks carrying the mineral burned by the angry mob. Vigilantism is on the rise.

Vigilante justice is always worrying but it is hard to blame the local residents for resorting to it. When non-violent ways failed to address their grievances, they are left with less than desirable devices. Like it or not, vigilantism is a solution available when the typical mechanisms ”• market and government ”• are not working.

The free market usually provides robust solutions to a myriad of problems big and small. But such a market does not exist magically out of nothing. It is a human institution running on implicit human rules arising from our daily interactions with other fellow beings. As with any human creation, it can be imperfect. At times it can fail disastrously.

The market will disappoint the strongest supporters of the laissez-faire approach when too much of profits are privatized while too much of costs are passed on to the public with impunity. In economic jargon, that cost is called negative externality.

The tragedy of the commons is the oft-cited theoretical example of market failure involving extreme externality. Without any intervention to correct the misaligned private and public incentives, the benefits will be exhausted and the commons will collapse.

The negative effects of climate change are examples of market failure of global proportions.

Closer to home, I would submit the massive bauxite pollution in Kuantan, Pahang as a disturbing local case. The miners and the landowners reap their windfall profits but the rest bears the cost of the pollution.

Heavy red dust now contaminates the local air and water supply and that creates severe health threats to residents. One can only imagine the fate of whatever wildlife left in the plantations where the topsoil has been removed to feed China’s ferocious appetite for more bauxite.

When the market fails, then it is the responsibility of the government to step in and realign the diverging private and public incentives to produce a better outcome for both sides.

The typical solution involves taxing mining activities heavily, imposing strict production quotas or regulating the industry tightly in some ways to force the beneficiaries to take into account the disregarded general welfare.

But from the very beginning when the mining began, the government at the Pahang state level is not doing its job as the industry regulator and as the guardian of public welfare. Not enough has been done to correct the market failure. By definition, that is government failure.

Factors contributing to market failure mostly are innocent despite the grave consequences as it usually involves people minding their own legitimate business. It is always the government’s job to understand those businesses so that if there is any negative externality or conflict, then the authorities can come in and arbitrate any dispute. Any libertarian mindful of market failure will take this as one of the major roles of government.

In contrast ”• if it is not incompetence or inadequate powers ”• government failure is almost always about conflict of interest. In the case of Kuantan, it does seem like yet another case of conflict of interest.

For one, reports suggest the Pahang state government received more than RM37 million in revenue last year from bauxite mining. That figure will increase significantly once the state government doubles its current tariff rate on production to RM8 per ton.

The sum is significant for a government with a budgeted spending close to RM900 million in 2015. In a country where the concept of separation of powers is weak, the state’s fiscal interest can be hard to overcome.

But more troublingly, there are pictures circulating on the Internet, creating the allegations that some of the landowners enjoying the modern day gold rush are quite influential and close to the state government.

Information from the Internet may be wrong. While the local media has done a good job at reporting the impact of the pollution, not too many are investigating the identity of the landowners and the miners. Perhaps that is the cost of the culture of fear we have in Malaysia. Public welfare is suffering from gross disrespect for free press.

The federal government has come in to suspend the mining activities temporarily to order to study whether any environmental law has been breached. It is unclear if the suspension will mean anything or even be effective but one thing is certain: the issue falls firmly within the ambit of the state while the federal government is even more reluctant to do anything conclusive especially since Pahang is the political base of the prime minister. With so many troubles in other states, would he risk the ire of local politicians to do the right thing?

These are disheartening facts. Unless the conflict of interest is addressed strongly, the state and the federal government will likely continue to do too little, thus guaranteeing the continuing government and market failures.

I fear, at the rate we are going, the whole episode will lead to a period of persistent vigilantism. Down that slope ”• however far down the slope is ”• is a general breakdown in law and order. Miners are already employing thugs to protect the trucks from vigilantism. That sounds awfully close to anarchy.

But then again, does law and order mean anything these days? When the top leadership has no moral authority, will the so-called Little Napoleons down the line be impressed by any necessary directive from the top?

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 January 5 2015.