Category: Politics & government

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Politics & government

[2699] If you fail the first time Egyptians, try and try again

As a liberal, Egypt offers horrible options. I am glad I am just a lay observer from across the continent where I am unlikely need to make such choices any time in the foreseeable future.

On one side, there is the democratically elected Islamist organization Muslim Brotherhood with Mohamed Morsi as the former President. While democratically elected, they are no democrats and while in government, they were ready to abuse state institutions to cement their power. Something had to be done to counter the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and quite clearly, millions of Egyptians, majority or not, agreed that something needed to be done. So they protested more after the original protest turned into a revolution which pulled the dictator Hosni Mubarak down. The new protest brought the whole country to a standstill, which led us to the current situation.

In an attempt to break the deadlock, the military launched a bloodless, pre-announced, quick coup d’état. Some liberals have celebrated the move. Deep inside me, I am truly happy for what has happened in Cairo.

Nevertheless, it is hard to say having the unelected military in power instead of the elected Islamists a better option. Supporting a coup d’état itself is one of the most illiberal things to do. It would be very odd for a liberal to cheer on the military ousting the elected power, a power with repulsive outlook or otherwise.

But things are not that simple especially for Egypt which is emerging from Mubarak autocratic years. If Egypt was a normal democracy, than it would be easy to say a coup d’état by the military was outright wrong, But Egypt is in a revolution that has not concluded. The objective of the revolution is the creation of a sustainable democracy. The logic of revolution has its own rules.

The country is a state in flux and it is struggling to create such democracy. As a liberal, I am hoping that that democracy is a liberal one with individual rights sufficiently protected, and not merely a majoritarian democracy where the majority can do whatever it wants at the expense of others. After all, how many dictators have been elected to power? Winning an election is an insufficient condition for a person to have respect for democracy.

Given that Egypt is fresh at the start, it is important to get things right before everything calcifies.

With that in mind, having the Muslim Brotherhood with its wide tentacles unchecked can corrupt state institutions, leaving the opportunity to create independent institutions crucial to a liberal democracy smaller by the day. Already the new constitution gives too much power to the President, in the crucial early days of the Egyptian republic. Not only that, the constitution is inadequate to separate powers that exist in the state. That gives too much leeway for the Muslim Brotherhood to corrupt the state.

And the Islamists are no liberal and they have an Islamist vision that in the past months have shown intolerance to others, like the Christians. So, I see Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood as an oppressive regime which believes a victory at the ballot boxes gives it a free ticket to do anything. The only thing that has prevented the Muslim Brotherhood from taking off has been the military.

Democracy, as in modern democracy which really liberal democracy, is not merely about the ballot boxes. It is about rights and institutions and a majority win during one election alone does not give the power to trample those rights and institutions. Those Islamists do not understand that.

So, letting the Muslim Brotherhood through Morsi shaping the early history of the Egyptian republic excessively without strong constitutional safeguard sounds like a bad plan to me.

What the military coup does is to till land again. That gives a chance for a democracy that is more than majoritarianism to flourish. That creation of democracy is the goal of the revolution. If you fail the first time, try and try again. To waste this revolution will be one of the worst of all outcomes. They are already there and so, let them try as hard as they can.

It is only regrettable that the till was done through military might. Ideally, it should have been done through democratic process. Or Morsi should have stepped down. But the land got tilled anyway and that is a great consolation prize. I now hope that the military is merely a caretaker for a very short period before Egypt has another run on its democratic experiment. Whether I am right to hope, whether that hope is realistic, only time will tell.

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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.

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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.

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Personal Politics & government

[2683] Heartbreak for my emotional investment

I do not know what to write. Yet I need to write as we come closer to the election date.

I guess I just want to say that I am scared. I am scared of heartbreak.

I volunteered in the 2008 general election and the 2011 Sarawak state election. The two campaigns that I participated in were successful. The joy of winning the election was beyond words. But most importantly, I did not hold high expectation of winning. Things came out as a complete surprise. It was a pleasant surprise.

This time around I have a problem. Although I am less involved as I am not volunteering for anyone and I have not been to too many political events, I somehow have set a certain expectation. Past victories made me addicted to that feeling of joy.

I will not share the expectation but I can tell you that it is susceptible to disappointment.

I did not realize how much emotional investment I have made into the political process over the years until just now. I did not realize how much I am rooting for a certain party to win. I know I have always rooted for them over the past years but the intensity that I feel right now goes beyond my comprehension. It is as if I just realized I have made considerable emotional investment while I was sleeping. Then suddenly, just as I wake up, I find out of that investment with tomorrow will be the judgment day. Tomorrow will decide whether that investment will bear fruits. I wake up shocked, feeling naked with no time to regain my composure.

That is just too much for me.

I now somehow understand how a person can resort to violence. The impossibility of accepting a disappointment so big will force one to reject reality and forcefully change what is true. Slam the sledgehammer hard enough and then maybe reality will change so that it will no longer be a disappointment. It can become what you want and expect. From a loss, to a win, by force.

And if you have been in power so long, being out of power can create a sense of denial that is so strong…

I am not advocating violence. Violence is the worst thing that can probably happen the day after tomorrow. Violence will undo whatever progress we have made, win or lose. Yes, win or lose, there will be progress. We cannot allow violence to undo the progress.

But I think I can understand why someone would or could resort to it. I think so.

As I sit here, I am hoping for the best and try to temper my expectation down. The high expectation is unhealthy for me, especially since, well, what can a person do so late right now? It is unreasonable to punish myself for something I realistically have no control over. Damn those political scientists.

Hopefully tomorrow by the time I wake up and get ready to vote, my expectation will be lower than what I have right now, just to save myself from any heartbreak that I cannot stand.

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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]