Tag: Pakatan Harapan

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Politics & government

[2973] Harapan must not let Pakatan pussies speak for the coalition

We all understand why Pakatan Harapan needed to ally with Barisan Nasional. At the very end of the last political cycle, we were faced with stark choices: have an imperfect alliance between the reform-minded individuals and everything the grand old party presents, or live under an incompetent conservative regime that would rewrite what Malaysia would mean so completely. Given the world as it was at that particular point of that, the imperfect alliance was the preferred option.

Such imperfect alliance will always present Pakatan members and supporters with challenges. Compromises will have to be made and that is completely understandable and reasonable.

But not all things can be compromised, and compromises must involve both sides, not just one. If only one side compromises, and willing to compromise everything, then something is wrong.

That is where some Pakatan members and supporters are today.

Whenever new political appointments were made for the benefits of Umno, some Pakatan supporters would use the imperfect alliance as an excuse. “This is not a Pakatan government. It is a unity government.”

Now, there is movement to get Najib Razak, barely several months in prison, pardoned. Disappointingly, some Pakatan supporters now use the same template excuse without even thinking what it means. Too eager to defend the Pakatan government against any criticism, the template is used as get out of jail card for every single problem the government faces. They do not even bother to right the wrong. So fearful of any threat of instability to the government, they lose their backbone. They bend over without making any effort to push back.

Those are who I call Pakatan pussies. No backbone. No accountability.

These spineless pussies, when faced with difficult questions from Pakatan supporters, would go back to their list of lazy excuses and say “do you want a Pas government, or Pakatan? Choose.”

Betting chips down when they are not

The stark choices Malaysians collectively, and Pakatan supporters specifically, faced in November 2022 came to being when the chips were down. It was the nuclear option at the very end of the road.

We needed the nuclear option to sharpen the mind of many. “Pas or Pakatan” was a simple decision tree to let people discover for themselves the consequences of November choices. Veil of ignorance, so-to-speak. You present the many with the destinations, and make them work for themselves the roads towards the preferred destination. These allowed them to see the world as it was, and accept the decision made, however unpalatable the road was.

We are no longer in November 2022. The pressures are much less intense. The timeline is easier. In fact, attempts to get Najib Razak pardoned have not even started earnestly.

Yet, these Pakatan pussies are inappropriately using the nuclear option, betting the chips down too soon.

Red lines

Pardoning Najib Razak, in my mind, is a red line in any compromise between Pakatan and Barisan. I have at least three reasons why that is so.

One, he and his supporters have not expressed any remorse. In a society where corruption is still rampart, example must be set so we can begin to reset our morals. To free an unremorseful man is the wrong message to send in pursuit of a moral society.

Two, it opens Pakatan Harapan to partisan attacks from Pas and their allies. So far, Perikatan Nasional, Bersatu especially, appeared have been crippled. They are now in search of an issue to rejuvenate their political fortune. They have tried to make EPF withdrawals as a rallying point. They have not been successful there. Pakatan Harapan seemingly blessing the pardon—does not matter explicitly or implicitly—will be the one point Perikatan needs. Pas (and Umno) did that with ICERD and the death of  Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim, and came back from the dead in 2019.

Three, the long run is not as static as many make it out to be. In November 2022 when decisions had to be made in a matter of days if not weeks, the decision tree in which the nuclear option was represented was static. This is especially so when election had been concluded. It is a mistake to think the same statics will work over longer time horizon. People… voters… adapt to situations. If you keep using the nuclear options too many times, then people will begin to dismiss it and become immune to any similar exhortation. Additionally, it is quite easy to imagine more and more parties entering the arena competing for Pakatan’s base as a sign of dissatisfaction. At the very least, non-voting will be an issue. This has happened before not too long ago. In other words, in the long term, there is a real risk of current Pakatan voters deserting the coalition.

The final point is not a mere theoretical musing. In 2009 until 2013 when Najib was busy promoting various liberalization that he appeared to be a liberal, his men and women dismissed concerns about Umno’s voting base. “They would have no where to go.” That was quickly proven untrue in 2013, which partially led Najib to turn around and embraced racist politics more rabidly.

Message: do not take your voting base for granted.

Get a backbone and push back

Compromises have to be made. But there have to be red lines. Pardoning Najib is one of those red lines. Pardoning Najib risks the long-term viability of Pakatan Harapan, and we need Pakatan Harapan to succeed in order to push back racist and fascist forces.

Pakatan needs to push back. We need to tell Umno we will not support any pardoning, and in fact, opposes it. We can make it difficult, and raise the cost of them doing so.

And please, no kop-out by saying it is a royal prerogative. In so many ways, the royals are accountable to the people too. Rakyat itu Raja.

At the end of the day, Pakatan Harapan will have our urban fortresses. Right now, it is Umno that faces annihilation with Bersatu and Pas outside having the grand old party for lunch. It is Umno that faces existential crisis, not Pakatan. Remember, that crisis is Najib’s own doing. Too many in Umno are too blind to see what outsiders already know. Here, Pakatan needs to advise Umno the folly they are committing.

If the stubbornness continues, Pakatan needs to be careful so we do not sink with Umno.

This is why we need to push back.

And this is why Pakatan Harapan cannot let these Pakatan pussies speak for Pakatan. Not only they are spineless, they are myopic too.

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Politics & government

[2965] Anwar Ibrahim and Pakatan Harapan are a means to an end

It has been a long wait. Anwar Ibrahim is finally the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Many have remarked how he deserves it. Or that he has been cheated out of it before. Or everybody has had their chances and now, it is Anwar’s turn to rule. Or he suffered to get here.

But, I tell myself that it is never about Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar, and Pakatan Harapan for that matter, is a means to an end.

The end is something much bigger than any one of us. The end is a Malaysia where everybody has a place under the sun, living in dignity and as equal, prosperously.

It will not be easy to achieve that, especially when even such a goal is not quite concrete. It is fluffy. It is intangible, at least the non-economic part. In fact, it is clear not everybody will agree—vehemently disagree at that—to the kind of equality envisaged in that kind of Malaysia.

The first step towards that end, is clearly reconciliation between major groups in the country, and some kind of compromise. But that reconciliation cannot be about making everybody happy. There are principles and ground rules to be adhered to. That we are all Malaysians, that we all have dignity that must not be violated. Reconciliation does not mean reconciling everything. Something, like deep fascism, cannot be reconciled with inclusive values.

The meeting ground has to be reasonable.

Ultimately, the core of that inclusive values, to me are (among several others) the end to the means that are Anwar Ibrahim and Pakatan Harapan.

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Politics & government

[2962] 2022 manifesto represents progress in PH policymaking

Going through Pakatan Harapan’s latest 94-plus pages manifesto reminds me how far things have progressed over the last 10 or so years. By things, I mean the current component PH parties’ ability to churn out policy documents, and overall sophistication in promoting policies. Ten or 15 years ago, PH struggled to produce such policy documents.

The inability to do so was among others due to lack of manpower or professionals in various fields within party ranks and volunteers. In the past, most professionals or even experts stayed well in the private sector. If they had political ambition or interest, they would join Barisan Nasional. Contributing to parties like DAP and PKR (or then Pas) then meant career suicide. Few were willing to sacrifice their living standards for partisan politics.

That has changed as the urban middle class now relies less on  government largess, and with private employment opportunities well diversified beyond the reach of partisan hands. That trend, I think, comes as multiethnic urban voters shift their party preference from that of BN to PKR, DAP and their various allies over the years. Now, PH has access to those professionals and experts.

Even when DAP and PKR were weak during those years, they were measured on a harsher scale versus the one faced by BN. BN would be allowed to play on noob mode, but the public insisted DAP and PKR played only the hard mode. Where is your manifesto? Where is your alternative budget? Where is your shadow cabinet? That BN never took their own manifesto seriously was never questioned.

Prior to the 2010s, this was perhaps understandable because most would ask, why change when things are going okay? Reading We Are Marching Now recently, most voters then were interested in stronger checks and balances, but not a change in government. Voters were scared of change and if they were to be convinced of change, then advocates of change would need to surpass a very high bar before any convincing could take place. The status quo was easier and familiar.

But by the 2010s, changes are no longer something scary. And PH is more than capable of providing policy alternative to back its overall rally for federal power.

As for the PH manifesto itself, there are measures that I disagree with. Furthermore, I do feel there is an element of kitchen sink in it. Nevertheless, I suppose I need to remind myself that this is the nature of coalition politics, a compromise between equals. Messy but that is democracy. What is important is that, there has been progress over the years, and that progress as represented by the latest manifesto is not small by any measure.

Progress in developing policy-making skills among PH members have been so significant in the past 10 years that the corporate sector no longer could ignore PH manifesto.

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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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Economics Politics & government

[2957] Pakatan Harapan should avoid kitchen sink manifesto

Election is nearing and among policy-minded voters, it is not difficult to spot manifesto discussions. As someone with some implementation experience in government, let me say the last Pakatan Harapan manifesto was difficult. I knew this before I was pulled into the whole business: I reviewed the manifesto and summarized it as the following: the economic plank was “difficult to stomach wholly” but the other parts, particularly the institutional agenda, were what we needed. Given my concerns were institutional in nature, I was willing to give a blind eye to the economic plank, and support the institutional aspect wholly.

Looking back, the economic manifesto rode on popular anger quite effectively. That explained the kitchen sink approach taken by its authors. GST, monopoly, living costs, corporate corruption and other concerns were all meshed into one big document, which did not jive together. The authors knew what they wanted.

Unfortunately, riding the wave, and actually executing the policies were two very different things. Mahathir famously said ‘we’ did not expect to win, and so did not expect to implement those promises. Manifesto bukan kitab suci; manifesto isn’t a holy book. That highlighted the difficulties associated with the economic aspects of the manifesto, especially after GST was abolished just weeks after the 2018 election, and more importantly, before the Finance Minister was sworn in to bring SST back.

The next election, Pakatan Harapan can do better. They need to do better because the same mid-2010s anger is no longer there. There is little to match that economic anger, save the stubborn but relaxing global food prices and rising recession risks.

If I were to write the manifesto all by myself, I would reiterate the institutional aspects and reuse a good chunk for the 2022/2023 general election, and come up with a new one for the economic side. On the economics, I would reject the 2018 kitchen sink approach. I would instead set up overarching national goals. What do I mean by that?

In the kitchen sink approach, almost everything economic-related concerns were siloed off with little concerns to bigger concerns. One way to put it simply is that the proposed solutions were necessarily single-minded and siloed that the same proposed solutions ignored their effects on other things, like government finances and economic growth. At the implementation stage, at times this left those solutions contradicting each other, leaving individuals implementing those siloed solutions fighting each other and accusing the other side as blocking manifesto fulfillment. For instance, when Pakatan Harapan abolished GST without regards to policy sequencing, notwithstanding the previous problem with refunds (truly, the additional government revenue was lowered than BN admitted), how exactly the government would finance other parts of its economic promises? PTPTN? Highways? Petrol subsidies?

As you can see, the kitchen sink approach works from funding supply first, and then effectively takes the funding demand as an afterthought. This caused the troubles Mahathir identified so early. You ended up with insufficient funding supply to meet rising funding demand.

In the overarching national goals, it should work the other way round: start from funding demand-side first, and then work the funding supply-side afterwards.

To do this, we have to ask ourselves, what do we want for Malaysia?

Do we want to maintain our largely free, government revenue-financed healthcare system?

Do we want a welfare system given the damage Covid-19 has done to the financial security of many Malaysians?

Do we want a good education system? What kind?

Do we want better cities? Transport policy?

Do we want stronger defense?

Do we want to climate change infrastructure? Energy policy?

What?

This requires deep discussions among many parties, from lay users to experts. It has to be multidisciplinary, exactly so to avoid the silo problem that the 2018 Pakatan Harapan manifesto suffered (and contemporaneously, the Ministry of Health’s ongoing white paper).

And this way, we can be honest when it comes to taxation: taxes have to rise.

The truth few willing to say loudly because it is unpopular is that the Malaysia government lacks funding to do a whole lot of things due to low taxation. We can raise the deficit ratio, but even so it would not be enough to meet various legitimate demand associated with basic functions of government like health and defense (let us not talk about unorthodox fairy tales about ‘printing money’). For a country aspiring to be a “first-world” with worsening demography (but still young), our tax (and the bigger government) revenue to GDP ratio is low. That fact has caused unnecessary outsourcing of basic functions to the private sector. The same fact is the reason behind a whole lot of off-budget borrowings and spendings, which are nontransparent and significantly raises corruption risk in an environment where underfunded institutions cannot play their check-and-balance role properly.

To tell this truth, you have to tell the funding demand-side story: what do you want?

Of course, not all wants can be entertained lest the same problems besetting the 2018 manifesto would come back. You cannot want a well-run public transport system while wanting blanket petrol subsidies and eye-roll-worthy car duties cut. You cannot want a working revenue-funded health system while supporting tax cut for private insurance and spending at private hospitals. You cannot want a fully-funded education system while supporting tax cut for private education institutions. You cannot want a healthy Malaysian population but keep sugar cheap. You cannot want a good road while wanting a low road tax and cheap petrol.

Manifesto authors have to choose instead of putting everything into the kitchen sink. Here is where leadership is needed: decide on the policy direction instead of a Hail Mary rush.

And also, of course, manifesto has to be popular. It has to have its hooks. But those populist promises can be brought in line with the overarching themes. For example, have public transport cheap, with discount and vouchers and everything, and admit the system will always be in the red, to which the government will have to fully fund it directly (leaving financial performance for public transport system second in priority to physical performance).

Be direct about the funding demand, and through that, we can be honest about funding supply, and taxation.

I should add that the institutional aspect of the 2018 manifesto worked because it had an overarching goal: improving the overall check-and-balance mechanism and all of them are linked to one another in one way or another. It was not a kitchen sink.

To summarize it all: the next manifesto should be driven by overarching goals, instead of a laundry list of grouses. In other words, do not throw everything into the kitchen sink.