Tag: UMNO

[2878] The anti-ICERD protest is a chance to show this government is different from the past administration

Post author By Hafiz Noor Shams
Post date Saturday, December 8 2018
No Comments on [2878] The anti-ICERD protest is a chance to show this government is different from the past administration

This is the first significant protest the current government faces. And this is yet another opportunity for this government to demonstrate that it is different from the previous corrupt racist, fascist regime.

That can be shown by accommodating the protest as much as possible with a view of not being explicitly hostile to it either through speech or action, but by guaranteeing the safety of the protest participants and others while they exercise their rights to freedom of assembly and speech.

I participated in all of the Bersih protests and each time, there was always a dread feeling inside of me expecting the worst to happen. Such feeling was warranted.

Previously, government-controlled media always delivered threatening messages to the masses ahead of any large protest. May 13 without fail was the boogeyman.

My first taste of tear gas happened while I was standing amid a large crowd near the Maybank tower.

I have been chased by the police before. At one time, an officer pulled a gun near Jalan Raja Laut after chaos erupted. There was a time when I walked by a security personnel during a protest, and he verbally abused me.

And the laying out of barbwire and other actions like the conspicuous rolling out of anti-riot assets with security personnel all equipped with armor always threatened the atmosphere of the protest.

Furthermore, it was common knowledge that the party in power then sent provocateurs to create chaos, and create a reason for the security personnel to come in and break the protest.

All this should be avoided by this government. The police should hold back and not purposefully threaten the crowd. No provocateur should be sent by anybody associated with the ruling parties and the government.

It is by backing off from these provocative tactics that we can show to the world that the government is self-assured and strong.

The function of a government within the context of its citizens exercising their rights is to protect those rights and the people who are practicing it peacefully.

We can disagree with the agenda of the protest participants, however racists they are, but we should also respect their right to assemble peacefully.

We can be different and we must be different. We can show to them that there is another way. We do not need to beat our chest to show our confidence and strength.

That is the best way to blunt their message: that we are different and better.

Tags free speech, ICERD, PAS, protests, racism, right of assembly, UMNO

Economics Politics & government

[2844] Evolution of corporate ownership in Malaysia

Post author By Hafiz Noor Shams
Post date Friday, December 30 2016
1 Comment on [2844] Evolution of corporate ownership in Malaysia

Terence Gomez is embarking on a massive project investigating quantitatively the influence of government-linked companies in the Malaysian economy. The dominance of government in business and in the economy is no mystery. What is special here is that he is analyzing the numbers more comprehensively than many had done before. He is currently focusing his research at the federal level but if I remember correctly, he plans to delve into state level bodies, looking into bodies like Kumpulan Perangsang Selangor, which are much less known than those like Khazanah Nasional.

Together with Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Gomez in 1997 wrote the go-to book — Malaysia’s Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Profits — exploring the ownership of corporate Malaysia in the 1990s and its links to politics, namely Umno. To understand political financing during the Mahathir era, this is the book to read.

The scale of Gomez’s latest project on ownership is larger than anything available before. There have been work done on corporate ownership in Malaysia after his 1997 book but they provided only partial view of the whole story while nibbling at the edge.

Gomez in his lecture, which I attended at the University of Malaya earlier this year (and later at an event organized by the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs; Ideas is funding of the project) made the connection between previous ownership literature and showed how the majority ownership changed from the 1950s to the 2010s, the present time.

He is continuing the work pioneered by James Puthucheary, who back in the 1950s went through official colonial and Malayan documents to understand who owned what in the economy. Through that, he corrected the idea that the Chinese had controlled the economy when in fact it were the Europeans. Gomez mentioned Lim Mui Hui’s work as the other important literature in the 1970s tracing capital ownership in the Malayan-Malaysian economy in the early days of the New Economic Policy period.

Gomez in his lecture showed just as Puthucheary demonstrated decades ago that the British and other European bodies controlled the majority of the top Malayan companies in the 1950s. This changed in the 1960s and the 1970s when Chinese tycoons rose up in the list. By the 1980s and the 1990s, due to the implementation of the New Economic Policy and Mahathir’s industrialization drive, the list was dominated by Malay industrialists. The ownership list was also more diverse than it ever was, with Genting, Berjaya and YTL were among the biggest then.

But in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis, something fundamental happened. Most of top Malaysian companies were owned by the government and no longer belonged to private individuals or groups. There were bailed out or acquired by the government through the Government-Linked Investment Companies. Gomez listed the usual seven: the Employees Provident Fund, Kumpulan Wang Persaraan, Permodalan Nasional, Lembaga Tabung Haji, the Armed Forces Fund, Khanazah Nasional and the Ministry of Finance Incorporated. Many of the Malay industrialist companies like UEM were now owned by the government.

Not all of those seven government-linked investment companies are the same. The EPF, for instance, is not strictly a government company, in the same Khazanah is. But nevertheless, the EPF does have an extremely strong presence in the Malaysian economy, in both the equity and the debt markets.

In a different talk of a more casual style, historian Khoo Kay Kim claimed the Germans controlled the Malayan economy before the First World War. Their influence diminished after their lost the war and was replaced by the Japanese during the interwar period. I have not read a proper document to ascertain the claim but I have read from various sources that Japanese companies were active in Malaya prior to the Second World War.

Gomez’s work has implications beyond economics. Control over of these government-linked corporations and entities enables political control and enhances political power, just has the Umno’s ties to various the 1980s-1990s Malay industrialists had kept the party’s machinery going. But unlike then, when those funds were private money from private companies (public companies privatized), the government today does enforce spending or procurement requirement to benefit certain parties. While Gomez did not cover 1MDB, the 1MDB corruption scandal, provides the starkest example of public resources being used directly and illegally to finance Umno’s (and even its president’s personal) requirement. The connection is starker and more corrupt now than ever before.

The evolution of corporate ownership in Malaysia simply does not inspire confidence, and the completion of Gomez’s work will truly show how big the beast has become.

Tags corporate, foreign ownership, government-linked companies, James Puthucheary, K.S. Jomo, Lim Mui Hui, Mahathir Mohamad, Najib Razak, Terence Gomez, UMNO

Politics & government

[2793] Choice of words and the shaping of opinions

Post author By Hafiz Noor Shams
Post date Friday, August 28 2015
1 Comment on [2793] Choice of words and the shaping of opinions

When I think of the terms “coup d’tat”, “overthrow”, “topple” and the like, I would think of a violent change in government. The revolutions in Egypt and Ukraine would come to my mind. Closer to home, having tanks rolling through the streets of Bangkok is another excellent example.

In contrast, when I think of the case of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi — backstabbed by his UMNO colleagues and pressured to resign what seems ages ago — the whole episode falls under the realm of peaceful power transfer.

It lacks the violence or coerciveness that colors the words “coup d’tat”, “overthrow” and “topple” so thickly. The events in 2008-2009 were messy but democracy is always unruly. It is never as clean as an autocrat dressed in a democrat costume would like. These autocrats think modern democracy is about having regular elections only while ignoring other prerequisites that are just as important.

I do not think the definition of “topple” I have outlined exists only in my mind. The violent undertone it brings falls within the everyday understanding of the word. If “topple” had been used to describe the end of the Abdullah-led administration, then I would think the term has been abused grossly.

And so I frown when Najib Razak’s supporters and the police chief especially throw around that word to describe attempts at removing the prime minister from power through a vote of no confidence in Parliament. So insecure they are that even calling for his resignation is a go at coup d’tat.

But perhaps after so much power and institutional corruption committed by UMNO and their BN allies in government, it is only natural for the same side to corrupt the language we use every day.

I would think they know they are twisting these words beyond their intended meaning. It is a purposeful exaggeration to meet their selfish political end, which is to stay in power even at the expense of the country.

The bigger problem is when the intended recipients of the political message, mostly men and women on the streets, accept the word subversion without critical examination and then blindly reuse it in that unnatural way.

To understand why this is an issue worth highlighting, we have to understand that language has the power to shape our opinion. Language is not merely a neutral medium of exchange but it also influences how we perceive information, and from there on shapes our views.

Since “topple” comes with the violent connotation, applying it in the context of peaceful power change would likely cause the uncritical message recipients to balk and recoil from any call for change. They would hesitate from supporting change out of fear, merely because the words used.

That is the purpose of word subversion. It tries to pollute the legitimate peaceful means of change with the created image of smoke, fire and death. It is done to instill fear in us, make us feel hopeless and convince us to do nothing even in the face of injustice. It is to discourage the case for peaceful power change.

The sages of old told us not to judge a book by its cover. But let us face it. We almost always act on the first impression. We read the headline and prejudge without reading the whole article. We live in the too-long, didn’t-read culture.

In the same line of reasoning, most of us do not think too much of how “topple” has been used. I have spotted too many innocent men and women reusing the word in the corrupted context without realizing it, thus perpetuating fear and serving the pro-Najib camp.

I am sure I am guilty of the same sin I warn of here in other cases elsewhere. It is truly tiring trying to be critical about every single word uttered, read and written all the time with a thick dictionary by my side.

But during this chaotic dishonest period when words are abused frequently, meanings are not so straight forward and outright doubletalk is the norm, we must stand guard for the tabula rasa that still exists in the corners of our mind. We just cannot afford to be the uncritical blind consumers of language waiting to be exploited in these deplorable days full of deceits.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malay Mail on August 25 2015.

Tags Barisan Nasional, Bersih, coup dâ€™Ã©tat, language, Malay Mail, topple, UMNO

Politics & government Sci-fi

[2792] Malaysian dystopia coming true

Post author By Hafiz Noor Shams
Post date Wednesday, August 26 2015
No Comments on [2792] Malaysian dystopia coming true

Some dystopian science fictions rest on absurd premises.

Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is a statist world of paperwork. There is a form to fill up for everything you do. The story begins with a naming mistake in a government ministry.

Instead of Tuttle printed on the warrant, it was Buttle. That leads to the arrest and the eventual death of an innocent man the authority believed was a terrorist.

When a person discovers that the authority had the wrong person, everybody else refuses to correct or even admit the mistake for fear of having to face the impossible mountains of paperwork. And so the bureaucracy covers it up rather.

Mistakes or not, the bureaucracy is always right. Adherence to the system is so paramount that any attempt to rectify the error is an act of rebellion against the state. The state, meanwhile, does not look kindly on rebellion.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is more ominous than Brazil. While people of Gilliam’s world are free as long as they fill their forms correctly, Orwell’s is a totalitarian universe with the one party controlling every facet of your life.

The truth is whatever the government ”• the Big Brother ”• says. The government rewrites history however it sees fit. If anybody has a different opinion or remembers history differently, the government will put him through a special rehabilitation program to change his or her mind, forcefully.

There are other brilliantly absurd dystopian works out there.

These absurdities are fictions only to a healthy civilized society when the government is decent. We can laugh at these fictions because they are entertainingly absurd and so far removed from reality.

But the farther down the hole we are from a decent government, the less fictional these absurdities become. In them lie the seeds of truth.

Whenever I think of Malaysia today, my mind wanders to these old dystopian science fictions. I sigh at the ridiculousness of our situation that might as well be the target of mocking and satire of these works.

Our very own Big Brother (is he Ah Jib Gor?) proclaimed back when 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) was established that the fund was the centerpiece to his transformation.

It would help to create a new financial center for Kuala Lumpur. It would help reform the power sector. It would push Malaysia into the dreamy First World list.

Drive by the long Jalan Tun Razak, you will read the pretentious phrase ”For a Greater Kuala Lumpur” printed on aluminum hoarding surrounding the prime land 1MDB bought so cheaply from the government. ”1MDB is strong,” the government said.

Today, financial troubles and corruption scandals beset the fund. The strong 1MDB now is in need of government support to survive. The financial center stands unbuilt. The power authority is scrambling to meet Malaysia’s future energy demand because 1MDB failed to build the necessary power plants despite winning the tenders. Amid all this, the government is trying to convince us all that 1MDB is too small compared to the Malaysian economy. ”The fund is inconsequential now,” they claimed.

It took four to five years to change the storyline from it’s-a-big-thing to it-doesn’t-matter. One should be forgiven for not noticing the changing deceit told over such a long period.

But another episode is more shocking. Only a person of dulled senses and soft mind would not notice it.

Remember when all of those corruption allegations backed by various leaked documents implicating 1MDB, the prime minister and several other individuals first came out? They were tampered documents, the government said. The implicit defense was that the allegations were untrue.

Now, as the official government story goes, the money transfer did happen and the accounts did exist. All that was an all-legal multibillion-ringgit donation from someone unnamed. Suddenly, it was all true. Meanwhile, everybody who seems to be trying to right the wrong is arrested.

So, what about those tampered documents? The government is silent on that, instead preferring to talk about political donation reform, which by the way UMNO the ruling party itself rejected while blaming the Opposition for the reform failure. Such is the prevalence of doubletalk in Malaysia.

That blatant defense change happened in the pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The fascist party said ”We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.” The masses nodded and they understood they had always been friends with Eastasia.

Suddenly at the same event, the party said ”We’ve always been at war with Eastasia,” The masses were oblivious to the switch in name and nodded dutifully.

We have already that one party, the volte-face, a hint of corrupt bureaucracy along with the inane rationale and excuses today. It is up to us Malaysians to not nod lest Malaysia becomes these dystopias tomorrow.

First published in The Malay Mail on August 7 2015.